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In this stimulating two-part article, psychoanalyst James Grotstein revises and broadens the blueprint of Melanie Klein and later object-relations specialists. Readers from the developmental school of analytical psychology will recognize in these articles a serious and thoughtful inquiry into subtle clinical issues wherein the dynamics of the Self go unrecognized by therapists who have little understanding of this vital area of study. Grotstein gives an historical perspective and current assessment of projective identification and countertransference. His initial premise is that Kleinian theory has suffered a ‘sea change as it crossed the Atlantic’, so that its current use and understanding by American analysts is divergent with the originators in England. Grotstein argues that American analysts have arrived at an inaccurate division between projection and projective identification. Jungian analysts, whether influenced or not by object-relations theory, will find food for thought in his precise definitions of projection/projective identification and how each functions in the analytic process.
Grotstein amplifies the ways in which projection/projective identification are ‘forced’ into the analyst. The suffering of, by, and within the analyst, constitutes in Grotstein's thinking the ‘profounder nature of the transference/countertransference situation’ and the healing process of the patient. He further contends that analysts have blunted, dissipated, and muted the pivotal meaning of transference and counter-transference. He concludes that analysts must approach the idea of countertransference resistance even more seriously as a central problem in clinical practice.
Most importantly, he not only broadens the scope of projective identification and its concurrent countertransference but arrives at conclusions that closely mirror archetypal theory as first proposed by C. G. Jung. In a painstakingly detailed and precise explication, Grotstein writes that the ‘crucifixion’, th