Notes on Identification—Ii. Clarification of Related Concepts

The present analysis attempts to clarify some of the terminological and conceptual issues that Freud's evolving notions of identificatory processes and the development of intrapsychic structure have posed for us (26). The focus of the study is on separating and conceptualizing some of the processes that Freud specified as related to and involved with identification, i.e., internalization, imitation, incorporation, and introjection. It is concluded that imitation is not a form of internalization but that it bears a complex relation to processes of internalization. Incorporation and introjection are described as internalizing mechanisms which serve phase-specific development and defensive ends that are correlative with the level of internal structure formation and the degree of object relatedness. Introjection, together with its correlative mechanism of projection, is

analyzed in terms of a transitional object model of object relatedness. Introjection is distinguished from identification by reason of its instinctual drive-dependence and derivation, its function in the economy of conflict and defense, the character of introjects as primary process presences (as quasi-autonomous sources of intrapsychic activity which maintain a relative distance from the subjective ego core), and by its susceptibility to projection and greater capacity for regression. Introjection, therefore, emerges as a metapsychologically distinct process which differs from identification economically, dynamically, structurally, genetically, and adaptively. The relationship between introjections as quasi-autonomous primary process presences that bear a structuralizing influence on intrapsychic integration, and identifications as drive-independent and autonomous secondary process structuralizations by which the internal structure of the ego is organized and stabilized, demands further analysis and clarification.