1. Act or process of determining classification or nature of. 2. A sense of oneness, or psychic continuity with another person or group; one of the freudian defense mechanisms common to everyone whereby anxiety regarding one's personal identity or worth is dissipated via the mechanism of perceiving oneself as having characteristics in common with a person in the public eye, or in childhood identifying with a more powerful person such as a parent. SYN: incorporation. [Mediev. L. identicus, fr. L. idem, the same, + facio, to make]
- projective i. a defensive attribution of one's own psychic processes to another person.
- synthetic sentence i. a test of central auditory pathway integrity in which a closed set of 10 syntactically incomplete sentences are presented with a competing message for i..
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iden·ti·fi·ca·tion ī-.dent-ə-fə-'kā-shən, ə- n
1) an act of identifying: the state of being identified
2 a) psychological orientation of the self in regard to something (as a person or group) with a resulting feeling of close emotional association
b) a largely unconscious process whereby an individual models thoughts, feelings, and actions after those attributed to an object that has been incorporated as a mental image
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n.
(in psychological development) the process of adopting other people's characteristics more or less permanently. Identification with a parent is important in personality formation, and has been especially implicated in the development of a moral sense and of an appropriate sex role.
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iden·ti·fi·ca·tion (i-den″tĭ-fĭ-kaґshən) a largely unconscious process by which a person patterns himself or herself after one or more other people, associating closely with them and assuming their viewpoints; in some people this can be a type of defense mechanism.Medical dictionary. 2011.