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I have attempted to explore the historical development of the concept of identification and to offer some further developmental perspectives, especially as they are related to the process of individuation. Classically identification has been seen as a "monument to object relations" (26), and a "vicissitude of the id." I attempted to look at identifications as the building stones of a developing identity as well as a means by which the relationship to significant persons is kept psychically alive. The relatively autonomous roots of identification in the child's early tendencies to imitate, to seek out novelty, and to become effective in relation to his environment are considered.
When occurring under appropriate developmental conditions, identification can stimulate the process of individuation, including the transformation of passivity to activity, and of symbiotic relatedness to a self-reliant, yet reciprocal interdependence. At the same time, identification is a partial means through which these shifts or transformations in development come about.