Psychological Identification

Abstract

Psychological identification, which the Medical Subject Headings vocabulary classifies under both personality development and the defense mechanisms, is the process by which a person assimilates an aspect of another and is transformed, wholly or in part, after that model. Sigmund Freud introduced it as the earliest emotional tie to another person and as the mechanism that builds the ego and the super-ego. Later work split into distinct traditions: Anna Freud's defensive identification with the aggressor, Herbert Kelman's social-influence account, Albert Bandura's observational learning, and modern theories of identity motives. This article explains what identification is and how MeSH files it, its classical varieties and its MeSH subtype, how it forms character and conscience, its defensive use, and how contemporary research measures identification with groups and with aggressors.

Keywords: identification, introjection, internalization, social identity

Psychological identification is the mind's way of becoming like another: a child, a patient, or a group member takes an attribute of someone else and makes it part of the self, so that the model is no longer merely admired or obeyed but is, in some measure, incorporated. Psychoanalysis gave the term its first technical meaning, treating identification as the process that converts relationships into structure, and the concept has since spread across developmental, social, and clinical psychology (Freud, 1921; Laplanche & Pontalis, 1973). Its lasting value is that it names a mechanism, distinct from simple imitation or compliance, by which the people around us become the materials out of which character, conscience, and group belonging are built (Freud, 1923).

What Psychological Identification Is

Identification is the psychological process whereby a person assimilates an aspect, property, or attribute of another and is transformed, wholly or partially, after the model the other provides (Laplanche & Pontalis, 1973). The definition has two parts that keep it distinct from neighboring ideas. The first is assimilation: something of the other is taken in, not merely copied in behavior, so identification is deeper than imitation. The second is transformation: the self is changed by what it takes in, so identification is more than momentary compliance with another's wishes. The MeSH scope note captures the everyday core of the term as a process by which an individual patterns themselves after another, a largely unconscious process that is central to personality development.

Freud used the word in more than one sense across his work, and later analysts sorted those senses into named varieties. Table 1 sets out the classical forms, from the primary, undifferentiated identification of infancy through the secondary identifications that follow the giving-up of an attachment, to the defensive and projective forms described by later clinicians.

In the Medical Subject Headings vocabulary, psychological identification is filed in two places at once: as one of the defense mechanisms and as a process of personality development. That dual placement is not a contradiction but a faithful record of the concept's history: identification is both the ordinary engine of development, by which a child grows into a person by taking in those around them, and, in one of its forms, a defense that protects the ego against anxiety. The demonstration below treats the social-influence reading of identification, following Kelman's distinction between an attitude that lasts only under surveillance, one that lasts only while a relationship is salient, and one that has become genuinely one's own.

Remove the support and see which attitude survives

Kelman distinguished three processes of attitude change that look identical while they last but depend on different things. Compliance holds only while the source is watching; identification holds only while the valued relationship stays salient; internalization holds on its own because the attitude has become genuinely one’s own. Toggle the two supports and watch which attitudes collapse. Computed locally, not stored.

Identification has to be held apart from three things it is often confused with. It is not imitation, the mere outward copying of behavior, because identification changes the self rather than only the act. It is not compliance, doing what another wants while privately unconvinced, because identification is adopted for the sake of a valued bond, not to earn reward or avoid punishment (Kelman, 1958). And it is not internalization in Kelman's strict sense, an attitude accepted because its content is intrinsically satisfying, because an identification lasts only as long as the relationship that anchors it remains important. These distinctions matter because they predict different things: a complied-with attitude collapses when surveillance is removed, an identification fades when the relationship lapses, and an internalized attitude persists on its own.

Types of Psychological Identification

Because identification is a Medical Subject Headings descriptor, it sits in a hierarchy with narrower headings beneath it. Its parent kinds are personality development and the defense mechanisms; beneath identification itself, MeSH files one narrower descriptor that the site covers as its own article. Table 2 lists it, glossed from the MeSH scope note. The relationship is one of indexing, not strict logical containment: MeSH is a classification built for retrieving the biomedical literature, so a child heading marks a more specific topic indexed under the parent rather than a formal subset, and the subtype below is only one of several ways identification is made specific.

That gender identity should fall under identification reflects the developmental reading of the concept: a person's sense of their own gender is understood as something formed, in part, through identification with gendered models rather than a brute given. The classification is orthogonal to the varieties in Table 1, which cut across the material by mechanism (primary, defensive, projective) rather than by content; a single gender identification can be primary or secondary, ordinary or defensive, without ceasing to be the kind of identification MeSH indexes here.

How Identification Builds the Self

Freud's deepest use of identification was developmental: it is the process that turns relationships into psychic structure. In Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego he called identification the earliest expression of an emotional tie with another person, older than and distinct from the choice of that person as an object of desire (Freud, 1921). The child does not merely want the parent; before that, the child wants to be the parent, and this wanting-to-be is identification. In The Ego and the Id Freud made this the engine of character: when an object-attachment is given up, its trace is preserved as an identification, so that the ego is, in his famous phrase, a precipitate of abandoned object-cathexes, a record of everyone it has had to relinquish (Freud, 1923).

The super-ego is the limiting case of this process. Resolving the earliest triangular attachments, the child gives up the wish to possess one parent and to replace the other, and in place of those renounced wishes installs an identification with the parents' prohibitions and ideals. The result is an internal agency that observes, judges, and commands from within, as the parents once did from without (Freud, 1923). Conscience, on this account, is not taught from outside so much as built from identifications: the voice of the super-ego is the internalized voice of identified-with authority. Figure 1 shows this movement from an external relationship, through its renunciation, to an internal structure.

Bandura's social-learning program re-grounded the same developmental facts in observational learning. His 1961 study, in which nursery-school children who watched an adult attack an inflatable doll reproduced the aggression themselves, was framed explicitly as a test of the psychoanalytic identification hypothesis, and it recast what Freud had called identification as modeling: the acquisition of behavior by observing a model, without reinforcement of the observer (Bandura et al., 1961). The reframing mattered because it made the process experimentally tractable. Where Freud had inferred identification from clinical material, Bandura could manipulate the model and measure what the child took on, and the modern child-development literature on how children acquire the attributes of those around them descends from this line as much as from the psychoanalytic one.

Identification as Defense

Anna Freud isolated the defensive use of identification in The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence, where she described identification with the aggressor: a person facing an external threat masters the anxiety it produces by taking on the aggressor's own attributes, impersonating the figure who frightens them rather than remaining its passive target (A. Freud, 1936). The child scolded by a teacher who then plays at being a stern teacher, the frightened person who adopts the manner of what frightens them, converts a passive, endured threat into an active, performed role, and in doing so turns helplessness into a semblance of control. The mechanism is paradoxical precisely because it allies the victim with the source of danger, and it became a key to understanding why the abused may come to resemble their abusers.

This defensive form is where identification remains most clinically active. Dorit Amir's reading of the second generation of Holocaust survivors shows the Anna-Freudian defense operating across a generation, as the unspeakable experience of the parents is identified with and carried forward by their children (Amir, 2016). And the construct has been given a measurement basis: Yael Lahav and colleagues developed and validated the Identification with the Aggressor Scale and used it to show that, among abuse survivors, identification with the aggressor predicts both aggression turned outward and aggression turned inward against the self (Lahav et al., 2022). The demonstration below follows the defensive transformation, letting the reader increase the degree to which a threatened person adopts an aggressor's attributes and showing how anxiety falls while aggression is redirected.

Trade anxiety for the aggressor’s role

In identification with the aggressor, a threatened person masters anxiety by taking on the attributes of the figure who threatens them. The defense works — felt anxiety falls — but at a cost the measurement literature records: the adopted identification predicts aggression turned both outward, against others, and inward, against the self. Raise the degree of adoption and watch the trade. The values are illustrative, computed locally, not stored.

Worked Example

The social-psychological account treats identification with a group as something driven by identity motives, and the strength of identification can be estimated as a weighted combination of how well the group satisfies those motives (Vignoles, 2011). Vivian Vignoles's Motivated Identity Construction Theory names six such motives: self-esteem, distinctiveness, continuity, belonging, efficacy, and meaning. Empirical work shows these motives jointly predict how strongly people identify with a group, so a simple model is to score how well a group serves each motive and take their average as a predicted identification strength (Thomas et al., 2017).

Suppose a person rates a sports team they follow on each motive from 0 to 100. The team gives them a strong sense of belonging (90) and meaning (80), a good basis for self-esteem (70), moderate continuity (60) and efficacy (50), but little distinctiveness, since the team is widely supported (20). The equally weighted prediction is the mean of the six scores: (90 + 80 + 70 + 60 + 50 + 20) ÷ 6 = 370 ÷ 6 = 61.7, a moderately strong identification. Now suppose the person moves to a city where that team is rare, so following it suddenly sets them apart: distinctiveness rises from 20 to 80. The new total is 430, and the predicted identification rises to 430 ÷ 6 = 71.7. The ten-point jump comes entirely from the one motive that changed, which is why the same group can anchor a weak or a strong identity depending on the motivational work it happens to do for a given person. The demonstration below lets the reader set each motive and reads out the predicted strength, holding the equal-weight rule throughout.

Predict identification strength from the six identity motives

Motivated Identity Construction Theory holds that people identify with a group to the extent it serves six identity motives. A simple model scores each motive from 0 to 100 and takes their equal-weight mean as the predicted strength of identification. The opening scores reproduce the worked example — a widely-supported sports team — giving a mean of 61.7. Press Move to a city where the team is rare to raise distinctiveness to 80 and watch the prediction rise to 71.7. Computed locally, not stored.

Key Researchers

Albert Bandura

(1925-2021). Originator of social-learning and social-cognitive theory at Stanford; his Bobo-doll studies, framed as a test of the identification hypothesis, recast identification as observational learning. Wikipedia

Peter Fonagy

(living). Professor at University College London; his attachment-mentalization theory holds that the self is constituted by internalizing the caregiver's mirroring of the child's affective states. ORCID

Anna Freud

(1895-1982). Pioneer of child analysis and ego psychology; in The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence she described identification with the aggressor, the defensive variant in which anxiety is mastered by taking on a threatening figure's attributes. Wikipedia

Sigmund Freud

(1856-1939). Founder of psychoanalysis; he originated identification as a technical concept, naming it the earliest expression of an emotional tie and making it the mechanism by which abandoned attachments become the ego and the super-ego. Wikipedia

Herbert C. Kelman

(1927-2022). Social psychologist at Harvard; his 1958 typology placed identification between compliance and internalization as an attitude adopted to sustain a valued relationship with an admired source. Wikipedia

Yael Lahav

(living). Trauma researcher at Tel Aviv University; she developed the Identification with the Aggressor Scale and studies victim-perpetrator dynamics in abuse survivors. ORCID

Vivian L. Vignoles

(living). Social psychologist at the University of Sussex; his Motivated Identity Construction Theory specifies the identity motives that drive self- and group identification. ORCID

Discussion

Identification is unusual among psychological concepts in having been claimed, and reshaped, by nearly every major tradition in turn. Freud made it the hinge between relationship and structure, the way other people become the self (Freud, 1921; Freud, 1923). Anna Freud showed it could also defend, allying the threatened with the threatening (A. Freud, 1936). Bandura stripped away the drive theory and kept the observable core, modeling, making the process a matter for the laboratory (Bandura et al., 1961). Kelman relocated it in the social psychology of attitude change, distinguishing it sharply from both compliance and internalization (Kelman, 1958). The concept's breadth is its strength, since it links phenomena across the lifespan, but also its difficulty, since the word does not always name the same mechanism in each tradition.

What holds the uses together is the logic captured by Laplanche and Pontalis: in every case something of another is assimilated and the self is transformed after that model (Laplanche & Pontalis, 1973). The contemporary task is to make that logic measurable and specific. Modern work does this in two directions: outward, toward identification with groups, now modeled through identity motives and measured with validated scales (Vignoles, 2011; Thomas et al., 2017); and inward, toward the clinical forms, where the Identification with the Aggressor Scale gives Anna Freud's defense an operational definition and ties it to measurable outcomes in trauma survivors (Lahav et al., 2022).

Current Directions

The most active work on identification is on its developmental and clinical mechanisms. Peter Fonagy's attachment-mentalization theory recasts the Freudian claim that the self is built from internalized relationships in testable developmental terms: the infant comes to know its own mind by internalizing a caregiver who reflects, or mirrors, the infant's affective states, so that identification with the mirroring other is the route to a reflective self (Fonagy et al., 2018). This reframes identification as a specific capacity, mentalization, that can be assessed and, where it fails, targeted in therapy. On the social side, identity-motive models continue to refine how group identification is predicted and measured, with evidence that the motives operate together to set the strength of belonging across very different kinds of group (Thomas et al., 2017). The clinical front is the measurement of defensive identification: validated scales now let researchers test, rather than merely infer, how identification with an aggressor is transmitted across generations and how it predicts the direction of aggression in survivors of abuse (Amir, 2016; Lahav et al., 2022). The open questions are whether a single construct underlies these developmental, social, and defensive forms, and how far the capacity for mentalization explains individual differences in all of them.

Common Misconceptions

Identification is just imitation.

Imitation copies behavior outwardly; identification assimilates an attribute of the other into the self, changing who one is rather than only what one does (Laplanche & Pontalis, 1973).

Identification is the same as internalization.

In Kelman's typology they differ: an identification lasts only while the relationship that anchors it stays salient, whereas an internalized attitude persists because its content is intrinsically satisfying (Kelman, 1958).

Identifying with an aggressor means agreeing with them.

It is a defense against anxiety, not a considered endorsement; the threatened person adopts the aggressor's attributes to master fear, often without any genuine change of values (A. Freud, 1936).

Identification is only a psychoanalytic idea.

It was absorbed into social-learning theory as modeling and into social psychology as a measurable form of group belonging, with validated scales for both group and defensive identification (Bandura et al., 1961; Thomas et al., 2017).

Glossary

Defense mechanism.

An unconscious process that protects the ego against anxiety; identification with the aggressor is one such mechanism.

Ego ideal.

The internalized standard of what one ought to be, formed by identification with admired figures; a component of the super-ego.

Gender identity.

A person's internally held sense of their own gender; MeSH files it as a narrower kind of psychological identification.

Identification with the aggressor.

A defensive identification in which a threatened person takes on the attributes of a feared figure to master anxiety.

Identification.

The process by which a person assimilates an aspect of another and is transformed, wholly or partly, after that model.

Identity motive.

One of the needs (for example self-esteem, distinctiveness, belonging) that, in Motivated Identity Construction Theory, drive identification.

Incorporation.

The bodily prototype of identification, in which an object is fantasized as taken into the self; the oral root of introjection.

Internalization.

The taking-in of an external relationship or standard as part of the self; in Kelman's sense, an attitude accepted because its content is intrinsically satisfying.

Introjection.

The taking-in of an object's attributes into the ego; the mechanism closely allied to, and often used as a synonym for, identification.

Mentalization.

The capacity to understand behavior in terms of mental states; in Fonagy's theory it develops through internalizing a caregiver's mirroring.

Modeling.

In social-learning theory, the acquisition of behavior by observing another; Bandura's reframing of identification as observational learning.

Narcissistic identification.

An identification that replaces an object-attachment wholesale, so the self is treated as the object once was; central to Freud's melancholia.

Object-choice.

The selection of a person as an object of desire; Freud distinguished wanting to have the object from identification's wanting to be it.

Primary identification.

The earliest, undifferentiated emotional tie to the first object, before self and other are clearly distinguished.

Projective identification.

An interpersonal form in which an unwanted part of the self is attributed to another, who is pressed to feel and act accordingly.

Secondary identification.

The taking-on of a lost or renounced object's attributes; the ego preserves an abandoned attachment by becoming like it.

Social identity.

The part of the self-concept derived from membership in groups; the object of group identification.

Super-ego.

The internal agency of conscience and ideals, formed by identification with the parents' prohibitions and standards.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is psychological identification?

It is the process by which a person assimilates an aspect, property, or attribute of another and is transformed, wholly or partly, after the model the other provides; it is deeper than imitation because it changes the self rather than only behavior (Laplanche & Pontalis, 1973).

How is identification different from imitation?

Imitation copies another's behavior outwardly; identification takes an attribute of the other into the self, so the person is changed rather than merely acting alike (Freud, 1921).

What is identification with the aggressor?

It is a defense, described by Anna Freud, in which a person facing a threat masters their anxiety by taking on the attributes of the threatening figure, turning a passive, endured danger into an active, performed role (A. Freud, 1936).

What is the difference between identification and internalization?

In Kelman's typology, an attitude adopted by identification lasts only while the valued relationship that anchors it stays salient, whereas an internalized attitude persists on its own because its content is intrinsically satisfying (Kelman, 1958).

How does identification form the super-ego?

When the child gives up its earliest attachments to the parents, it installs in their place an identification with the parents' prohibitions and ideals, which becomes an internal self-observing agency, the super-ego (Freud, 1923).

Is identification a defense mechanism or a developmental process?

Both. MeSH files it under both headings: ordinarily it is the developmental engine by which a child grows into a person, and in one of its forms it is a defense that protects the ego against anxiety (Freud, 1923; A. Freud, 1936).

How do researchers measure identification today?

Group identification is modeled through identity motives and measured with validated scales, while the defensive form is assessed with the Identification with the Aggressor Scale, which links it to measurable outcomes in trauma survivors (Thomas et al., 2017; Lahav et al., 2022).

How does MeSH classify psychological identification?

The Medical Subject Headings vocabulary files Identification, Psychological (D007062) under both the defense mechanisms and personality development, and places gender identity beneath it as a narrower heading (Laplanche & Pontalis, 1973).

References