The Pivotal Papers on Identification - Tapa dura

Collected in this anthology are pivotal papers that elaborate the psychoanalytic and psychodynamic approach to a basic mechanism which was elaborated by both Sigmund and Anna Freud. Other classical references to this mechanism have been included, and it is hoped that theorists and scholars will find them useful. The modern psychotherapist must be sensitive to identification not only as a means of reflecting past internalizations but also of coping with current stresses predicated on what had been useful in the past. There are defenses against identification; there are hidden identifications; there are combined identifications; there are, as well, the more traditional considerations of identification with the aggressor. The clinical and theoretical implications of this will become apparent as the classic papers included in this volume are reviewed and understood.