Hinshelwood's general premise in this paper is that our individual identities are under constant pressure from interpersonal processes which subject them to ongoing ‘reconstructions’. He begins with Freud's concept of identification employed in Mourning and Melancholia and linked with failure to mourn: ‘the object that was loved becomes instead a part of the person who is bereaved’. In a clinical example Hinshelwood describes a patient's process of taking in a hated object which then comes to dominate her internal world in a powerfully hostile way. He hypothesizes that the manner of internalization has implications for the individual's sense of personal identity. He then moves to social psychology to explicate processes of internalization in society at large; these can give rise to internal objects that are characterized by the prevailing zeitgeist. In oppressive political regimes, for example, a ‘totalitarian object’ may become installed within individuals; this object remains impervious to realities—such as a