Introjection

Literary/ Cultural Context Essay

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  • The Literary Encyclopedia. WORLD HISTORY AND IDEAS: A CROSS-CULTURAL VOLUME.

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This psychoanalytic concept was coined by Sandor Ferenczi in his paper “Introjection and Transference” (1909) as the antithesis to “projection”. He defined it as taking into the ego parts of the outside world and making them the object of unconscious phantasies. Freud developed Ferenczi's idea, notably in his essay “Instincts and their Vicissitudes” (1915) and in “Mourning and Melancholia” (1917), as a contrasting dyad with his earlier term projection (first used in 1896), such that introjection becomes the process of taking into ourselves that which is associated with pleasure, whilst projection is a defensive mechanism for ejecting from ourselves that which causes unpleasure. Both ideas build upon fundamental physiological and infantile grounds (sucking and introjecting…

542 words

Citation: Clark, Robert. "Introjection". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 22 October 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=564, accessed 19 March 2024.]

564 Introjection 2 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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