ABSTRACT
This chapter offers some further thoughts on the nature and implications of the different kinds of identification to which a person may be drawn in their mid- to late adolescent years. The main emphasis will be on the projective processes, by an exploration of the more introjective ones. An account is given of the character development of one particular patient, Simon. The description of aspects of Simon's treatment may serve as a useful way of making clearer the links between Kleinian notions of identification and more recent ideas about the role of different kinds of learning in a person's progress towards self-knowledge. At the core of these matters lies the familiar and important distinction between the kind of identification which is in the service of growth and development, and the kind which may oppose development, encouraging instead an avoidance of anxieties rather than an engagement with them. Although, chronologically, nearly an adult, the nature of Simon's problems belonged to mid-adolescence.
