The Ego and the Id Brevity

Identification is when we internalise people we have an emotional attachment to and make their qualities, traits and attitudes part of our own Identity.

Freud suggests that the only way for the Ego to deal with the loss of someone you deeply loved is to swallow them up and internalise them, rather than letting them go. In doing so, all of the emotional energy we feel from the loved one gets redirected onto yourself, and we start to focus less on the loss and more on ourselves.

Sometimes, you may even start to absorb their traits during the relationship. So over time your personality becomes a layered mix of all the people you've been emotionally attached to.

When the Id really loves someone, it craves them and wants them. However, the Ego knows that's never going to happen, so instead it absorbs that person by means of Identification. From that point on, the Ego becomes greatly influenced by the traits of that loved one, and is highly likely to perceive and act on reality in a similar fashion to that of how the loved one would.

As mentioned previously, the Ego doesn't have any strength of its own and is therefore unable to over power the Id on its own accord. Identification is a way for the Ego to get closer to the Id and gain more control over it. Rather than rejecting the Id's desire to covet the loved one, the Ego makes a compromise and instead allows the mind to Identify with the loved one to satisfy the Id.

The Ego gains strength by ignoring the impulses from the Id and turning them into Ego structures (internal values, identification etc).