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This chapter aims at being a brief introductory reflection on a subject which will be repeatedly considered later.
It is interesting to note that in his later years Freud once again turned his attention to problems which, like those in the case of Schreber, could not be entirely understood in terms of the antithesis between three-dimensional inside and three-dimensional outside, which was the only one available to him. And again he added to our understanding. These new insights are contained in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921). Melanie Klein, who put forward the concept of projective identification (1946 [1952]: 300–01; 1952: 207), comments (1955: 313, n. 3) that on re-reading the book just mentioned it appeared to her that Freud ‘was aware of the process of identification by projection, although he did not differentiate it by means of a special term from the process of identification by introjection’.
Klein also refers to Elliott Jaques (1955: 480–82), who, on his part, deals with the same question in more detail. He mentions, quite rightly, the distinction made by Freud ‘between identification of the ego with an object and replacement of the ego ideal by an object’ (Freud 1921, SE 18: 134), and adds that in his opinion the first is identification by introjection and the second contains implicitly the conception of identification by projection, i.e. projective identification. As an illustration Jaques cites an example given by Freud, i.e. when