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Dear Editors,
I am pleased that Dr Grotstein, an authority on projective identifi cation, appreciates my paper and is consonant with many of the points illustrated in it. I am particularly delighted that he has taken an interest in the many forms of identifi cation embraced by the concept of projective identifi cation as well as in the relation between projective identifi cation and knowing. Allow me to quote his description of the process of knowing, partly derived from Bion and partly from his own experience: ‘The subject—he writes—employs the projective identifi cation of inherent and acquired pre-conceptions on to the incoming stimuli emanating from the object. This is how we know reality’ (Grotstein, 2002). It seems to me that these words fit perfectly with empathy as well, as I have written in my text, and with the process of ‘becoming the patient’. Dr Grotstein does not explicitly say this, but I believe he also thinks that ‘becoming’ the patient must be a transient process that allows the analyst to return to being himself and not get into confused, inextricable situations.