The Effects of Counteridentification*

The most human of attributes in relation to our evolutionary animal ancestry is that particular aspect of consciousness which is self-awareness, together with the ability to objectify it, and the outside world as well, through symbolic, verbal expression. But in order to be aware of self, there must be one—separate and distinct from others, and from all other objects in the world of reality, even of dreams and fantasy. As we know, the individual self does not come into being full blown like Minerva from the head of Jupiter. It is hard won through a process of development and creation, partly unconscious and partly consciously willed. The psychic aspect of the self—that which is its executive branch, which acts and functions, thinks and dreams, hopes and desires, despairs and rejects—is the ego. The ego is largely, though not entirely, made up of identifications, that is, of memory images of experiences with significant others which have been laid down in the tissues of the brain and nervous system. This internalization of the outer world is usually referred to in psychoanalysis as introjection, probably because its beginning and most crucial period takes place in the oral mode, during the oral phase of development. The consolidation of that which has been introjected into a synthesized ego results in the identifications that constitute the building blocks of personality—components parts of the ego that can be isolated and made conscious in the course of psychoanalytic therapy. It is this capacity to form identifications that I regard as the most human of attributes, for while it is predicated on the development of memory, consciousness, and symbolic representation, its significance goes beyond these. It expresses the emotional