Projection and Projective Indentification in a Three-Year-Old Boy

Observations of a three-year-old boy are interpreted in terms of the psychoanalytic concept of projection as articulated by Sigmund Freud, as well as Melanie Klein's theory of projective identification. The author concludes that the projective mechanisms described by freud and Klein are both useful tools for understanding this young boy's behavior, and proposes that these projective processes are qualitatively different, having emerged in this young subject at different periods of emotional development, and are unconsciously employed by the boy to accomplish different objectives. Projection was employed by this young child as an ego defense warding off intolerable feelings and self-representations. Requiring a complex use of verbal explanation, projection is a developmentally more advanced process than projective identification which involves the nonverbal emotional communication of an unconscious fantasy. Where projection is an intrapsychic process employed at moments of relative ego autonomy, projective identification is used by this young boy to strengthen his narcissistic attachment to objects, and to fuse together libidinal and aggressive drives to simultaneously hate and preserve these objects.