ABSTRACT
Introjective identification implies the enigmatic concept of relinquishment of a love object. The context is birth and weaning and their symbolic successors, and in each case the consequence is that in place of looking back at what has been given up, there is looking forward to development through identification. The "precipitates in the ego" or "heirs to the Oedipus complex" became the internal parental objects, which Melanie Klein later described as inhabiting the inner world of the imagination of the child. Identification with the "bad" superego would mean a preoccupation with guilt and punishment, possibly erotized in the form of sado-masochism and ultimately of mental illness. The chapter suggests that Freud might be linked to Biggies in her mind as a hero in the war against mental illness, and that she was identifying herself with him. A series of dreams illustrates the theme of the evolution of the ego-ideal and the processes of identification in statu nascendi.
