Introjection

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In psychology, introjection (also known as identification or internalization) [1] is the unconscious adoption of the thoughts or personality traits of others. [2] It occurs as a normal part of development, such as a child taking on parental values and attitudes. It can also be a defense mechanism in situations that arouse anxiety. [2] It has been associated with both normal and pathological development. [1]

Contents

Theory

Introjection is a concept rooted in the psychoanalytic theories of unconscious motivations. [1] Unconscious motivation refers to processes in the mind which occur automatically and bypass conscious examination and considerations. [3]

Introjection is the learning process or in some cases a defense mechanism where a person unconsciously absorbs experiences and makes them part of their psyche. [1]

In learning

In psychoanalysis, introjection (German : Introjektion) refers to an unconscious process wherein one takes components of another person's identity, such as feelings, experiences and cognitive functioning, [4] and transfers them inside themselves, making such experiences part of their new psychic structure. [5] These components are obliterated from consciousness (splitting), perceived in someone else (projection), [6] and then experienced and performed (i.e., introjected) by that other person. [4] Cognate concepts are identification, incorporation [7] and internalization.

As a defense mechanism

It is considered a self-stabilizing defense mechanism used when there is a lack of full psychological contact between a child and the adults providing that child's psychological needs. [8] In other words, it provides the illusion of maintaining relationship but at the expense of a loss of self. [8] To use a simple example, a person who picks up traits from their friends is introjecting.

Another straightforward illustration could be a youngster who is being bullied at school. Unknowingly adopting the bully's behavior, the victim youngster may do so to stop being picked on in the future. [9]

Projection has been described as an early phase of introjection. [10]

Historic precursors

Freud and Klein

In Freudian terms, introjection is the aspect of the ego's system of relational mechanisms which handles checks and balances from a perspective external to what one normally considers 'oneself', infolding these inputs into the internal world of the self-definitions, where they can be weighed and balanced against one's various senses of externality. For example:

According to D. W. Winnicott, "projection and introjection mechanisms... let the other person be the manager sometimes, and to hand over omnipotence." [11]

According to Freud, the ego and the superego are constructed by introjecting external behavioural patterns into the subject's own person. Specifically, he maintained that the critical agency or the super ego could be accounted for in terms of introjection and that the superego derives from the parents or other figures of authority. [12] The derived behavioural patterns are not necessarily reproductions as they actually are but incorporated or introjected versions of them. [12]

Torok and Ferenczi

However, the aforementioned description of introjection has been challenged by Maria Torok as she favours using the term as it is employed by Sándor Ferenczi in his essay "The Meaning of Introjection" (1912). In this context, introjection is an extension of autoerotic interests that broadens the ego by a lifting of repression so that it includes external objects in its make-up. Torok defends this meaning in her 1968 essay "The Illness of Mourning and the Fantasy of the Exquisite Corpse", where she argues that Sigmund Freud and Melanie Klein confuse introjection with incorporation and that Ferenczi's definition remains crucial to analysis. She emphasized that in failed mourning "the impotence of the process of introjection (gradual, slow, laborious, mediated, effective)" means that "incorporation is the only choice: fantasmatic, unmediated, instantaneous, magical, sometimes hallucinatory...'crypt' effects (of incorporation)". [13]

Fritz and Laura Perls

In Gestalt therapy, the concept of "introjection" is not identical with the psychoanalytical concept. Central to Fritz and Laura Perls' modifications was the concept of "dental or oral aggression", when the infant develops teeth and is able to chew. They set "introjection" against "assimilation". In Ego, Hunger and Aggression, [14] Fritz and Laura Perls suggested that when the infant develops teeth, he or she has the capacity to chew, to break apart food, and assimilate it, in contrast to swallowing before; and by analogy to experience, to taste, accept, reject or assimilate. Laura Perls explains: "I think Freud said that development takes place through introjection, but if it remains introjection and goes no further, then it becomes a block; it becomes identification. Introjection is to a great extent unawares." [15]

Thus Fritz and Laura Perls made "assimilation", as opposed to "introjection", a focal theme in Gestalt therapy and in their work, and the prime means by which growth occurs in therapy. In contrast to the psychoanalytic stance, in which the "patient" introjects the (presumably more healthy) interpretations of the analyst, in Gestalt therapy the client must "taste" with awareness their experience, and either accept or reject it, but not introject or "swallow whole". Hence, the emphasis is on avoiding interpretation, and instead encouraging discovery. This is the key point in the divergence of Gestalt therapy from traditional psychoanalysis: growth occurs through gradual assimilation of experience in a natural way, rather than by accepting the interpretations of the analyst.

See also

Related Research Articles

Psychoanalysis is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques that deal in part with the unconscious mind, and which together form a method of treatment for mental disorders. The discipline was established in the early 1890s by Sigmund Freud, whose work stemmed partly from the clinical work of Josef Breuer and others. Freud developed and refined the theory and practice of psychoanalysis until his death in 1939. In an encyclopedic article, he identified the cornerstones of psychoanalysis as "the assumption that there are unconscious mental processes, the recognition of the theory of repression and resistance, the appreciation of the importance of sexuality and of the Oedipus complex." Freud's colleagues Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav Jung developed offshoots of psychoanalysis which they called individual psychology (Adler) and analytical psychology (Jung), although Freud himself wrote a number of criticisms of them and emphatically denied that they were forms of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis was later developed in different directions by neo-Freudian thinkers, such as Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, and Harry Stack Sullivan.

In psychoanalytic theory, the id, ego and superego are three distinct, interacting agents in the psychic apparatus, defined in Sigmund Freud's structural model of the psyche. The three agents are theoretical constructs that Freud employed to describe the basic structure of mental life as it was encountered in psychoanalytic practice. Freud himself used the German terms das Es, Ich, and Über-Ich, which literally translate as "the it", "I", and "over-I". The Latin terms id, ego and superego were chosen by his original translators and have remained in use.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Otto Rank</span> Austrian psychoanalyst (1884–1939)

Otto Rank was an Austrian psychoanalyst, writer, and philosopher. Born in Vienna, he was one of Sigmund Freud's closest colleagues for 20 years, a prolific writer on psychoanalytic themes, editor of the two leading analytic journals of the era, managing director of Freud's publishing house, and a creative theorist and therapist. In 1926, Rank left Vienna for Paris and, for the remainder of his life, led a successful career as a lecturer, writer, and therapist in France and the United States.

Psychoanalytic theory is the theory of personality organization and the dynamics of personality development relating to the practice of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology. First laid out by Sigmund Freud in the late 19th century, psychoanalytic theory has undergone many refinements since his work. The psychoanalytic theory came to full prominence in the last third of the twentieth century as part of the flow of critical discourse regarding psychological treatments after the 1960s, long after Freud's death in 1939. Freud had ceased his analysis of the brain and his physiological studies and shifted his focus to the study of the psyche, and on treatment using free association and the phenomena of transference. His study emphasized the recognition of childhood events that could influence the mental functioning of adults. His examination of the genetic and then the developmental aspects gave the psychoanalytic theory its characteristics. Starting with his publication of The Interpretation of Dreams in 1899, his theories began to gain prominence.

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Melanie Klein was an Austrian-British author and psychoanalyst known for her work in child analysis. She was the primary figure in the development of object relations theory. Klein suggested that pre-verbal existential anxiety in infancy catalyzed the formation of the unconscious, which resulted in the unconscious splitting of the world into good and bad idealizations. In her theory, how the child resolves that split depends on the constitution of the child and the character of nurturing the child experiences. The quality of resolution can inform the presence, absence, and/or type of distresses a person experiences later in life.

Projection is a psychological phenomenon where feelings directed towards the self are displaced towards other people.

In psychoanalytic theory, a defence mechanism is an unconscious psychological operation that functions to protect a person from anxiety-producing thoughts and feelings related to internal conflicts and outer stressors.

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Object relations theory is a school of thought in psychoanalytic theory and psychoanalysis centered around theories of stages of ego development. Its concerns include the relation of the psyche to others in childhood and the exploration of relationships between external people, as well as internal images and the relations found in them. Thinkers of the school maintain that the infant's relationship with the mother primarily determines the formation of its personality in adult life. Particularly, attachment is the bedrock of the development of the self or the psychic organization that creates the sense of identity.

Transference is a phenomenon within psychotherapy in which repetitions of old feelings, attitudes, desires, or fantasies that someone displaces are subconsciously projected onto a here-and-now person. Traditionally, it had solely concerned feelings from a primary relationship during childhood.

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<i>The Ego and the Id</i> Book by Sigmund Freud

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Jaffe, Charles M. (24 August 2018). "Introjection in Psychoanalytic Couple and Family Therapy". Encyclopedia of Couple and Family Therapy. Springer, Cham. pp. 1–2. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-15877-8_12-1. ISBN   978-3-319-15877-8. S2CID   220278667.
  2. 1 2 "The American Psychological Association Dictionary of Psychology". www.apa.org. American Psychological Association. Retrieved 30 October 2021. a process in which an individual unconsciously incorporates... the attitudes, values, and qualities of another person or a part of another person's personality. Introjection may occur, for example, in the mourning process for a loved one.
  3. ↑ Westen, Drew (1999). "The Scientific Status of Unconscious Processes: Is Freud Really Dead?". Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. 47 (4): 1061–1106. doi:10.1177/000306519904700404. PMID   10650551. S2CID   207080.
  4. 1 2 Hinshelwood, R. D. (1995). "The Social Relocation of Personal Identity as Shown by Psychoanalytic Observations of Splitting, Projection, and Introjection". Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology. 2 (3): 185–204. ISSN   1086-3303.
  5. ↑ Jaffe, Charles M. (2018). "Introjection in Psychoanalytic Couple and Family Therapy". Encyclopedia of Couple and Family Therapy: 1–2. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-15877-8_12-1. ISBN   978-3-319-15877-8. S2CID   220278667.
  6. ↑ Malancharuvil, Joseph M. (2004-12-01). "Projection, Introjection, and Projective Identification: A Reformulation". The American Journal of Psychoanalysis. 64 (4): 375–382. doi:10.1007/s11231-004-4325-y. ISSN   1573-6741. PMID   15577283. S2CID   19730486.
  7. ↑ A form of taking the outside world into the inner world, being focused on bodily sensation.
  8. 1 2 Erskine, Richard G. (2018-04-17). Relational Patterns, Therapeutic Presence: Concepts and Practice of Integrative Psychotherapy. Routledge. ISBN   9780429918513.
  9. ↑ "Introjection, Internalization, Identification, Oh My!". Therapist Development Center. Retrieved 2023-08-26.
  10. ↑ Malancharuvil JM (December 2004). "Projection, introjection, and projective identification: a reformulation" (PDF). Am J Psychoanal. 64 (4): 375–82. doi:10.1007/s11231-004-4325-y. PMID   15577283. S2CID   19730486.
  11. ↑ "Winnicott, D.W. Home is Where We Start From: Essays by a Psychoanalyst. New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1986. 50.
  12. 1 2 Wollheim, Richard (1981). Sigmund Freud. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 223. ISBN   052128385X.
  13. ↑ Jacques Derrida, "Foreword", Nicolas Abraham/Maria Torok, The Wolf Man's Secret Word (1986) p. xvii and p. 119n
  14. ↑ Perls, F., Ego, Hunger and Aggression (1942, 1947) ISBN   0-939266-18-0
  15. ↑ Wysong, J./Rosenfeld, E.(eds.): An oral history of Gestalt therapy. Interviews with Laura Perls, Isadore From, Erving Polster, Miriam Polster , Highland, N.Y. 1982, p. 6.
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