identify with phrasal verb ( see also ↑ identify )
1 . identify with somebody/something to feel sympathy with someone or be able to share their feelings:
Humans can easily identify with the emotional expressions of chimpanzees.
He identified with our distress.
2 . identify somebody with something to think that someone is very closely related to or involved with something such as a political group:
She has always been identified with the radical left.
3 . identify something with somebody/something to think that something is the same as, or closely related to, something else:
the attempt to identify crime with poverty and social problems