  Such a view yields a kind of paradox: If the agent is the mere effect of the repeated acts, then how are the acts themselves produced?  The concerns may be mitigated to some extent by recognizing that Butler is interested in the very formation of self-identity as understood within a psychoanalytic tradition. She follows Freud in seeing the ego as formed largely through a process of complex identifications. Identification, in this context, is to be understood as the stable psychic “taking on” of perceived properties of a lost love object (1990, 73–84; 1991 26–7). In this way, the lost object becomes a part of the ego through a process of imitation: The object is internalized (and psychically “preserved”).