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Expressed formulaically, identification means:

I = you or I = we or I = an object / a thing

Identifications do not automatically mean giving up one’s own identity. When learning to talk, for example, children naturally identify with their mother’s language, her accent, her tone of voice. Rather than deeming this identification

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we can speak in terms of ‘imitation’ or mimicry. In general, parents are the role models for their children, and their children imitate them - according to the old pedagogical wisdom: ‘It doesn’t matter how much you try to teach your children, they’ll still end up just copying you.’ In behavioural psychology this is called ‘modelling’.

But identifications can also serve to distract us from ourselves and from the lack of our own ‘I’ and will. Identifications can be used to cover up our own inner emptiness with something that is recognised and admired by others. This leads to the fact that some people often seem more than they are. They may look successful in the eyes of others because they have a family, a house, a car or a respected job. Or it may be that they are associated with the ‘in-crowd’ according to the narcissistic thinking that we can be important if we hang out with important people. But in fact those people are deeply self-insecure, the function of their healthy I is poorly developed, and left to their own devices they are barely capable of knowing who they are and what they want.