Introjection (Psychology)

Introjection is the unconscious adoption of the thoughts, memories, or personality traits of another person, absorbing components of someone else's identity, feelings, or ways of thinking into one's own psychic structure. It occurs as an ordinary part of development, as when a child adopts a parent's values, but Sigmund Freud also treated it as one of the processes by which the ego and superego are themselves built out of introjected patterns of behavior. Sandor Ferenczi offered a different reading in a 1912 essay, describing introjection as an extension of a person's own interests that broadens the ego by lifting repression. As a defense mechanism, introjection can also let a person maintain the illusion of a relationship at the cost of their own separate sense of self, a pattern researchers have illustrated with a bullied student who unconsciously adopts a bully's aggressive behavior to avoid further mistreatment.