Introduction to Identity/Identification

In 2001, Out of the Tower, Off of the Couch created a year-long series under the heading of “Mistaken Identities.” Four different movies were shown that were initially discussed in an informal manner by the movie audience in the theatre. At the end of the series, Woman in the Window, Being John Malkovich, Fight Club, and Boys Don't Cry were reviewed by Celeste Schneider, Homay King, myself, and Francisco Gonzalez. The papers by Gonzalez, King, and Schneider were intended to be published eventually in fort da. However, time has passed, and in the meantime we mourned the death of Gayle Wheeler, who was one of the principal speakers of that series. What had been initially intended as a collection of essays on the theme of identification and identity formation has now become a tribute to Gayle Wheeler and her great passion for movies. Gayle lived and spoke in the language of movies. She was so well versed in all the movie genres that fascinating conversations would quickly unfold with her, leading one over a winding road, picking scenes from one movie or another to explain her point of view. There was so much to learn from Gayle. Yet, her too sudden death just put an abrupt end to all that we could have still distilled from her. The process of identification involves an ability to let go of a loved and admired object, to internalize this object rather than mourn it; I believe that many of us will not be able to let Gayle part quickly but, instead, will identify with one or the other “Wheelerism” that Gayle was so loved for. Many of us will find ourselves wanting to look at movies through Gayle's eyes and, in this identification with her, capture an old memory of her here and there.

Identification is a complex process, weaving in loss, mourning, and memory. The concept itself has had a complicated and at times confusing history in the field of psychoanalysis. In Freud's early writings, in the days of the Studies on Hysteria (1895) and Dora, in particular, identification w