Mike Lee wrote 21 February: <<I believe this ["introjection"] is essentially the opposite of "projection," and is similar to "identification." It is taking something external, be it an object or an aspect of another person's personality, and making an internalization of it. For the infant, the first external object to be "introjected" might be the mother's breast, for example. Someone else on this list may have a better or more technical definition, as I'm working from already overtaxed semantic memory system.>>
Freud's first use of the notion of "introjection" seems to have been in "Instincts and their Vicissitudes" (1915): "In so far as the objects which are presented to it are sources of pleasure, it takes them into itself, it 'introjects' them (to use Ferenczi's [1909] term)�" (SE 14, p. 136). At times he seems to use the terms "identification" and "introjection" interchangeably (see chapter 7, "Identification", in "Group Psychology" [1921]), but my sense is that "introjection" implies a more thoroughgoing identification, whereas one could use the term "identification" when someone merely copies certain behaviours or traits of another individual. In *Freud Evaluated* Malcolm Macmillan notes that Freud used the term identification to mean different things at different times (1997 [1991] pp. 448-49), and from a survey of the literature through the twentieth century he cites the differing views of prominent psychoanalysts concerning the meaning of the two terms (pp. 496-97). (Incidentally, Macmillan's monumental volume should be on the bookshelf of every psychology department.) Freud gives an example of the psychoanalytic use of the notion of identification in "Group Psychology" (1921): "A young man has been unusually long and intensely fixated upon his mother in the sense of the Oedipus complex. But at last, after the end of puberty, the time comes for exchanging his mother for some other sexual object. Things take a sudden turn; the young man does not abandon his mother, but identifies with her; he transforms himself into her, and now looks about for objects which can replace his ego for him, and on which he can bestow such love and care as he has experienced from his mother." (SE 18, p. 108) Whether or not you buy that kind of explanation seems to be a matter of intellectual taste. My own view is that, as so often in psychoanalytic discourse, one can 'explain' almost anything by such analyses. At various times Freud came up with three different explanations for the development of homosexuality in men (Esterson 1993, p. 242; Macmillan 1997 [1991], pp. 357-58), as well as stating that "every human being oscillates all through his life between heterosexual and homosexual feelings, and any frustration or disappointment in one direction is apt to drive him over into the other" (SE 12, p. 46). Well, that should cover everything... Allen Esterson London www.human-nature.com/esterson/index.html References: Esterson, A. (1993). *Seductive Mirage: An Exploration of the Work of Sigmund Freud*, Chicago: Open Court. Freud, S. (1912). "Psychoanalytic Notes on an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paronoia", Standard Edtion vol. 12, pp. 3-82. London: Hogarth. Freud, S. (1915). "Instincts and their Vicissitudes", Standard Edition vol. 14, pp. 111-140. London: Hogarth. Freud S. (1921). "Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego", Standard Edition vol. 18, pp. 65-143. London: Hogarth. Macmillan, M. (1997 [1991]).*Freud Evaluated: The Completed Arc*. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
