Incorporation (psychoanalysis)

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Incorporation is the first of three internalization processes within psychoanalytic developmental psychology . Internalization means here that aspects of an object ("objects" are significant reference persons in psychoanalysis) are internalized and thus taken over. In terms of developmental psychology, incorporation is the earliest process of internalization. In the theory of psychoanalysis this means that the subject (the infant) symbolically takes the object (the mother or parts of her) into his body, in which it continues to exist. In fact, the properties of the object are taken over by the processes of incorporation.

In the development of the infant, this happens before the ability to differentiate between subject and object has developed (Mentzos p. 44), i.e. before the child can distinguish between its own inner world and the outer world. The other two levels of internalization presuppose more mature ego structures. The incorporation represents the earliest internalization process, which can also be described as "incorporation". The two more mature internalization processes are introjection and identification (Hoffmann SO, p. 68).

If maturation does not take place, elements of incorporation predominate in adults too, in the sense of a predisposition and tendency to reactivate such forms of internalization and the associated object relationships. As a result, internalizations become pathological defense processes that even adults resort to regressively in some situations . For example, Mentzos writes that incorporations play a role in the psychodynamics of addictions.

The term is used in different schools of psychoanalysis. It has a special meaning for the object relation theory , and here especially for the theory which was founded by Melanie Klein . According to Melanie Klein, in such an early phase of development, in which incorporation is the predominant form of internalization, the caregivers (mostly the mother) in the infant's imagination have only very archaic properties and are not perceived as a whole. These properties are called object qualities in psychoanalytic theory. During incorporation, basic properties such as good and bad are usually internalized, i.e. fantasized as being present in one's own body.

But incorporation processes are also described in modern psychoanalytic literature. For example, psychoanalytical infant researchers describe certain interaction processes as incorporation, since this can describe which “object qualities” the infant has actually internalized. (M.Dornes 2003 51 ff.)

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  • Mentzos, Stravos. Neurotic Conflict Processing - Introduction to the psychoanalytic theory of neuroses, taking into account new perspectives. Fischer publishing house. Frankfurt a. M. 1984. p. 44.
  • SO Hoffmann. 1979. Character and Neurosis. Suhrkamp. Frankfurt a. MS 68
  • Dornes, M. 2003. p. 51 ff.