For Sigmund Freud, introjection designates a process by which the ego, subject to the pleasure principle, passes within it, identifies itself as itself, which is good (while, by means of projection, rejecting itself as bad), thus modifying the boundary between it and the outside world. It is a notion similar to those of incorporation and identification.

Understanding Introjection

With Melanie Klein, this process, added to that of projection, involves objects and plays a large role in the treatment design. For Lacan, introjection concerns only the signifiers and he approaches it within the framework of the subject's relations with the Other through the dialectics of alienation-separation and symbolic identification.

In addition, the term introjection was introduced by Sándor Ferenczi (Transference and Introjection, 1909) where it designates, in opposition to the projection of the paranoid who "expels from his ego the tendencies that have become unpleasant, the attitude of the neurotic that "seeks a solution by bringing into his ego as much as possible of the outside world, Analyzing the Introjection according to Freud, where he resumes this term in Pulses and Their Destinies, from 1915, first showing that the pulses are oriented according to three oppositions: inner-outer pleasure-displeasure activity-passivity.

In the beginning, the subject coincides with the pleasant, the outside world with the indifferent. This ego in the beginning is qualified by Freud as a real ego. However, far from being subject to the principle of reality, it is an ego concerned only with enjoying. Thus, what does not concern pleasure does not interest him. But, says Freud, he therefore has a good objective criterion for distinguishing inside and outside, for which he can be considered real.

Introjection and pleasure

Later on, the boundary between inside and outside will be modified and will become less real. In fact, under the dominion of the pleasure principle and by the mechanism of introjection, "the ego receives into itself the objects presented, insofar as they are sources of pleasure, introjects them [...], and rejects outside itself what for it becomes in the depths of the heart a motive of disgust. " Thus, the real self at first "changed into a purified pleasure self that places the criterion of pleasure above all others. If the ego (the inner) remains attached to pleasure, the outer world is now confused with displeasure and no longer with indifference.

As a result, the new object (the part that is not incorporated into the ego) merges with the stranger and the hated. Introjection, according to Jacques Lacan, in The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (1964), understands the Freudian purified self-prazer as that which, in the self-real, is satisfied with the object, becomes the mirror-image of that object.

As for displeasure, from which the non-self will be constituted, it is the other part of the primitive real self, the one that, whatever the intentions of the object, feels disturbed in its tranquility (the pleasure principle is that of least tension). This disturbed part becomes hostile to the ego, like an outsider, but persists within it without the homeostatic functioning of the pleasure principle ever being able to reabsorb it.

Lacan and Introjection

Lacan replaces introjection in the dialectic of the subject's relationship with the Other with its fundamental dissymmetry. What is introjected is always a trace of the Other, a signifier that, while bringing out the subject, reduces it to being only this signifier. The subject's relationship with the Other is therefore always marked by a loss. This is what Lacan calls alienation. It is an ever-lost choice between meaning and being.

Indeed, if the subject appears as meaning, it is at the cost of disappearing under the signifier that represents it. Its being-meaning thus falls into absurdity and will constitute the unconscious The introjection of a signifier is, therefore, accompanied by a disappearance of the subject.

But this returns thanks to what Lacan calls separation. It is his own loss that the subject will propose as a response to the absence of a signifier in the Other to designate his being. This loss is realized by the subject in the form of objects with a unity, objects separable from the body (breast weaned, feces left for cleaning, the look, the voice).

Conclusion

We see, then, that introjection cannot be explained on the basis of the pleasure principle alone, because, far from the unique unity of object concerns favorable to pleasure, it recognizes itself precisely as a unity in which it revolves around these objects.

In which, in the end, it may be useless. Introjection, insofar as it concerns the foundation of all conduct in relation to the other, thus shows us the failure of an ethics that would be situated in the sole register of the useful as of pure pleasure and simplicity.

This article was written by Michael Sousa ( [email protected] ). He has an MBA in Strategic Management from FEA-RP USP, a degree in Computer Science and a specialist in Process Management and Six Sigma. He has an extension in Applied Statistics from Ibmec and in Cost Management from PUC-RS.of Clinical Psychoanalysis.