Conflict and the Orgins of Identification

The science of psychoanalysis in the hands of its inventor, Sigmund Freud, had among its earliest rewards the discovery that human mental structure was extensively the product of social experiences. Indeed, Freud learned that it was the relationships of early life, particularly those with parents and others with whom contact was extensive, that had the most profound and enduring impact on the developing mind. The observation that individuals display aspects of this structure in patterns of behavior like those of the important people around them also soon became part of the data of psychoanalysis. The behaviors in which these resemblances were seen, however, were certainly not all of one type. In fact, the resemblances might be apparent in various behaviors. For example, the individual might speak to himself as he had been spoken to, might walk in the manner of his model, or might behave toward others as he had been treated. From this data a notion quite naturally arose, apparently, that the model for a particular behavior had been “taken in,” since the subject now showed characteristics of this model. Just where the model was put once “taken in” and why it was “taken in” in the first place were questions immediately posed by this conceptualization. Writings addressing these matters came to use terms such as “identification,” “incorporation,” and “introjection” to delineate these “internalization” processes. (The notion of a psychic “structure,” it must be emphasized, cannot be usefully employed without recognition that it has behavioral re-ferrents such as a subject's conduct in his love attachments, his interests, his stream of thoughts, and his ideals.)

It was observed later that these “internalization” processes seemed to bear some relationship to disruptions in the smooth adaptation