I just don’t seem to matter," Rufus thinks to himself on his way home from work. The divorced, 47-year-old father of two feels like his job doesn’t accomplish anything that he isn’t doing a good job of parenting his sons, and that he doesn’t have any real impact on the world around him. In Erik Erikson’s theory, Rufus is experiencing a sense of:

a. stagnation
b. egocentrism.
c. despair.
d. isolation.