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The notion of identification had already formed part of both colloquial and philosophical language when Freud introduced the concept into psychoanalytic theory. The dialectical relationship between questions that emerged from his clinical work, and the different theoretical contexts within which these questions were answered, brought about enrichments and redefinitions of the concept that were not always explicit. In this paper, we shall distinguish and refine the different clinical and theoretical contexts within which the concept of identification appears. We shall also trace the pathway that runs through the development of Freudian theory from the point where identification is a concept understood simply as a mechanism involved in the formation of neurotic symptoms to a point where it is considered to be a fundamental operation in the structural differentiation of the psychic apparatus.
In his correspondence with Fliess, Freud (1954) referred repeatedly to identification as a mechanism whereby symptoms were formed (Letters 53, 58, 64, and 105). He had already glimpsed the relationship between ego and identification (Letters 61 and 125) which later, in the theoretical context of the second topography, would become the nucleus of identification theory. However, it was not until The Interpretation of Dreams, that Freud (1900) began to systematically elaborate the theory of identification. The two pillars on which the theory was constructed in that work were: (1) identification as a mechanism involved in the formation of hysterical symptoms, and (2) identification as a mechanism operating in dreams.