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[Editor's Note: To assist those among our readership unacquainted with Dr. Grotstein's use of certain terms, we have requested a glossary—and Dr. Grotstein has kindly consented to provide one.]
Some of the terms used in this paper may need to be clarified. My understanding of “projective identification” corresponds to Kleinian usage and is at some odds with how the term is used by many American authors (Grotstein, 1981, 1994, 1995). “Projective identification” is identical with “projection” and has two major forms: (a) normal (as in empathy, planning, and anticipating) and (b) defensive. The latter, in turn, can appear as unconscious fantasies either of invading the object in order to disappear or of taking control of (manipulating) the object as if it were an extension of the subject. I conceptualize “projective identification” essentially as an intrapsychic unconscious fantasy. In the analytic situation, the identification always belongs to the projecting subject, no matter what that person's fantasy may be about in whom the projection may be felt to be (trans)located.
When the analyst also identifies with the patient's projective identification, that phenomenon is called “introjective counteridentification” (Money-Kyrle, 1956).
I conceive of the “countertransference complex” as comprised of a normal intuitive and empathic responsiveness on the part of the analyst (constituting the analyst's “analytic instrument”) and an abnormal responsiveness (constituting the analyst's “countertransference proper”).
The difference between a healthy and a pathological “countertransference neurosis” lies in whether the analyst's introjective counteridentification is partial (trial) or total, that is, in whether the analyst's reality testing has been suspended. In addition to the analyst's partial or total introjective counteridentification to the patient's projective identifications, there is another factor to be considered. The analyst's introjective counteridentification represents