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As we continue to move away from Freud's drive-centered theories toward new analytic paradigms, our understanding of the metapsychological building blocks from which we construct our clinical hypotheses must inevitably be altered. An evolution in the meaning and roles assigned to the basic mechanisms of defense is underway. Indeed, Kohut (1984) has argued that the traditional analyst's whole view of defenses as “discrete ‘mechanisms’ tied to the functioning a mental ‘apparatus’” is a holdover from the nineteenth century's ideal of an observer-independent scientific objectivity as the model for the analytic inquiry. In this paper I will particularly focus on the traditional view of the mechanism of projection and show how it must necessarily be significantly altered, as has the whole concept of defense itself, as we move from the context of classical drive theory to that of self psychology.
I will begin with a clinical vignette illustrating how projection is commonly interpretively invoked, and what problems I see arising from such interpretations. I will then proceed to outline some of the history of the concept and show how the clinical examples originally used by Anna Freud and others to define projection can be understood in new ways.
I recently received a call from a former patient whom I had not seen in over 3 years. He had reached an impasse with his new psychiatrist (a change necessitated when he moved out of state) and felt the need for a consultation. This schizophrenic man was able to function as a highly skilled computer programmer. However he was acutely sensitive to his interpersonal milieu, in which he suffered extreme social awkwardness. He felt that he stood out as an oddity to his coworkers, who he thought talked and laughed about him behind his