Some reflections on identification

The author presents a view of identification based on a rereading of two of Freud's key texts and an approach derived from an academic interpretation of Hegel dating from the 1930s. These aspects are considered at length. The importance of the human and anthropogenic element is stressed. The human subject is presented as coming into being through language; being called upon to be what he is not and not to be what he is, the subject appears as wishful in nature, desiring the wish of the other at the same time as he desires the object of the other's wish. The author argues that identification as a problem arises only in a human being who speaks or has received an injunction to speak; this raises the question of who or what he is and of being as such. Analytic treatment may in his view therefore proceed in one of two directions, one based on the interplay of projection and introjection with identification as an end, and the other on resistance and repression where the Oedipus complex is seen as the nuclear issue. Identification is seen in terms of overcoming the negative identity of not being all other subjects, and identity is found to be a conscious response that might even have a political element.