Ontological security is one form, but a very important form, of feelings of security in the wide sense in which I have used the term earlier. The phrase refers to the confidence that most humans beings have in the continuity of their self-identity and in the constancy of the surrounding social and material environments of action. A sense of the reliability of persons and things, so central to the notion of trust, is basic to feelings of ontological security; hence the two are psychologically closely related.

DEFINE: Giddens defines ontological security as confidence in the continuity of self-identity and constancy of surrounding social and material environments, closely tied to trust.

Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Moderni…, loc. 225