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According to the psychoanalyst Freud, the ego and the superego are constructed by introjection of external behavioral patterns into the own persona. Introjection is also the name of a defence mechanism, which handles threats from the outside that can potentially cause anxiety by infolding it into the internal world of the subject, where it can be neutralized or alleviated. More specifically it is introjecting attributes, attitudes or qualities of an absent person of high significance (mother gone to work, relative gone to heaven...) into oneself. One precedential example often used is the child enveloping a representational image of the absent parents in itself ( memory?) while at the same time fusing it with the self.