Another important concept that we get from Klein is that of introjection.

Introjection is that process by which we non-rationally incorporate aspects of the

external environment primarily but not exclusively the traits of others into our
own personality. By non rationally incorporate, I mean to contrast that with the
process by which we consider ideas or traits carefully and decide whether or not to
accept them as our own. So for example, being persuaded to adopt a political
position for instance and then making that political position my own on basis of
arguments in its favor written by a philosopher or a speaker that I hear, that
would not count as a case of introjection. Likewise, if I come across someone who I
feel is very generous or very empathetic or very accepting, I might say those are
traits I'd like to emulate as well, I think I'm going to try to develop and
cultivate those traits in myself, but, those will not be cases of introjection
either, introjection requires something getting inside of me so to speak that
doesn't go through a rational scrutiny process. So for instance, if I adopt a
parent's authoritarian personality or some feature of that personality, that would
be case of introjection if it's not done in light of a conscious consideration of
the merits for doing so. Many of us would say that we have non rationally accepted
many of our for example parents� characteristics without realizing it until much
later in life. That would be a case of introjection. You might look in yourself and
ask, "How many of my parent's characteristics have I carried forward into my own
personality without necessarily having scrutinized them, without necessarily having
thought about whether those are characteristics that I've consciously considered
before taking on board." I'll bet many of us will find there are lots of such
cases. Why would somebody introject? According to psychoanalytic theory, people
introject in order to forge a tie with the person whose characteristics are being
incorporated. For example, a child who has an unpredictable, fraught, unstable
relationship with the caregiver might introject some of that person's, some of the
caregivers characteristics in the hope, where the hope is unconscious, in the hope
of forging of stronger, more solid, more reliable tie with them. They carry them
forward into their lives, into the future even after that caregiver is gone, as a
way of keeping them, in some sense still there, still with them. We sometimes also
introject traits of those who have left us either through death or abandonment.
Even if we didn't introject before they left us, by either one of those means we
might after the fact start taking on some of their personality characteristics as a
way of keeping them there by our side in some sense. Remember though that this in
the hope of forging a tie, will still not be part of a conscious deliberation,
something that nevertheless we just find ourselves with an impulse to do. We can
also see that some cases of introjection can result in negative personality traits
being taken up on board. I already mentioned the introjection of characteristics of
an authoritarian or abusive caregiver, if a child introjects those characteristics
then that could end up causing severe problems for the child as they grow up. As a
result of this, some kinds of psychoanalysis aimed to undermine or undo those
incorporated traits. Can we find the introjected material that you have from not
necessarily healthy parents and think of ways to get it out of your system, as you
to try to move beyond those characteristics or personality that might indeed be
causing you trouble. So the concept of introjection I can build on to the next
concept that is that of projective identification. (Sorry for all the jargon.)
Melanie Klein also introduces the concept of projective identification through
which a person imbues another person with qualities she finds in herself or in
someone else that she wants to replicate. The object or the projective
identification might not merely be construed in a certain way but can actually
start conforming her own behavior to that of the projector, the person doing the
projection. So we've got a projector, person doing some projection on one side and
we've got an identifier on the other, the person onto whom the traits are projected
and the recipient starts identifying and in fact introjecting some of that
material. If you see your boyfriend as a father figure for example, your boyfriend
might unconsciously start to oblige you by taking on the attributes that you want
him to have that is by introjecting those attributes. That is, projective
identification builds on introjection but also goes beyond it because it's a tango
now, not just a solo activity. People nowadays use terms like �co-dependent� and
�enabling� to refer among other things to those cases in which one person gets
pulled into another's psychological orbit or economy. That would include helping
them to resolve conflicts from earlier in life. So, if I've taken on perhaps
willfully albeit unconsciously-- if I've taken on characteristics of one of your
caregivers from when you were growing up, you might now make use of that new
introjected material in me in order to work through some of the unresolved
conflicts that you had with your caregivers as a child. Here's an example, a
relatively famous one, �gas lighting�. A special case of projective identification
that has gained some attention reasonably for example amongst feminist philosophers
is gas lighting named after the movie "Gas Light" from 1944 directed by George
Cooper. The phenomenon goes beyond some of the particulars of the movie but
crucially involves one person projecting feelings of incompetence or
incomprehension on to another and that other person buying in or introjecting on
some level so that she or he accepts those attributes and starts exemplifying them
as well. Gas lighting is discussed by feminist philosophers because they're
interested in the possibility that for example women albeit unconsciously end up
introjecting some of the messages about incompetence, incomprehension, lack of
intelligence et cetera that men attempt to project onto them. So the standard model
would be something like, "A man feels incompetent and instead of acknowledging it,
puts it on to a woman, a coworker for example, a partner, a friend et cetera and
then if only unconsciously woman accepts that identity, introjects that identity
and thereby ends up getting inferior status to the men. More general question about
how these mechanisms affect our behavior is as follows. If they are all
unconscious, then it's not clear how they're going to so to speak bubble up into
behavior in such way as to make us do something. Back when we talked about
parapraxis, we noticed that sometimes an unconscious urge might bubble up in such a
way as to actually so to speak grab our tongue and make us say something we didn't
intend to say or grab our hands and make us knock something over and break
something valuable. Those bubble up into some conscious level in order to make us
behave. How would for example a repressed desire cause us to behave in a certain
way? I want to make a hypothesis now that goes a bit beyond what the mid-century
psychoanalytic movement suggested and suggest that in many cases these unconscious
phenomena are only partly unconscious but that they, if we want to work with the
idea of being submerged partly under the water in the way that an iceberg is, these
individual unconscious phenomena have themselves parts that are above the surface
of the water. Which parts are they? I want to suggest that there are parts that
have to do with the qualitative nature of experience. That is to say, they have to
do with how things seem to us experientially, and in particular they manifest
themselves, these unconscious phenomena manifest small residues of themselves in
consciousness by making things in our environment either actual physical
environment or our imaginary environment, what we hypothesize, what we imagined or
even what we remember from the past, they make things in our environment salient,
marked in some way. So just as, if you're in a room and various things have
different smells, some attractive, some less so, you'll be affected by the
olfactory imprint those things make on you in ways that don't necessarily have to
make their way through verbal cognition. You don't have to think thoughts, form
beliefs, they can nevertheless affect you. This one is a little bit unpleasant,
you'd move away, this one is very nice, you're attracted towards it's up to you.
Unconscious phenomena can have experiential residues in such a way as to make us be
attracted to one thing. For example, this guy that I'm considering dating has some
characteristics of my of my mother or father and that's why I want to continue to
spend time with him for example. But those characteristics are not ones that I
consciously register, they nevertheless draw me towards someone in a kind of
magnetic but unspoken way. So, my suggestion is that, these unconscious phenomena
move us to act in many ways because they have residues that bubble up into the
conscious sphere in particular in the form of the experiential side of our minds.
The qualitative way things seem, something just feels right about being with this
person. That person, their memory just makes me kind of shutter or recoil. Those
are manifestations I want to suggest not always but in many cases of unconscious
phenomenon.