The Difference Between Identity and Character

In philosophy, personal identity does not refer to a single unified problem, but to a collection of loosely connected questions that are easily conflated. Outside technical debates, people generally use the phrase in what is known as the characterization sense: the properties and traits to which someone feels a deep sense of ownership or attachment. Under this framing, having an identity crisis is not an abstract metaphysical dilemma about bodily survival, but a practical crisis of self-definition—becoming fundamentally unsure of what sort of person one is.