Hold up a second, art history lesson.

Identification

In psychoanalytical terms, identification is a psychological process whereby the subject assimilates an aspect, property or attribute of the other and is transformed, wholly or partially, after the model the other provides. It is by means of a series of identifications that the personality is constituted and specified. The roots of the concept can be found in Freudian theory. Freud distinguished three main kinds of identification: first, identification is the original form of emotional tie with an object; secondly, in a regressive way it becomes a substitute for a libidinal object-tie and thirdly, it may arise with any new perception of a common quality which is shared with some other person.

Hysterical identification

Psychoanalysis teaches us that there is another type of identification which is qualified as hysterical identification. In that case, the shared fate is not with disappearance or death, but on the contrary with presence, affirmation and life.