Projective Identification: Some Clinical Considerations

The limitations of the analytic relationship are a product of the analysis of transference and the resistances. Projective identification is a fundamental element of the transference and is often the primary resistance. Therefore, it can become the chief limitation to the exploration and enhancement of the analytic relationship. I begin by focusing on specific manifestations of projective identification found within the Autistic—Contiguous mode of functioning (Ogden, 1989), the Paranoid—Schizoid position (Segal, 1974), and the Depressive position (Segal, 1974). Then I examine specific clinical implications for the day-to-day, moment-to-moment interpretation and understanding of projective identification by patient and analyst as a method of cultivating the therapeutic relationship. The actual criteria for when, how, and why to analyze projective identification processes will be discussed with clinical examples.

Tausk (1919/1948) made an early contribution to the study of projective identification when he stated:

The projection of one's body may, then, be traced back to the developmental stage in which one's body is the goal of object finding. This must be the time when the infant is discovering his body, part by part, as the outer world, and is still groping for his hands and feet as though they were foreign objects. At this time, everything that “happens” to him emanates from his own body; his psyche is the object of stimuli arising in his own body but acting upon it as if produced by outer objects. These disjecta membra are later on pieced together and systematized into a unified whole under the supervision of a psychic unity that receives all sensations of pleasure and pain from these separate parts. This process takes place by means of identification with one's own body. (pp. 72-73)

Although the dynamics Tausk describes are undifferentiated states of primary narcissism, they in fact begin a very basic process of separation