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Through Harold, I came to know many Mormons in my highschool and went to some of their Saturday night dances. Inevitably, the topic of missions came up. Young men and women are expected to go on missions and can head off as early as age 18. They go in same-sex pairs to different countries for a length of two years and discuss the Mormon faith with potential converts. Based on the way Harold’s friends talked, I could tell the mission was a powerful rite of passage. It confirmed them in their faith.

Post-freudian psychologists talk about this kind of identity building in terms of encountering the other. As we pass through various stages of life, from baby to child, child to adolescent, and so forth, we interact with others in a way that gradually defines who we are. This begins between the baby and the mother’s breast, where the child’s focus is very object-driven, and the line between baby and mother are blurred. Gradually, the child develops more distinct forms of identity as it becomes independent and encounters a wider range of situations.

In Erik Erikson’s book, Gandhi’s Truth, the post-Freudian psychologist details this kind of trajectory in the life of Mahatma Gandhi. The young Gandhi had his own “Harold”, a rapscallion friend who got into a lot of trouble. Erikson suggests Gandhi, by interacting with this friend, was able to test who he was and what he stood for. The friend helped Gandhi grow. This is why, when people change, it can be provocative. It causes the people around them to re-evaluate who they are whether they want to or not.

I know of one guy in construction who, when he decided to stop drinking, was greeted with physical aggression by some of his co-workers. They were not ready, in any way, to question their own drinking and his choice of abstinence forced them into an unwanted self-evaluation. Gandhi’s shift from a lawyer dressed in suit and tie to a political leader clothed in simple cotton cloth he wove himself is an example where his personal life changes had much wider implications. It changed the way Indians saw themselves and the way the English colonizers viewed them in turn.