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The adolescent experiences identity crises in terms of time perspective vs. time diffusion.

Time perspective -- the ability to plan for the future and to postpone gratifying immediate wants in order to achieve long-range objectives -- is more easily developed if, from infancy on, the individual has been able to rely on and trust people and the world in which she lives.

Erikson has noted that, unless this trust developed early, the time ambivalence experienced, in varying degree and temporarily, by all adolescents ( as a result of their remembering the more immediate gratification of wants during childhood, while not yet having fully accepted the long-range planning required by adulthood ) may develop into a more permanent sense of time diffusion.

Experience of this time diffusion ranges from a sense of utter apathy to a feeling of desperate urgency to act immediately.