Identification (literature)
Acclaimed filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock used specific camera and acting techniques in his films to incite audience identification with his characters in order to create suspense.
[4] Freud first introduced the concept of identification in his 1921 book Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, where he referred to it as “the original form of emotional tie with an object”.
[6] Freud claimed that a successful resolution to the Oedipus complex was for the patient to adopt a state of primary identification with their same-sex parent by internalising part of their personality and worldview.
[3] It is largely informed by Freudian psychoanalysis, but has since grown into its own field in literary theory, influenced by the work of psychoanalysts such as Carl Jung, Melanie Klein, and Jacques Lacan.
[10] Archetypal literary criticism draws heavily on the work of psychoanalyst Carl Jung, a friend and colleague of Freud’s who branched out from Freudian psychoanalysis to establish the field of analytical psychology.
[15] Lacanian theory claims that this identification with the camera provides the spectator with a sense of imaginary mastery and is the source of the pleasure in watching film.
[16] Lacan argued that this mirror-self is more attractive to the individual than their fragmented, internal sense of self, composed of fluctuating thoughts, emotions, desires, and fears.
[17] The mirror phase identification is the moment of separation of the ideal fantasy self, similar to Freud’s ego, with the real self, or in other words, the concept of self with the actual self.
[17] Metz states that watching film recreates the initial pleasure experienced during the Lacanian mirror phase, where the viewers identity is distilled into a single image.
[21][22] Alfred Hitchcock was an English new wave filmmaker, considered to be one of the most distinguished directors in the history of cinema and nicknamed the "Master of Suspense" for his long career of making thriller films, many of which are critically regarded as masterpieces, such as Rear Window (1954), Vertigo (1958), and Psycho (1960).
[23] Hitchcock used the process of viewer identification as a technique to establish suspense, stating that the more invested the audience is in the fate of the character, the more "urgent and keen" a viewing experience.
[25] By using restrained acting during facial close-ups and during shot/reverse shot sequences, Hitchcock designed his scenes in such a way that when the camera cut to what the character was looking at, "the viewer would experience the emotion directly, through identification, rather than by observing the actor's artifice of sentiment".
