Notes on Identification—Iii. The Concept of Identification

The concept of identification as it developed in Freud's thinking enjoyed a certain breadth of meaning which allowed a variety of processes to be included under it. Freud, in fact, used the term with considerable flexibility. His later thinking on the subject separated several forms of identification. Hysterical identification meant that the subject assimilated a property or quality of an object on the basis of a shared unconscious element. The assimilation was functional and symptomatic but not structural. He also recognized primary identification as a primitive form of emotional attachment prior to any object relations. The most important form of identification, however, was narcissistic identification which followed on loss of an object and in which the lost object was regressively replaced by introjection. This became the basic mechanism of superego formation. It was the primary mechanism for structural formation. But he also mentioned other forms of identification that did not follow on object loss and did not seem to involve introjective mechanisms. He described cases of simultaneous object cathexis and identification in which the alteration takes place before any object is given up (Freud, 1923). He also recognized a form of identification based on the perception of common qualities that did not depend on an object relation but did effect structural formation within the ego (Meissner, 1970a).

The thesis advanced in the present study is that Freud's use of 'identification' covered a set of metapsychologically distinct processes that demand clarification and delineation in view of the development in ego psychology that has gone on since Freud. It is my view that incorporation, introjection, and