ABSTRACT
Concepts of " ident i f icat ion" and of " in t roject ion," and other related concepts, are relied upon i n psychoanalytic theory, as they are i n this book, to explain how dynamic structures become set up w i t h i n the personality. The superego, for example, is usually considered to be largely a derivative of identifications or introjections made d u r i n g the period when the chi ld is caught up i n the Oedipus complex. But we confront a major difficulty here: Freud never really worked out satisfactory conceptions of identifica t ion and introject ion. Other writers-psychologists and social scientists as w e l l as psychoanalysts-have since used the t e rm " ident i f ica t ion" i n a n u m ber of ways. M u c h clarification w i l l be necessary before these concepts can become maximal ly useful.
