Tag: Sigmund Freud

What is Cathexis?

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Introduction

In psychoanalysis, cathexis (or emotional investment) is defined as the process of allocation of mental or emotional energy to a person, object, or idea.

Refer to Acathexis, Decathexis, Body Cathexis, and Anticathexis.

Origin of Term

The Greek term cathexis (κάθεξις) was chosen by James Strachey to render the German term Besetzung in his translation of Sigmund Freud‘s complete works. Freud himself wrote of “interest (Besetzung)”, in an early letter to Ernest Jones.

Peter Gay objected that Strachey’s use of cathexis was an unnecessarily esoteric replacement for Freud’s use of Besetzung – “a word from common German speech rich in suggestive meanings, among them ‘occupation’ (by troops) and ‘charge’ (of electricity)”.

Usage

Freud defined cathexis as an allocation of libido, pointing out for example how dream thoughts were charged with different amounts of affect. A cathexis or allocation of emotional charge might be positive or negative, leading some of his followers to speak as well of a cathexis of mortido. Freud called a group of cathected ideas a complex.

Freud frequently described the functioning of psychosexual energies in quasi-physical terms, representing frustration of libidinal desires, for example, as a blockage of (cathected) energies which would eventually build up and require release in alternative ways. This release could occur, for example, by way of regression and the “re-cathecting” of former positions or fixations, or the autoerotic enjoyment (in phantasy) of former sexual objects: “object-cathexes”.

Freud used the term “anti-cathexis” or counter-charge to describe how the ego blocks such regressive efforts to discharge one’s cathexis: that is, when the ego wishes to repress such desires. Like a steam engine, the libido’s cathexis then builds up until it finds alternative outlets, which can lead to sublimation, reaction formation, or the construction of (sometimes disabling) symptoms.

M. Scott Peck distinguishes between love and cathexis, with cathexis being the initial in-love phase of a relationship, and love being the ongoing commitment of care. Cathexis to Peck, therefore, is distinguished from love by its dynamic element.

Object Relations

Freud saw the early cathexis of objects with libidinal energy as a central aspect of human development. In describing the withdrawal of cathexes which accompanied the mourning process, Freud provided his major contribution to the foundation of object relations theory.

Thinking

Freud saw thinking as an experimental process involving minimal amounts of cathexis, “in the same way as a general shifts small figures about on a map”.

In delusions, it was the hypercathexis (or over-charging) of ideas previously dismissed as odd or eccentric which he saw as causing the subsequent pathology.

Art

Eric Berne raised the possibility that child art often represented the intensity of cathexis invested in an object, rather than its objective form.

Criticism

Critics charge that the term provides a potentially misleading neurophysiological analogy, which might be applicable to the cathexis of ideas but certainly not of objects.

Further ambiguity in Freud’s usage emerges in the contrast between cathexis as a measurable load of (undifferentiated) libido, and as a qualitatively distinct type of affect – as in a “cathexis of longing”.

What is Working Through?

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Introduction

In psychodynamic psychotherapy, working through is seen as the process of repeating, elaborating, and amplifying interpretations. It is believed that such working through is critical towards the success of therapy.

The concept was introduced by Sigmund Freud in 1914, and assumed ever greater importance in psychoanalysis, in contrast to the immediacy of abreaction.

Interpretation and Resistance

Interpretations are made when the client comes up with some material, be it written, a piece of art, music, or verbal, and are intended to bring the material offered into connection with the unconscious mind. Because of the resistance to accepting the unconscious, interpretations, whether correct or partially incorrect, consciously accepted or rejected, will inevitably require amplifying and extending to other aspects of the client’s life.

In a process Sandor Rado compared to the labour of mourning, the unconscious content must be demonstrated repeatedly in all its various forms and linkages – the process of working through.

Because of the power of resistance, the client’s rational thought and conscious awareness may not be sufficient on their own to overcome the maladjustment, entailing further interpretation and further working through.

Rat Man

Before formulating the concept of working through, in his case study of the Rat Man, Freud wrote of his interpretations:

“It is never the aim of discussions like these to create convictions. They are only intended to bring the repressed complexes into consciousness…and to facilitate the emergence of fresh material from the unconscious. A sense of conviction is only attained after the patient has himself worked over the reclaimed material”.

Transference

The necessity of working through the transference is stressed in almost all forms of psychodynamic therapy, from object relations theory, through the openings offered for working through by transference disruption in self psychology, to the repetitive exploration of the transference in group therapy.

What is Abreaction?

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Introduction

Abreaction (German: Abreagieren) is a psychoanalytical term for reliving an experience to purge it of its emotional excesses – a type of catharsis.

Sometimes it is a method of becoming conscious of repressed traumatic events.

Psychoanalytic Origins

The concept of abreaction may have actually been initially formulated by Freud’s mentor, Josef Breuer; but it was in their joint work of 1895, Studies on Hysteria, that it was first made public to denote the fact that pent-up emotions associated with a trauma can be discharged by talking about it. The release of strangulated affect by bringing a particular moment or problem into conscious focus, and thereby abreacting the stifled emotion attached to it, formed the cornerstone of Freud’s early cathartic method of treating hysterical conversion symptoms. For instance, they believed that pent-up emotions associated with trauma can be discharged by talking about it. Freud and Breur, however, did not treat the spontaneous emotional reliving of traumatic event as curative. They instead described abreaction as the full emotional and motoric response to a traumatic event necessary in adequately relieving a person of being repetitively and unpredictably assailed by the trauma’s original and unmitigated emotional intensity. Although the element of surprise is not compatible with Freud’s approach to therapy, other theorists consider that, in abreaction, it is an important part of analytic technique.

Early in his career, psychoanalyst Carl Jung expressed interest in abreaction, or what he referred to as trauma theory, but later decided it had limitations in treatment of neurosis. Jung said:

Though traumata of clearly aetiological significance were occasionally present, the majority of them appeared very improbable. Many traumata were so unimportant, even so normal, that they could be regarded at most as a pretext for the neurosis. But what especially aroused my criticism was the fact that not a few traumata were simply inventions of fantasy and had never happened at all.

Later Developments

Mainstream psychoanalysis tended over time (with Freud) to downplay the role of abreaction, in favour of the working through of the emotions revealed through such acting-out of the past. However, Otto Rank explored abreaction of birth trauma as a central part of his revision of Freudian theory; while Edward Bibring revived the notion of abreaction as emotional reliving, a theme subsequently taken up by Vamik Volkan in his re-grief therapy.

Abreaction Therapies

In Scientology, Dianetics is a form of abreaction that science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard borrowed from the United States Navy when he spent three months in a San Diego hospital in 1943 with the complaints of an ulcer and malaria. Hubbard later wrote, in his autobiography My Philosophy, that he had observed abreactive therapy in the hospital, though in later life he claimed to have made the discovery on his own after being wounded in battle and given up as untreatable.

What is Negative Transference?

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Introduction

Negative transference is the psychoanalytic term for the transference of negative and hostile feelings, rather than positive ones, onto a therapist (or other emotional object).

Refer to Narcissistic Neurosis and Transference Neurosis.

Freud’s Preference

In his pioneering studies of transference phenomena, Freud noted the existence of both positive and negative transferences, while expressing a preference for the former, which he initially saw as a prerequisite for analytic work. Freud considered that “The hostile feelings make their appearance as a rule later than the affectionate ones and behind them”; and more frequently in same-sex than in mixed-sex analytic pairings.

Otto Fenichel pointed out that whereas neurotic aggravations can follow the emergence of a negative transference, so too (paradoxically) can improvements: the patient gets better to spite the therapist for emphasising the patient’s problems.

Later Formulations

Melanie Klein in her disputes with Anna Freud laid much greater emphasis than her opponent on the constructive role to be played by interpreting the negative transference. Jacques Lacan followed her theoretical lead in seeing “the projection of what Melanie Klein calls bad internal objects” as key to “the negative transference that is the initial knot of the analytic drama” – though he himself would face criticism for glossing over the negative transference in training analyses, to keep his analysands in dependence.

W.R.D. Fairbairn was also more interested in the negative than the positive transference, which he saw as a key to the repetition and exposure of unconscious attachments to internalised bad objects. In his wake, object relations theorists have tended to stress the positive results that can emerge from working with the negative transference.

Technical Blocks

  • Fritz Wittels considered the brevity of Wilhelm Stekel’s analyses to be due to his narcissism being unable to endure the emergence of the negative transference.
  • Rollo May saw the flaw in person-centred therapy as a pervasive reluctance to deal with the negative transference.

Literary Analogues

Describing the process of becoming the focus of a paranoid’s hostility, C.P. Snow wrote:

“No one likes being hated: most of us are afraid of it: it jars to the bone when we meet hatred face to face.”

What is Narcissistic Neurosis?

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Introduction

Narcissistic neurosis is a term introduced by Sigmund Freud to distinguish the class of neuroses characterised by their lack of object relations and their fixation upon the early stage of libidinal narcissism.

The term is less current in contemporary psychoanalysis, but still a focus for analytic controversy.

Freud considered such neurosis as impervious to psychoanalytic treatment, as opposed to the transference neurosis where an emotional connection to the analyst was by contrast possible.

Freud’s Changing Ideas

Freud originally applied the term “narcissistic neurosis” to a range of disorders, including perversion, depression, and psychosis. In the 1920s, however, he came to single out “illnesses which are based on a conflict between the ego and the super-ego… we would set aside the name of ‘narcissistic psycho-neuroses’ for disorders of that kind” – melancholia being the outstanding example.

About the same time, in the wake of the work of Karl Abraham, he began to modify to a degree his view on the inaccessibility of narcissistic neurosis to analytic treatment. However his late lectures from the thirties confirmed his opinion of the unsuitability of narcissistic and psychotic conditions for treatment “to a greater or less extent”; as did his posthumous ‘Outline of Psychoanalysis’.

Later Developments

From the twenties onwards, Freud’s views of the inaccessibility of the narcissistic neuroses to analytic influence had been challenged, first by Melanie Klein, and then by object relations theorists more broadly.

While classical analysts like Robert Waelder would maintain Freud’s delimiting standpoint into the sixties, eventually even within ego psychology challenges to the ‘off-limits’ view of what were increasingly seen as borderline disorders emerged.

Relational psychoanalysis, like Heinz Kohut, would also take a more positive approach to narcissistic neurosis, emphasising the need for a partial or initial participation in the narcissistic illusions.

In retrospect, Freud’s caution may be seen as a result of his unwillingness to work with the negative transference, unlike the post-Kleinians.

What is Transference Neurosis?

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Introduction

Transference neurosis is a term that Sigmund Freud introduced in 1914 to describe a new form of the analysand’s infantile neurosis that develops during the psychoanalytic process.

Based on Dora’s case history, Freud suggested that during therapy the creation of new symptoms stops, but new versions of the patient’s fantasies and impulses are generated. He called these newer versions “transferences” and characterised them as the substitution of the analyst for a person from the patient’s past. According to Freud’s description: “a whole series of psychological experiences are revived not as belonging to the past, but as applying to the person of the analyst at the present moment”. When transference neurosis develops, the relationship with the therapist becomes the most important one for the patient, who directs strong infantile feelings and conflicts towards the therapist, e.g. the patient may react as if the analyst is his/her father.

Refer to Narcissistic Neurosis and Negative Transference.

Basic Characteristics

Transference neurosis can be distinguished from other kinds of transference because:

  1. It is very vivid and it rekindles the infantile neurosis.
  2. It is generated by the feelings of frustration that the analysand inevitably experiences during sessions, since the analyst does not fulfil the analysand’s longings.
  3. In transference neurosis the symptoms are not stable, but they are transformed.
  4. Regression and repetition play a key role in the creation of transference neurosis.
  5. Transference neurosis reveals the particular meanings that the analysand has given to current infantile relationships and events, which generate internal conflicts between wishes and particular defences formed to strive against them. These meanings are united and create several transference patterns.

Resolution

Once transference neurosis has developed, it leads to a form of resistance, called “transference resistance”. At this point, the analysis of the transference becomes difficult since new obstacles arise in therapy, e.g. the analysand may insist on fulfilling the infantile wishes that emerged in transference, or may refuse to acknowledge that the current experience is, in fact, a reproduction of a past experience. However, the successful resolution of transference neurosis through interpretation will lead to the lifting of repression and will enable the Ego to solve the infantile conflicts in new ways. Furthermore, it will allow the analysand to recognize that the current relationship with the analyst is based on repetition of childhood experiences, leading to the detachment of the patient from the analyst.

The replacement of the infantile neurosis by transference neurosis and its resolution through interpretation remains the main focus of the classical psychoanalytic therapy. In other types of therapy, either the transference neurosis does not develop at all, or it does not play a central role in the therapy process. Although it is more likely for transference neurosis to develop in psychoanalysis, where the sessions are more frequent, it may also appear during psychotherapy.

What is Transference?

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Introduction

Transference (German: Übertragung) is a phenomenon within psychotherapy in which the feelings a person had about their parents, as one example, are unconsciously redirected or transferred to the present situation.

It usually concerns feelings from a primary relationship during childhood. At times, this transference can be considered inappropriate. Transference was first described by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, who considered it an important part of psychoanalytic treatment.

Occurrence

It is common for people to transfer feelings about their parents to their partners or children (that is, cross-generational entanglements). Another example of transference would be a person mistrusting somebody who resembles an ex-spouse in manners, voice, or external appearance, or being overly compliant to someone who resembles a childhood friend.

In The Psychology of the Transference, Carl Jung states that within the transference dyad both participants typically experience a variety of opposites, that in love and in psychological growth, the key to success is the ability to endure the tension of the opposites without abandoning the process, and that this tension allows one to grow and to transform.

Only in a personally or socially harmful context can transference be described as a pathological issue. A modern, social-cognitive perspective on transference explains how it can occur in everyday life. When people meet a new person who reminds them of someone else, they unconsciously infer that the new person has traits similar to the person previously known. This perspective has generated a wealth of research that illuminated how people tend to repeat relationship patterns from the past in the present.

High-profile serial killers often transfer unresolved rage toward previous love or hate-objects onto “surrogates”, or individuals resembling or otherwise calling to mind the original object of that hate. It is believed in the instance of Ted Bundy, he repeatedly killed brunette women who reminded him of a previous girlfriend with whom he had become infatuated, but who had ended the relationship, leaving Bundy rejected and pathologically rageful (Bundy, however, denied this as a motivating factor in his crimes). This notwithstanding, Bundy’s behaviour could be considered pathological insofar as he may have had narcissistic or antisocial personality disorder. If so, normal transference mechanisms cannot be held causative of his homicidal behaviour.

Sigmund Freud held that transference plays a large role in male homosexuality. In The Ego and the Id, he claimed that eroticism between males can be an outcome of a “[psychically] non-economic” hostility, which is unconsciously subverted into love and sexual attraction.

Transference and Counter-Transference during Psychotherapy

In a therapy context, transference refers to redirection of a patient’s feelings for a significant person to the therapist. Transference is often manifested as an erotic attraction towards a therapist, but can be seen in many other forms such as rage, hatred, mistrust, parentification, extreme dependence, or even placing the therapist in a god-like or guru status. When Freud initially encountered transference in his therapy with patients, he thought he was encountering patient resistance, as he recognised the phenomenon when a patient refused to participate in a session of free association. But what he learned was that the analysis of the transference was actually the work that needed to be done: “the transference, which, whether affectionate or hostile, seemed in every case to constitute the greatest threat to the treatment, becomes its best tool”. The focus in psychodynamic psychotherapy is, in large part, the therapist and patient recognising the transference relationship and exploring the relationship’s meaning. Since the transference between patient and therapist happens on an unconscious level, psychodynamic therapists who are largely concerned with a patient’s unconscious material use the transference to reveal unresolved conflicts patients have with childhood figures.

Countertransference is defined as redirection of a therapist’s feelings toward a patient, or more generally, as a therapist’s emotional entanglement with a patient. A therapist’s attunement to their own countertransference is nearly as critical as understanding the transference. Not only does this help therapists regulate their emotions in the therapeutic relationship, but it also gives therapists valuable insight into what patients are attempting to elicit in them. For example, a therapist who is sexually attracted to a patient must understand the countertransference aspect (if any) of the attraction, and look at how the patient might be eliciting this attraction. Once any countertransference aspect has been identified, the therapist can ask the patient what his or her feelings are toward the therapist, and can explore how those feelings relate to unconscious motivations, desires, or fears.

Another contrasting perspective on transference and countertransference is offered in classical Adlerian psychotherapy. Rather than using the patient’s transference strategically in therapy, the positive or negative transference is diplomatically pointed out and explained as an obstacle to cooperation and improvement. For the therapist, any signs of countertransference would suggest that his or her own personal training analysis needs to be continued to overcome these tendencies. Andrea Celenza noted in 2010 that “the use of the analyst’s countertransference remains a point of controversy”.

What is a Therapeutic Alliance?

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Introduction

A therapeutic alliance, or working alliance, is a partnership between a patient and their therapist that allows them to achieve goals through agreed-upon tasks.

The concept of therapeutic alliance dates back to Sigmund Freud. Over the course of its evolution, the meaning of the therapeutic alliance has shifted both in form and implication. What started as an analytic construct has become, over the years, a transtheoretical formulation, an integrative variable, and a common factor.

Alliance as Analytic

In its analytic permutation, Freud suggested the importance of allowing for the patient to be a “collaborator” in the therapeutic process. In his writings on transference, Freud thought of the patient’s feelings towards the therapist as resembling the non-conflicted, trusting elements of early relationships with the patient’s parents, and that this could serve as the basis for collaboration in this way.

In later years, ego psychologists popularised a construct that they would relate to the reality-oriented adaptation of the ego to the environment. For certain ego psychologists, the construct refocused psychoanalytic thought away from a perceived overemphasis on transference and allowed space for greater technical flexibility across different psychotherapeutic modalities. It also called into question the idea of therapist as a tabula rasa, or blank screen, and turned away from the idealised therapist stance of abstinence and neutrality. Instead, it brought attention to the real, felt dimension of the therapeutic relationship, and made an argument for the therapist as being supportive and the patient as identifying with the therapist.

Alliance as Integrative

Edward Bordin reformulated the therapeutic alliance more broadly, namely beyond the scope of the psychodynamic perspective, as transtheoretical. He operationalised the construct into three interdependent parts:

  • The affective bond between the patient and therapist;
  • Their agreement on goals; and
  • Their agreement on tasks.

This conceptualisation preserved the earlier focus on the affective aspects of the alliance (i.e. bond), while also incorporating more cognitive dimensions as well (i.e. tasks and goals). Bordin’s work led to a desire among researchers to further develop ways to measure the alliance based on his initial operationalisation. Around this time there was a surge of interest in psychotherapy integration and psychotherapy research on the alliance.

Alliance as Intersubjective

Jeremy Safran and J. Christopher Muran, along with their colleagues Catherine F. Eubanks and Lisa Wallner Samstag, advanced a further reformulation of the alliance. They agreed with Bordin that at an explicit level, patient and therapist collaborate on specific tasks. However, on an implicit level, they are also negotiating specific desires derived from underlying needs.

In this regard, the authors invoked the motivational needs for agency (self-definition) and communion (relatedness), and the existential need for mutual recognition (to see another’s subjectivity and to have another see one’s own as the culmination of knowing one exists), to advance an intersubjective consideration.

The authors suggested ruptures invariably occur as result of the inherent tensions in the negotiation of these dialectical needs. They distinguished between withdrawal and confrontation rupture markers, interpersonal communications or behaviour by patient or therapist.

  • The former includes movements away from self or other: that is, movements towards isolation or appeasement, pursuits of communion at the expense of agency.
  • The latter includes movements against the other: that is, movements towards control or aggression, pursuits of agency at the expense of communion. They defined the repair of these ruptures as a critical change process.

Alliance in Psychotherapy Research

Beginning in the 1970s, the alliance construct became a primary focus of psychotherapy research. This can be attributed largely to Bordin’s reformulation, which led to the development of Working Alliance Inventory (WAI) and Lester Luborsky’s Penn Helping Alliance Questionnaire (HAq). The Vanderbilt Psychotherapy Process Scales and the California Psychotherapy Alliance Scales (CALPAS) were other noteworthy measures.

Christoph Flückiger, AC Del Re, Bruce Wampold, and Adam Horvath conducted a meta-analysis on the alliance in psychotherapy. The researchers synthesized 295 independent studies of over 30,000 patients published 1978-2017. Results confirmed a moderate relationship between alliance and psychotherapy outcome.

In addition, Eubanks, Muran, and Safran conducted two meta-analyses on rupture repair in the alliance. The first indicated a moderate relationship between rupture repair and outcome. The second examined the effect of an alliance-focused training on rupture repair. Results suggested some support for the effect of such training.

What is Regression (Psychology)?

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Introduction

Regression, according to psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, is a defence mechanism leading to the temporary or long-term reversion of the ego to an earlier stage of development rather than handling unacceptable impulses more adaptively.

In psychoanalytic theory, regression occurs when an individual’s personality reverts to an earlier stage of development, adopting more childish mannerisms.

Freud, Regression, and Neurosis

Freud saw inhibited development, fixation, and regression as centrally formative elements in the creation of a neurosis. Arguing that “the libidinal function goes through a lengthy development”, he assumed that “a development of this kind involves two dangers – first, of inhibition, and secondly, of regression”. Inhibitions produced fixations; and the “stronger the fixations on its path of development, the more readily will the function evade external difficulties by regressing to the fixations”.

Neurosis for Freud was thus the product of a flight from an unsatisfactory reality:

“along the path of involution, of regression, of a return to earlier phases of sexual life, phases from which at one time satisfaction was not withheld. This regression appears to be a twofold one: a temporal one, in so far as the libido, the erotic needs, hark back to stages of development that are earlier in time, and a formal one, in that the original and primitive methods of psychic expression are employed in manifesting those needs”.

Behaviours associated with regression can vary greatly depending upon the stage of fixation: one at the oral stage might result in excessive eating or smoking, or verbal aggression, whereas one at the anal stage might result in excessive tidiness or messiness. Freud recognised that “it is possible for several fixations to be left behind in the course of development, and each of these may allow an irruption of the libido that has been pushed off – beginning, perhaps, with the later acquired fixations, and going on, as the lifestyle develops, to the original ones”.

In the Service of the Ego

Ernst Kris supplements Freud’s general formulations with a specific notion of “regression in the service of the ego” … “the specific means whereby preconscious and unconscious material appear in the creator’s consciousness”. Kris thus opened the way for ego psychology to take a more positive view of regression. Carl Jung had earlier argued that “the patient’s regressive tendency…is not just a relapse into infantilism, but an attempt to get at something necessary…the universal feeling of childhood innocence, the sense of security, of protection, of reciprocated love, of trust”. Kris however was concerned rather to differentiate the way that “Inspiration -…in which the ego controls the primary process and puts it into its service – needs to be contrasted with the opposite…condition, in which the ego is overwhelmed by the primary process”.

Nevertheless his view of regression in the service of the ego could be readily extended into a quasi-Romantic image of the creative process, in which “it is only in the fiery storm of a profound regression, in the course of which the personality undergoes both dissolution of structure and reorganization, that the genius becomes capable of wresting himself from the traditional pattern that he had been forced to integrate through the identifications necessitated and enforced by the oedipal constellation”.

From there it was perhaps only a small step to the 1960s valorisation of regression as a positive good in itself. “In this particular type of journey, the direction we have to take is back and in….They will say we are regressed and withdrawn and out of contact with them. True enough, we have a long, long way to back to contact the reality”. Jungians had however already warned that “romantic regression meant a surrender to the non-rational side which had to be paid for by a sacrifice of the rational and individual side”; and Freud for his part had dourly noted that “this extraordinary plasticity of mental developments is not unrestricted in direction; it may be described as a special capacity for involution – regression – since it may well happen that a later and higher level of development, once abandoned, cannot be reached again”.

Later Views

Anna Freud (1936) ranked regression first in her enumeration of the defence mechanisms, and similarly suggested that people act out behaviours from the stage of psychosexual development in which they are fixated. For example, an individual fixated at an earlier developmental stage might cry or sulk upon hearing unpleasant news.

Michael Balint distinguishes between two types of regression: a nasty “malignant” regression that the Oedipal level neurotic is prone to… and the “benign” regression of the basic-fault patient. The problem then is what the analyst can do “to ensure that his patient’s regression should be therapeutic and any danger of a pathological regression avoided”.

Others have highlighted the technical dilemmas of dealing with regression from different if complementary angles. On the one hand, making premature “assumptions about the patient’s state of regression in the therapy…regarded as still at the breast”, for example, might block awareness of more adult functioning on the patient’s part: of the patient’s view of the therapist. The opposite mistake would be “justifying a retreat from regressive material presented by a patient. When a patient begins to trust the analyst or therapist it will be just such disturbing aspects of the internal world that will be presented for understanding – not for a panic retreat by the therapist”.

Peter Blos suggested that “revisiting of early psychic positions…helps the adolescent come out of the family envelope”, and that “Regression during adolescence thus advances the cause of development”. Stanley Olinick speaks of “regression in the service of the other” on the part of the analyst “during his or her clinical work. Such ego regression is a pre-condition for empathy”.

Demonstration of pain, impairment, etc. also relates to regression. When regression becomes the cornerstone of a personality and the life strategy for overcoming problems, it leads to such an infantile personality.

  • A clear example of regressive behaviour in fiction can be seen in J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. Holden constantly contradicts the progression of time and the ageing process by reverting to childish ideas of escape, unrealistic expectations and frustration produced by his numerous shifts in behaviour. His tendencies to reject responsibility and society as a whole because he ‘does not fit in’ also pushes him to prolonged use of reaction formation, unnecessary generalisations, and compulsive lying.
  • A similar example occurs in Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape. Krapp is fixated on reliving earlier times, and re-enacts the foetal condition in his ‘den’. He is unable to form mature relationships with women, seeing them only as replacements for his deceased mother. He experiences physical ailments that are linked to his foetal complex, struggling to perform digestive functions on his own. This literal anal retentiveness exemplifies his inefficacy as an independent adult.

What is Identification (Psychology)?

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Introduction

Identification is a psychological process whereby the individual assimilates an aspect, property, or attribute of the other and is transformed wholly or partially by the model that other provides.

It is by means of a series of identifications that the personality is constituted and specified. The roots of the concept can be found in Freud‘s writings. The three most prominent concepts of identification as described by Freud are:

  • Primary identification;
  • Narcissistic (secondary) identification; and
  • Partial (secondary) identification.

While “in the psychoanalytic literature there is agreement that the core meaning of identification is simple – to be like or to become like another”, it has also been adjudged ‘”the most perplexing clinical/theoretical area” in psychoanalysis’.

Freud

Freud first raised the matter of identification (German: Identifizierung) in 1897, in connection with the illness or death of one’s parents, and the response “to punish oneself in a hysterical fashion…with the same states [of illness] that they have had. The identification which occurs here is, as we can see, nothing other than a mode of thinking”. The question was taken up again psychoanalytically “in Ferenczi’s article, ‘Introjection and Transference’, dating from 1909”, but it was in the decade between “On Narcissism” (1914) and “The Ego and the Id” (1923) that Freud made his most detailed and intensive study of the concept.

Freud distinguished three main kinds of identification. “First, identification is the original form of emotional tie with an object; secondly, in a regressive way it becomes a substitute for a libidinal object-tie…and thirdly, it may arise with any new perception of a common quality which is shared with some other person”.

Primary Identification

Primary identification is the original and primitive form of emotional attachment to something or someone prior to any relations with other persons or objects: “an individual’s first and most important identification, his identification with the father in his own personal prehistory…with the parents”. This means that when a baby is born he is not capable of making a distinction between himself and important others. The baby has an emotional attachment with his parents and experiences his parents as a part of himself. “The breast is part of me, I am the breast”.

During this process of identification children adopt unconsciously the characteristics of their parents and begin to associate themselves with and copy the behaviour of their parents. Freud remarked that identification should be distinguished from imitation, which is a voluntary and conscious act. Because of this process of emotional attachment a child will develop a super ego that has similarities to the moral values and guidelines by which the parents live their lives. By this process children become a great deal like their parents and this facilitates learning to live in the world and culture to which they are born.

“By and large, psychoanalysts grant the importance and centrality of primary identification, even though…the concept varies ‘according to each author and his ideas, its meaning in consequence being far from precise’ (Etchegoyen 1985)”.

Narcissistic (Secondary) Identification

Narcissistic identification is the form of identification following abandonment or loss of an object. This experience of loss starts at a very young age. An example: wearing the clothes or jewellery of a deceased loved one. In “Mourning and Melancholia” Freud, having “shown that identification is a preliminary stage of object-choice”, argued that the experience of loss sets in motion a regressive process that “served to establish an identification of the ego with the abandoned object”. In “The Ego and the Id”, he went on to maintain that “this kind of substitution has a great share in determining the form taken by the ego and that it makes an essential contribution towards building up what is called its ‘character'”.

Lacan, in his theory of the Imaginary, would develop the latter point into his view of “the ego is constituted in its nucleus by a series of alienating identifications” – part of his opposition to any concept of an “autonomous” and conflict-free ego.

Partial (Secondary) Identification

Partial identification is based on the perception of a special quality of another person. This quality or ideal is often represented in a “leader figure” who is identified with. For example: the young boy identifies with the strong muscles of an older neighbour boy. Next to identification with the leader, people identify with others because they feel they have something in common. For example: a group of people who like the same music. This mechanism plays an important role in the formation of groups. It contributes to the development of character and the ego is formed by identification with a group (group norms). Partial identification promotes the social life of persons who will be able to identify with one another through this common bond to one another, instead of considering someone as a rival.

Partial Identification and Empathy

Freud went on to indicate the way “a path leads from identification by way of imitation to empathy, that is, to the comprehension of the mechanism by which we are enabled to take up any attitude at all towards another mental life”. Otto Fenichel would go on to emphasize how “trial identifications for the purposes of empathy play a basic part in normal object relationships. They can be studied especially in analyzing the psychoanalyst’s ways of working”. Object relations theory would subsequently highlight the use of “trial identification with the patient in the session” as part of the growing technique of analysing from the countertransference.

Anna Freud and Identification with the Aggressor

In her classic book The Ego and the Mechanism of Defence, Anna Freud introduced “two original defence mechanisms…both of which have become classics of ego psychology“, the one being altruistic surrender, the other identification with the aggressor. Anna Freud pointed out that identification with parental values was a normal part of the development of the superego; but that “if the child introjects both rebuke and punishment and then regularly projects this same punishment on another, ‘then he is arrested at an intermediate stage in the development of the superego'”.

The concept was also taken up in object relations theory, which particularly explored “how a patient sometimes places the analyst in the role of victim whilst the patient acts out an identification with the aggressor” in the analytic situation.

With the Analyst

Mainstream analytic thought broadly agrees that interpretation took effect “by utilizing positive transference and transitory identifications with the analyst”. More controversial, however, was the concept of “the terminal identification” at the close of analysis, where “that with which the patient identifies is their strong ego…[or] identification with the analyst’s superego”.

Lacan took strong exception to “any analysis that one teaches as having to be terminated by identification with the analyst…There is a beyond to this identification…this crossing of the plane of identification”. Most Lacanians have subsequently echoed his distrust of “the view of psychoanalysis that relies on identification with the analyst as a central curative factor”. How far the same criticism applies, however, to those who see as a positive therapeutic result “the development of a self-analytic attitude…[built on] identification with and internalization of the analyst’s analytic attitude” is not perhaps quite clear.

Marion Milner has argued that “terminal identification” can be most acute in those analysands who go on to become therapists themselves: “by the mere fact of becoming analysts we have succeeded in bypassing an experience which our patients have to go through. We have chosen to identify with our analyst’s profession and to act out that identification”.

Contemporary Psychoanalytic Thinking

Much has been written on identification since Freud. Identification has been seen both as a normal developmental mechanism and as a mechanism of defence. Many types of identification have been described by other psychoanalysts, including counter-identification (Fliess, 1953), pseudoidentification (Eidelberg, 1938), concordant and complementary identifications (Racker, 1957), and adhesive identification (Bick, 1968): “the work of Bick and others on adhesive identification, exploring the concept of the ‘psychic skin'”.