In theatrical terms, the Freudian interpretation — which posited that Hamlet hesitated to kill Claudius because he identified with the man who shared his mother's bed — allowed the Prince to be shown as a strong, if tortured, man, rather than as the sensitive weakling that the Victorians had popularized, and that Gielgud still played to perfection.
To his credit, Gispert also made an effort not to comment on his subjects or their designs, because he identified with the nature of their commitment.
I was delighted to read Paul Krugman's March 5 column, because he identified a problem, the "states of depression" at the state and local levels, that has received too little attention.
Rembrandt deliberately botched the arm, Sebald suggested, because he identified more closely with the wronged criminal than with the surgeons who had commissioned him.
In a 2013 Guardian interview, he cited Ian Curtis as an influence, and the band have informed his music since 2011's album XXX. Brown told Rolling Stone that he named the album Atrocity Exhibition because he identified with Curtis's pain in the song – the authenticity of which received terrible confirmation when the singer hanged himself in 1980, aged 23.
It is thought that he included the dodo because he identified with it and had adopted the name as a nickname for himself because of his stammer, which made him accidentally introduce himself as "Do-do-dodgson", his legal surname.
Because he identified with him we could too.
He photographed Picasso, Matisse, Bonnard and Giacometti, not because they were famous, but because he identified with them as artists.
"In The Long Firm, Harry Starks comes out from watching Lawrence of Arabia in floods of tears because he identifies with the great queer hero," he says.
