Anna Freud and Identification With The Aggressor
In her classic book The Ego and the Mechanism of Defence, Anna Freud introduced 'two original defence mechanisms...both of which have become classics of ego psychology', the one being altruistic surrender, the other identification with the aggressor. Anna Freud pointed out that identification with parental values was a normal part of the development of the superego; but that 'if the child introjects both rebuke and punishment and then regularly projects this same punishment on another, "then he is arrested at an intermediate stage in the development of the superego"'.
The concept was also taken up in Object relations theory, which particularly explored 'how a patient sometimes places the analyst in the role of victim whilst the patient acts out an identification with the aggressor' in the analytic situation.
Read more about this topic: Identification (psychology)
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