The Child's Need for Identification

processes, and he could only achieve this by identification with the adult, since a good identification is the basis of maturity. Before a child can make a good relationship with an adult he must feel secure, and real security is difficult to achieve without the basic oneness of the very early mother-baby relationship. From this emerges the capacity for relationship with other loved adults, and the need to copy them?partly, it would seem, because they are loved and loving, and partly because they are so powerful, and the child wishes to take into himself the power of controlling outside forces. The need to copy the adult is so imperative, however, that even without secure foundations the child will copy any chance individuals, and, it would seem, their chance actions. Perhaps this is best illustrated by reference to a Residen-