Feelings on the Move · 4 of 5
Introjective identification
Becoming like someone you took in
AF
Meet the person
Anna Freud
1895–1982
Sigmund Freud’s youngest daughter. She was a schoolteacher first. She came to London with her father in 1938, and during the Second World War she ran nurseries for children who’d lost their homes. She and Melanie Klein disagreed so strongly that their arguments got a name: the Controversial Discussions (1941–45). The Anna Freud children’s centre in London is named after her.
The idea
Introjection means you carry someone’s voice. Introjective identification goes further: you become like them. Klein named this. Anna Freud described one famous version in 1936: identification with the aggressor. If someone scares you, one way to stop feeling small is to become the scary one. That’s how a bullied kid can turn into a bully.
Introjective identification: I don’t just hear you — I turn into you.
Has this ever happened to you?
Break the chain: the hurt keeps moving down the line until someone notices it. That someone can be you.
Spot it
Priya’s older brother mocks her every day. At school, she starts mocking younger kids in exactly the same way. What is this?
▸ For grown-ups: sources
[Ref: Freud A. (1936) The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence. London: Hogarth Press, 1937]
[Ref: Klein M. (1955) On identification. In: Klein M., Heimann P., Money-Kyrle R. (eds) New Directions in Psycho-Analysis. London: Tavistock]