The notion of identity, now so popular among those who look for it in gender and race and sexuality, implies the possibility of resolving the self in some binding manner. If Freud is right and the psyche is always churning, then it can never be fixed in such a way that one can claim an identity. We are simply too changeful for that: the civil war within the psyche goes on and on.
But what is the harm of claiming identity? From Freud’s point of view, it is a form of hubris. It suggests a self-resolution that humans cannot achieve. A person who believes that he’s achieved identity is likely to be overbearingly confident. She knows who she is. She’s got herself all figured out. And from such feelings of coherence and correctness are likely to come assertions, exclamations, dictates. It is not surprising that the advocates of identity are often such aggressively confident dispensers of their views. How could they be wrong? They know precisely who and what they are. And knowing that, they must know more besides. They are awake. Others live in a dream, waiting to be rescued by loudly administered doses of the real.
Mark Edmundson, The Age of Guilt: The Super-Ego in the Online World, 72.