Discussions in the Hampstead Index on ‘The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence’: X. Identification with the Aggressor

The third part of Anna Freud's book, containing Chapters 9 and 10, is entitled ‘Examples of Two Types of Defence’. In Chapter 9, in introducing the topic of identification with the aggressor, Anna Freud remarks that the ego's habitual defence mechanisms may be relatively easily seen when they are employed separately and in relation to some specific threat. It is not so easy when defences are combined, or when the defence is used alternately against internal and external forces. Both these problems are illustrated in the process of identification which, as a factor in superego formation, helps towards mastery of the drives. But identification is also ‘one of the ego's most potent weapons in its dealings with external objects which arouse its anxiety’ (117, 110)1. Anna Freud recalls that Aichhorn once described a boy who had a habit of making faces that would cause the whole of his class to laugh. Aichhorn discovered that it was not that the boy was making fun of the schoolmaster, but rather that ‘the boy's grimaces were simply a caricature of the angry expression of the teacher’ (118, 110). When the boy faced a reprimand from the teacher ‘he tried to master his anxiety by involuntarily imitating him’. This imitation of the teacher was unconscious,