Identification is one of the most widely used concepts in psychoanalysis. It has gained its place in notably different schools of psychology, including those outside the psychoanalytical framework, as well as in social scientific literature of wide range. Jean Laplanche and J.-B. Pontalis, in their The Language of Psychoanalysis, define identification as a “psychological process whereby the subject assimilates an aspect, property or attribute of the other and is transformed, wholly or partially, after the model the other provides. It is by
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means of a series of identifications that the personality is constituted and specified." (Laplanche & Pontalis 1974, 211.)
It has been argued that Freud occasionally uses identification as a synonym for introjection (see Sandford 1974). Because of this, it is not clear precisely what Freud means by identification in different parts of his writing.
The concept of introjection which was used first by Melanie Klein (1932) is associated with fantasies. Introjection is a fantasy of taking an external object or scenario into oneself. In introjection the object disappears inside, as it were.
There is no actual relation between subject and object. This process is parallel to that of incorporation which corresponds to the oral phase of psychosexual development. In introjection, however, there does not necessarily exist a physical or bodily basis for the fantasy, whereas in incorporation the subject aggressively takes the object into its own body – ingests it. (Laplanche &
Pontalis 1974, 211-212.)
Something considerably different happens in identification. Freud (SE 22, 86) once argued that “if one has lost a love object or has had to give it up, one often compensates oneself by identifying oneself with it; one sets it up again inside one’s ego, so that in this case object-choice regresses, as it were, to identification.” Freud defined identification as the first emotional tie to the object, before he finalized it as preceding abandoned object cathexes (see Freud 1962, 45). The main point in identification is its being a relationship between subject and object and not a purely internal process like introjection. A continuing relationship with the object is therefore a distinctive feature of identification. Furthermore, we have to assume a rudimentary form of self to exist in order for the identification to take place. This is not the case in introjection.
The key concept in understanding what Freud means by identification is Oedipus complex, in which the role of identification is crucially emphasised.
While developing his theory of Oedipus complex, Freud mentions the felt rivalry of the boy with his father over the mother’s love, as well as the boy's fear of punishment. The same identificatory processes are of course happening in the female child even though Freud did not take it in to account (cf. Benjamin 1995, 115-141.) But to go on, here we find the ground for and the dynamic nature of identification. It is a means to prevent the threat of the boy's own primitive impulses to retaliate when subjected to hostility on the father’s part.
The logic behind this is: if you can’t beat the father, you might as well join him.
In identification the boy is able to take part in the father’s strength. The boy therefore through identification takes on aspects of the father’s character.
He takes over some of his father’s demands and expectations as well as some of his ways of thinking and moral beliefs. Crucial here is the balance of the boy’s feelings towards his father. If the balance moves towards hostility, the identification is mostly defensive and the super-ego that develops along the Oedipus complex is mainly characterized by reaction-formation. According to Freud, feelings in Oedipus circle are always ambivalent, and this is the reason hostility has a major role in the formation of the super-ego.
The question poses itself, however, of whether identification is sufficient for moral development, as Freud is suggesting. Does identification create genuine autonomy? One could further argue that acquiring moral values involves more than the taking over of someone else’s moral attitudes. I stress that we must take into consideration the complex process of learning, where every acquired value, and every response that the actions of the individual create, develops new sentiments along with new ways of criticizing actions. I am nevertheless of the opinion that Freud is reasonably correct to conceptualize super-ego as a “tyrant”. In fact, many psychoanalysts have followed his example and made a distinction between super-ego and for example conscience (see. Jones 1955, 40; Fromm 1947, 143-158).
While writing with respect to group-psychology, Freud (1988) notes, that identification generally operates along two different axes, horizontal and vertical. There is a certain degree of mutual identification to begin with between the members of a group. This form of identification resembles that between siblings. On the other hand, there exists a qualitatively different identification, one between the individual group members and their leader, teacher, God, or abstract ideal, the father figure. Identification between group members, however, is strictly subordinate to their identification with the leader, which in a more sublimated form may be replaced by an abstract ideology.
Freud (1988, 56-61) additionally speaks of the so-called herd instinct of the group, which is derived from the mutually aggressive desire of its members to replace one another in their desire for their leader. From the ontogenetic viewpoint, siblings are jealous of each other for the love they receive from their parents, they want to kill each other but their father won’t let them. Their response to this is to repress their aggression and defend themselves against its subsequent irruption by developing the opposite affect, love. Moreover, this love is not allowed to be erotic either, so it becomes inhibited in its aim. This love consequently regresses to the level of a narcissistic identification, something facilitated by the similarity between siblings-comrades, and their shared attachment to the father-leader. In addition, this defensive reaction provides a secondary gain, as the identification with the other permits the vicarious enjoyment of the love and approval received by them from the leader or parent. In Freud’s terms, “social feeling is based upon the reversal of what was first a hostile feeling into a positively-toned tie in the nature of an identification […] under the influence of a common affectionate tie with a person outside the group” (1988, 60). The development of this narcissistic identification, then, accounts for such phenomena as group hysteria, and mass hallucination, referred to as “group contagion”. However, it does so only by appeal to the relation of each group member to the leader; group contagion is subordinate to the vertical axis of identification, between the father and the child.
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