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Projective identification is definitionally indistinguishable from projection because it always operates in an object-relations context; i.e., the projecting subject needs an object to warrant the illusion that the latter can contain the projection. It is a primitive as well as sophisticated mechanism that runs the gamut from defensive, evacuative disavowal, through regressively hibernative dedifferentiation from (fusion with) the object, through vicarious participation with objects and manipulative control of them, to, ultimately, sublimated empathic resonance with them. It is the agent of preverbal communication between the infant and its mother and is also a form of signalling and posturing. It is the source of all anxiety (as opposed to normal fear and concern) and of all persecution (as opposed to realistic danger). It is the architectural instrument par excellence for the creation of the internal objects that comprise the structures of the internal world, for the distortion of, or transference to, the objects of the external world, and is largely responsible for the creation of superegos. It is most manifest when we take life events "personally, " that is, subjectively. It saturates the manifest and latent content of all psychoanalyses in its role as projected "alter egos, " which are signifiers of the self at one remove.
Projective identification is a principal participant in the transference/countertransference situation. As the patient projects his own disidentifications into the image of the analyst (actually, into the potential space existing between them), the recipient analyst seeks to contain these projective