The Psychodynamics of Internalization
On psychoanalysis, 04
The field of object-relations psychoanalysis found its germs in Freud’s work, but it continued to develop throughout the 20th and into our own century as a field of theory and clinical praxis. A central — perhaps the central — concept to the object-relations approach in psychoanalysis is the psychodynamics of internalization.
In object-relations, as the name indicates, our internal lives (fantasies, dreams, wishes, relational models, and so on) are the result and product of a long and complex development of relationships in the external world. The world is populated by objects, like people or things. Over time our internal lives begin to reflect what we encounter in the world. This is the classic take on the nature/nurture debate: we are deeply nurtured. Although object-relations accepts some accounts of genetics and predispositions, it is mostly concerned with our psychosocial development — the development of our mental lives.
Somehow, these events become subjectivized, and the clinician must ask the question: How does an event become an experience? This is the question of internalization, or taking things in.
Through the process of internalization — which I will explore in some detail below — an internal world, a sense of self and other, is brought in and becomes the basis of subjectivity. Relations between internal objects become the cornerstone of personality — hence ‘object-relations.’ My inner world looks like a big soup of objects of various shapes, sizes, and qualities, and they are always relating to one another. This provides the template which I will use to navigate my external world. As can be seen, development is never completely one way: I take in the external world and it becomes my internal world; and in turn I behave in the external world as it has informed my internal world.
Defining Internalization
While Freud first used the term ‘internalization’ in his Three Essays, it was not until the work of Karl Abraham, Melanie Klein, and Sandor Ferenczi — and, to a lesser and more esoteric extent, Ronald Fairbairn — that internalization received more attention.
The term, however, is a notoriously slippery one. As Morrison N. Eagle writes:
The psychoanalytic literature on internalization processes — which include incorporation, introjection, and identification — has been vast and, for the most part, confusing and confused. [1]
And, as Eagle does, I will try to bring some clarity to these categories (incorporation, introjection, identification).
Incorporation
Being primarily a developmental way of thinking, the primary dynamic of object-relations concerns the first few years of life: incorporation. It will surprise no one by saying that humans produce some of the most confused and helpless offspring of the animal world. It takes at least 10 months to walk, 2ish years to communicate effectively, and over one decade to develop reproductive capacities. In the beginning was not the Word, but utter existential fragility.
John Bowlby is perhaps the thinker par excellence of incorporation, his work being mostly focused on infants and how they develop attachments with caregivers they are physically (and mentally) dependent upon.
Incorporation is a “psychological eating” (Hamilton’s words [2]), wherein the moods, behaviors, and so on are completely taken into the child’s inner world. This is at a stage in development where there is very little self/other boundaries.
There is no separation between my internal needs and the external world; that is, until frustration sets in (but this is not the concern of incorporation, whose primary psychic foundation is a kind of narcissism). Winnicott called this phase ‘magic’ to emphasize its spontaneous quality for the mental life of the infant: when I am hungry, I cry, and food somehow appears — magic.
Incorporation — an intentionally corporeal word — implies a connection between mind and body; or, rather a blending of them. But the main point of this form of internalization is the bodily aspect. Hunger is satiated (usually) by the mother’s body in the form of breastfeeding (or some symbolic representative, like already-pumped milk or other forms of warm, soft food). The infant is literally ‘taking in’ the contents of the mother’s body, of her vitality and life.
Klein would extend this aspect of early development in her ideas of introjection, briefly touched on below. For her, the central moment of internalization is breastfeeding.
Because of the lack of distinction between self/other, mind/body in the infant, the mother is taken in as well — psychically. She is ‘set up’ inside of the infant as part of the self. This is why infant’s throw such fits when a caregiver leaves them, particularly their mothers, in the first few glimpses of life. For the infant, it is as if the very foundation of their survival and bodily health is rupturing.
Introjection
Introjection comes a bit later and involves increasingly complex psychic capacities. As the mental capacities of the child mature, a stronger ego forms, and internalization looks different. Rather than the child completely subsuming the external world inside of them, there is some differentiation between self and other at this point.
An ‘introject’ is an object that is taken in from the external world (a memory, person, place, experience, or relationship) that is internalized without a merging with it. There is some distinction between, e.g., myself and my therapist.
While Hamilton (1988) emphasizes the developmental complexity as being the difference between incorporation and introjection, Laplanche and Pontalis claim that “Incoporation involves this bodily frontier [between inner world of subjectivity and outer world of objects] literally” while “Introjection has a broader meaning in that it is no longer a matter only of the interior of the body but also that of the psychical apparatus, of a psychical agency, etc.” [3] Thus, incorporation is of the body; introjection is more cognitive-emotional.
Introjection is the strict inverse to projection in terms of psychic mechanisms. One takes objects in (typically good objects, like a good mother or moral qualities like ‘virtuous’) while projection spits them out (typically bad objects, like an abusive teacher or bad moral qualities like ‘aggressive’).
The most systematic treatment of the introjection-projection dialectic is found in Klein’s work, who argued that the mother’s breast is the prototype of this back-and-forth. When the breast is frustrating (i.e., not satisfying), it is felt as cruel and is projected as a ‘bad object’. When it is gratifying to the infant, it is a ‘good object’. [4]
Identification
If incorporation and introjection are the slightly different mechanisms by which a subject’s physical internalization of the world and their psychical eating of the world (respectively), identification is closer to assimilation and metaphor, with like-as-like. In a sense, it means ‘to identify with’ this or that object or part-object. Incorporation and introjection have more of a bodily component than identification does, which can sometimes at the level of pure cognition, e.g., with moral ideals.
This mechanism is perhaps felt more consciously by the subject, who can say “I identify with X, Y, or Z” — though identification should not be necessarily conflated with conscious choice. For instance, Klein thought that children identified with the aggressor in the object which they felt threatened by.
Identification is basically a defense mechanism in response to frustrated attempts by the child, during the Oedipal phase, to be the object of desire for his or her parents. This object-cathexis (emotional-sexual investment) is then transformed into identification: “If I can’t have you, I’ll be like you.” [5] Hence, ‘the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.’
This is an installment of a series in which I attempt to elucidate as clearly as possible the findings and theories of the field of psychoanalysis in my own words and understanding.
Notes
[1] M. N. Eagle, Recent Developments in Psychoanalysis: A Critical Evaluation. (1984), p. 79.
[2] N. G. Hamilton, Self and Others (1988).
[3] J. Laplanche & J. B. Pontalis, The Language of Psycho-Analysis (Trans. D. Nicholson-Smith) (1973).
[4] R Fine, A History of Psychoanalysis (1979).
[5] Ibid.
