introjection
/ˌɪntrə(ʊ)ˈdʒɛkʃ(ə)n
/noun [mass noun] Psychoanalysis
The unconscious adoption of the ideas or attitudes of others: Hesse’s introjection of his parents' emotional values...
- This is essentially the biological cycle of ingestion and elimination, becoming the psychological cycle of introjection and projection.
- Identification is a process which may be conscious or unconscious, comprising the processes of introjection, projection and judgement, and through which people are able to find the links of identity and difference amongst themselves.
- The exercises enhance introjection of the therapist as a ‘good object’ and the self as ‘good me’.
Derivatives
introject
- In mourning, Freud claims, loss is conscious; in melancholy (what he characterized as ‘unresolved mourning’), loss is unconscious because the sufferer introjects the emptiness as his own.
- From the beginning the ego introjects objects ‘good’ and ‘bad’, for both of which the mother's breast is the prototype - for good objects when the child obtains it, for bad ones when it fails him.
- One could say: at a certain level in the development of productive social forces, labor cooperation introjects verbal communication into itself, or, more precisely, a complex of political actions.
Origin
Mid 19th century: from intro- 'into', on the pattern of projection.