Introduction to Part Four

In the five chapters of this section the themes developed in earlier papers are further explored and refined in relation to several areas, particularly transference, projective identification, envy, psychic change, and object relations. All these areas have been touched on in the earlier chapters, but are here discussed more systematically.

In ‘Transference: the total situation’ (1985 but written in 1983) Joseph develops some of the implications of Klein's notion that it is essential to think in terms of ‘total situations transferred from the past into the present, as well as of emotions, defences, and object-relations’ (Klein 1952a). Her fundamental stress is on the transference as a living, changing set of relationships to which the patient brings the patterns of unconscious phantasy, impulse, conflict, and defence which constitute his psychic life. She stresses that it is important to get the patient's underlying assumptions into the open, for he often communicates his problems and lives out his early history in ways which are beyond his individual associations and beyond what he can express in words. ‘Interpretations dealing only with the individual associations’, she says, ‘would touch only the adult part of the personality, while the part that is really needing to be understood is communicated through the pressures brought to bear on the analyst.’ We may be able to capture these experiences which are ‘beyond words’ only through the reactions and feelings the patient unconsciously attempts to arouse in the analyst. Once again, it is clear that Joseph regards the patient's acting out in the session as our richest source of information about his internal world, his object relationships, and his history.

The second chapter of this section, ‘Projective identification: some clinical aspects’ (1987 but written in 1984) does not introduce new ideas,

but gives a particularly lucid description of Klein's concept of projective identification (Klein 1946) and of Joseph's