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IN THIS PAPER3 I SHALL PRESENT a synthesis of the ideas which I have developed in various articles and books regarding the concept of "projective counteridentification". I first coined this term in 1957 to refer to a specific and differential aspect of countertransference, based on the unconscious analytic interaction between the patient and the analyst, and which is brought about by the particularly intense use of and psychopathic modality of the mechanism of projective identification of the patient. As a result of the pathological quality of this mechanism, the patient is able to induce different roles, affects and fantasies in the analyst, who unconsciously and passively feels himself "carried along" to play and experience them. (Grinberg, 1957).
I should like to refer briefly to the mechanism of projective identification.
This was described by Melanie Klein in her paper "Some Notes on Schizoid Mechanisms" (1946), and included in her hypotheses about emotional development in the first months of life. It consists in an omnipotent fantasy that unwanted parts of the personality, and parts of internal objects can be split, projected and controlled in the external object into which they have been projected.
Under normal conditions projective identification determines the empathic relationship with the object, not only because it allows