Concepts
Health psychology/Defence mechanisms · Immaturelow yield
Introjection
What it means
Taking the attributes, values or qualities of another person into oneself, adopting them as one’s own.
Worked example
A grieving widow takes up her late husband’s hobbies and opinions as if they were hers.
In the exam
After her husband dies, a woman adopts his political views, his phrases and his hobbies as though they had always been her own.
What settles it
Introjection internalises another’s qualities INTO the self. Identification models the self ON the other (behaving like them).
Classically confused with
Identification
Source: AMBOSS