THE PSYCHO-ANALYSIS OF THE NURSERY by ALICE BALINT

Author:ALICE BALINT
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Routledge

Chapter Four

IDENTIFICATION

I. THE CONQUEST OF THE EXTERNAL WORLD

SO far we have been mainly concerned with the content of the conflicts of childhood and we have said very little of the ways in which those conflicts are dealt with. And, now that we are approaching that side of the problem, we must for the time being leave the firm ground of direct observation and turn to a more theoretical consideration of the means adopted by children for the solution of their conflicts. I have already referred in passing to a few of these methods: repression, for instance, and displacement, and (something that is akin to the latter) sublimation. Repression enables us to blot out of our consciousness any wishes that have proved incapable of fulfilment, while displacement and sublimation enable some of our instincts to pursue their existence in a new and legitimate sphere. In the course of my remarks upon displacement I hinted at the existence of another method—namely, identificatory thought. I mentioned that displacement is closely related to this peculiarity of primitive thought, to the fact, that is, that children from the very first get to know the external world by means of ‘identifications’. For instance, a small child will regard any thick mass of material as fæces, and any liquid as urine, because fæces and urine are things that are already familiar to it. One advantage of these identifications is that they enable the child to find substitutes for primitive sources of pleasure that have to be given up under the pressure of education. Thus identificatory thinking is employed for the purpose of avoiding what is unpleasurable and obtaining what is pleasurable, and it aims at transforming a strange and consequently frightening external world into one that is familiar and enjoyable. This is the only way (apart from direct gratification) in which we can approach the external world. And since the relation between the ego and the external world is after all the main problem of all educative measures, it is worth while examining the phenomenon of identificatory thought in all its details.

The ego, and more particularly the primitive ‘pleasure ego’, plays the principal part in identificatory thinking to a much greater degree than it does subsequently, after the development of what is called ‘objective’ thinking. For the basis for the earliest identifications is not resemblance to the object (though naturally this plays its part) but the manner in which the object in question enters into relation with the child’s instincts. Indeed, this is self-evident: since whatever does not belong to our ego is alien to us, and thus the starting-point for identification must necessarily be our own body or our own instincts.1

Thus, for instance, a piece of brown paper will remind a four-year-old boy not of a parcel or of anything connected with paper, but of fæces—which is bound to strike an adult as an exceedingly forced comparison. In the same way a running tap usually reminds children of micturating. I have already in an earlier chapter given the instance of a four-year-old boy who identified a soldier’s sabre with a penis.

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