Ferenczi’s notion of
Identification with the aggressor
Perhaps the notion most
relevant to our discussion of the formation of SPs is Ferenczi’s
“Identification with the aggressor.” This notion of "identification with
the aggressor” (to be abbreviated to “IWA” hereafter) is generally considered
to be introduced by Anna Freud (1936)(L&P, p.207) who included IWA as one
of the defense mechanisms.” Faced with an external threat (typically
represented by a criticism emanating from an authority), the subject identifies
himself with his aggressor. He may do so either by appropriating
the aggression itself, or else by physical or moral emulation of the
aggressor, or again by adopting particular symbols of power by which the
aggressor is designated.”(L&P p.207)
The most characteristic of the
notion of IWA represented by Anna Freud is the reversal of the role.
Anna Freud thought that the child goes through an initial stage in which the
whole aggressive relationship is reversed: the aggressor is introjected while the
person attacked, criticized or guilty is projected outwards. It is only
afterwards that the aggressiveness turned inwards.
The same tone of view was
presented by René Spitz (No and Yes (1957)) who asserts that IWA is the
predominant mechanism in the acquisition of the capacity to say “no”.
Spitz, R.A. (1957). No and
yes : on the genesis of human communication. New York : International
Universities Press.
These authors stressed the
importance of the internalization of aggression, first directed toward the children,
to “use” it, so to speak, as a coping strategy in order to deal with the
original aggression. It is regarded as a healthy mechanism that a child needs
to acquire in order to further develop their personal integrity vis a vis
external world.
Recently,
there are views that assert the necessity that we turn our attention to
Ferenczi’s original notion of IWA, which stress rather pathological and
traumatic aspect of a situation where the IWA is mobilized. One of the
proponents who shed a new light on Ferenczi's original notion of IWA is Jay
Frankel (2002). (Frankel,
J. (2002) Exploring Ferenczi's Concept of Identification with the Aggressor:
Its Role in Trauma, Everyday Life, and the Therapeutic Relationship.
Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 12:101-139)
He stresses that
although many of us attribute this notion to that of Anna Freud, (as L & P
does as we saw above), Frenczi’s notion of IWA should be honored for its
originality, and his notion was practically very different from IWA proposed by
Anna Freud, which basically means that the victim turn the situation around and
becomes aggressor him/herself. “By impersonating the aggressor, assuming his
attributes or imitating his aggression, the child transforms himself from the
person threatened into the person who makes the threat” (A.Freud, 1936, p.
113).
Frankel carefully
guides us to explore Ferenczi’s original meaning of IWA.
Frankel states that
Ferenczi introduced this term in his work in 1933 (Ferenczi, 1933), three years
before Anna Freud’s work (1936)
Ferenczi, S. (1933), Confusion of tongues between adults
and the child. In:
Final Contributions to the ProbleMr.And Methods of
Psycho-Analysis, ed.
M. Balint (trans. E. Mosbacher). London: Karnac Books,
1980, pp. 156-
167., Freud, A. (1936), The Ego and the Mechanisms of
Defense (rev.). New York:
International Universities Press.
One of the reasons
that Ferenczi's notion did not gain recognition was because of the specific
circumstances in which his idea was initially presented. His 1933 paper was
presented at the Weisbaden Congress in September 1932 and published in German
in the same year. Unfortunately, it was not translated in English and published
until 1949. Frankel succinctly summarizes Ferenci’s idea presented in this
paper.” Exploring the early memories of his adult patients who had been
abused as children, Ferenczi (1933) found evidence that children who are
terrified by adults who are out of control will “subordinate themselves like
automata to the will of the aggressor to divine each one of his desires and to
gratify these; completely oblivious of themselves they identify themselves with
the aggressor…. The weak and undeveloped personality reacts to sudden
unpleasure not by defence, but by anxiety-ridden identification and by
introjection of the menacing person or aggressor” (pp. 162-163, entire passage
italicized in the original). The child “become[s] one” (p. 165) with the
attacker.
