You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
June 16, 1988
I read with interest Dr. Kernberg's (1987) paper on projection and projective identification.
Although I am one of those who do not accept entirely the Kleinian theory, I appreciate the clarity of his formulations, perhaps a bit schematic and categorical for me.
In my experience, in fact, I have found many more intermediate states between projection and projective identification than clear-cut states. In these intermediate states we find a variety of clinical conditions which may be placed between borderline and psychotic.
One point of his presentation drew my attention. This is where he states: "Insofar as projective identification implies a fantasy, and in order to fantasize we have to assume the capacity for having one element stand for another and be manipulated in the direction of a desired goal, the capacity for symbolization must be present. Insofar as the wish is to expel onto another what is felt as undesirable, there must exist a capacity not only for awareness of the difference between the self and the other …" (p. 799).
Are there not fantasies in the body (the way Gaddini [1982] described in his paper: "Early Defensive Fantasies and the Psychoanalytical process," which have a defensive—or protective—nature and appear much earlier than the capacity for symbolization? I feel that it is on these early fantasies, which have nothing to do with symbols, that we ought to concentrate our studies, as they are the basis for understanding psychosomatic (or psychophysical) disorders. In the latter, surely, we cannot assume the capacity for having one element standing for another, as takes place in symbolization, since symbolization requires the awareness of the difference between self and other, which these patients do not have (the other-mother being represented by their own body).