ABSTRACT
The central magnet of the reading experience is the reader’s process of identification with the characters. The literary evidence revealed seven types of identification that occur during the reading process and how the movement between them contributes to reflective processes and to the formation and integration of the reader’s self.
Each identification is first described and explained as a psychoanalytic term and then illustrated by a literary work. The seven types of identification aroused in reading literature and illustrated in this chapter are: introjective identification; projective identification; extractive identification; intrusive identification; primitive (adhesive and objectifying) identification; and chimeric identification.
