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Integration (from Latin integrare, ‘to make one’), in political science and the social sciences, refers to the processes by which members of different groups are incorporated into a society, organization, institution or state. Integration may occur socially, politically or economically, but the term is most precisely used to refer to political or civic integration treating everybody with citizenship rights as equal citizens. Social integration involves coming to share a common language and culture, which may be described as assimilation if the original cultural differences between peoples completely disappear, or acculturation if one group adapts to the culture of another. Political integration may involve the incorporation of existing states, territories or communities into a larger structure. Thus, for example, the European Community represents an experimental attempt to create a new political union out of existing states and peoples. Economic integration usually involves the integration of markets, either to control production and price levels, for example OPEC (the Organization of Petroleum Exporting countries), or to create conditions for free trade as exemplified by NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) which partially integrated the markets of Canada, the US and Mexico.
In psychoanalytical theory, integration is part of development. According to classical (Freudian) psychoanalysis, the psyche starts as an unintegrated id and becomes integrated through ego development.
According to later objects relations theory, the child starts off with a primary integrated ego; defence mechanisms, reacting to anxiety, act to split off repressed parts of the self. Psychoanalysis is then a process of retrieving lost parts of the self and reintegrating them into a more whole self.
Jung saw integration as a process of individuation, where movements between introversion (nearer the unconscious) and extroversion (nearer the conscious) turned cyclically to create periods of integration. MJ BO\'L
See also nationalism.Further reading K. Deutsch, Nationalism and Social Communication; , Freida Fordham, An Introduction to Jung\'s Psychology. |
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