Concept
Introjection
The process by which the subject, in phantasy, takes objects and their qualities from outside into itself, where they come to form part of the ego or settle as internal objects. Ferenczi coined the term in 1909 as the counterpart of projection: where the paranoiac expels what is unbearable onto the outside world, the neurotic draws as much of the outside world as possible into his own interests. Freud took the term up for mourning and melancholia and for the formation of the superego from the introjected parents. In Klein's work the interplay of introjection and projection, from the first months of life, builds up the inner world of good and bad objects.
Development
1909
introduced by Sándor Ferenczi
Ferenczi coined introjection in 1909 for the neurotic's drawing of the outer world into the ego, the counterpart of the paranoiac's projection: the psychoneurotic suffers from an enlargement of the ego, the paranoiac from its shrinking.
In Introjection and Transference (1909)
1943
developed by Susan Isaacs
Isaacs distinguishes the abstract mechanism of introjection from the phantasy of incorporating an object, and treats the phantasy as the way the mechanism is lived by the subject.
In The Nature and Function of Phantasy (1948)
1946
developed by Melanie Klein
Klein makes introjection, together with projection, one of the ego's first means of dealing with anxiety: the introjected good breast becomes a core of the ego, while introjected persecutors feed fears from within. Normal development depends on an optimal balance between the two processes; excessive projection is answered by an introjection felt as a forceful entry from outside.
In Notes on Some Schizoid Mechanisms (1946)
Relations
- 1909 introduced by Sándor Ferenczi
Ferenczi coined introjection in 1909 for the neurotic's drawing of the outer world into the ego, the counterpart of the paranoiac's projection: the psychoneurotic suffers from an enlargement of the ego, the paranoiac from its shrinking.
- 1943 developed by Susan Isaacs
Isaacs distinguishes the abstract mechanism of introjection from the phantasy of incorporating an object, and treats the phantasy as the way the mechanism is lived by the subject.
- 1946 developed by Melanie Klein
Klein makes introjection, together with projection, one of the ego's first means of dealing with anxiety: the introjected good breast becomes a core of the ego, while introjected persecutors feed fears from within. Normal development depends on an optimal balance between the two processes; excessive projection is answered by an introjection felt as a forceful entry from outside.
- opposed by Projection
Projection and introjection are paired as opposite movements between inside and outside: putting out of the self what belongs to it, and taking into the self what lies outside. Ferenczi coined introjection as the counterpart of projection, and Klein treats the two as working in constant interplay from the beginning of life. Lacan disputed that they are simple reciprocals, placing them in different registers.
Works
- 1909
Introjection and Transference is a two-part study by Sándor Ferenczi, published in 1909 in the first volume of the Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen and issued as an offprint by Deuticke in 1910. Its subject is the neurotic's readiness to transfer. The first part treats transference as a general mechanism of the psychoneuroses, a special case of displacement, by which the neurotic draws the outer world into the ego. Ferenczi names this process introjection and sets it against the projection of the paranoiac. In treatment, on this view, the physician does not create the patient's feelings but acts as a catalyst for affects that are already present. The second part reads hypnosis and suggestion as a transference onto the hypnotist of the child's love for its parents and fear of them, and distinguishes a paternal hypnosis, which works through fear, from a maternal hypnosis, which works through love. The paper is the source of the term introjection.
- 1946
Notes on Some Schizoid Mechanisms
First published in the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis in 1946 and reprinted, revised, in Developments in Psycho-Analysis (1952), this paper is Melanie Klein's account of the months that precede the depressive position she had described in the 1930s. In this earliest phase the infant's anxiety is predominantly persecutory and its defences predominantly schizoid; Klein names it the paranoid position, adding the term schizoid, which she takes from Ronald Fairbairn, and from 1952 calls it the paranoid-schizoid position. She holds that an ego capable of anxiety, defence and object relations exists from birth but lacks cohesion, and that its primary anxiety is a fear of annihilation arising from the death instinct within, which it deflects outward and then meets as persecution. Its chief defence is splitting: the object, at first the breast, is divided into a good and a bad one, and since the ego cannot split the object without being split itself, the same division runs through the self, sustained by idealisation, denial and omnipotent phantasies of annihilating what is bad. Klein here describes projective identification, the phantasy of forcing split-off parts of the self into the mother in order to harm, possess and control her, so that she comes to be felt as those parts; good parts of the self are projected too, which is necessary for good object relations but, in excess, depletes the ego. The paper traces how these mechanisms colour schizoid object relations and the transference, with their detachment and splitting-off of feeling, and argues that when persecutory anxiety and splitting are too strong the depressive position cannot be worked through, so that the fixation points of schizophrenia lie in this first position and are bound up with those of manic-depressive illness. Klein discusses Fairbairn's work at length, accepting much of his account of schizoid phenomena while objecting to his neglect of anxiety, aggression and the death instinct.
- 1948
The Nature and Function of Phantasy
Read to the British Psycho-Analytical Society in 1943 as the opening paper of the Controversial Discussions, and later reprinted in Developments in Psycho-Analysis (1952).
See also
References
- Notes on Some Schizoid Mechanisms1946Evidence for a relation
- The Nature and Function of Phantasy1948Evidence for a relation
- Introjection and Transference1909Evidence for a relation