In psychology, introjection (often mistakenly considered a substitute for the terms identification or internalization) is the unconscious adoption of the thoughts, memories or personality traits of others. 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.
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. and transfers them inside themselves, making such experiences part of their new psychic structure. These components are obliterated from consciousness (splitting), perceived in someone else (projection), and then experienced and performed (i.e., introjected) by that other person. 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. In other words, it provides the illusion of maintaining relationship but at the expense of a loss of self.
Projection has been described as an early phase of introjection.
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:
- "When a child envelops representational images of his absent parents into himself, simultaneously fusing them with his own personality."
- "Individuals with weak ego boundaries are more prone to use introjection as a defense mechanism."
According to D. W. Winnicott, "projection and introjection mechanisms... let the other person be the manager sometimes, and to hand over omnipotence."
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 superego could be accounted for in terms of introjection and that the superego derives from the parents or other figures of authority. The derived behavioural patterns are not necessarily reproductions as they actually are but incorporated or introjected versions of them.
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, 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."
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
- Internalization (sociology)
- Internalized oppression
- Internalizing disorder
- Labeling theory
- Suggestion