You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Capacities to form an internal representation of the other or, as in empathy, to place the self within the other are called identification mechanisms, assimilative and projective, respectively. From the earliest chronological period forward, assimilative or internalization types are incorporation, introjection, and identification. These defy exact delineation and, along with the projective mode, may be subsumed under the broad term, identification (Meissner, 1980; Ogden, 1979).
Assimilative and projective modes are often intermingled and kaleidoscopic. Both become automatized in the unconscious domain. Identification mechanisms must have a neural substratum, a determining genetic basis, in view of their adaptive value for such necessities as the prolonged mother-child bond and for later relationships with others.
Identification mechanisms, organized in a definable pattern, are the foundation for that type of transvestism called femmiphilic by Buhrich and McConaghy (1977). “Lover of the feminine” is basic in transvestism; further, after their study of 34 male transvestites, Buhrich and McConaghy regard this designation as advantageous because it bypasses questions of heterosexual or homosexual orientation and of underlying gender identity. The male's “philia” is expressed by donning women's clothes and accoutrements, often gazing at this transformed self in the mirror, and then, in many cases, experiencing mounting sexual arousal with masturbation and orgasm.
What are the identification mechanisms involved? The self is transformed into a female self that is externalized to the mirror. Within the male self, therefore, must reside a female representation, a female image, derived from a prior assimilative identification. Most likely, mother and associatively linked maternal derivatives have been assimilated. This internalized representation is projected. The man's action-self (ego) admires and wishes to penetrate the projected female component in the mirror. The masturbato