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In Klein’s original formulation of the mechanism of projective identification, she referred to an unconscious phantasy in which the patient expelled what were usually disturbing contents into another object. This object is partially transformed in the patient’s mind as a consequence of the projection, being now possessed of qualities the patient has expelled. As well as being a method of evacuation, Klein suggested that projective identification may fulfil a variety of other unconscious functions for patients, such as enabling them to believe that they possess the object, or control it from within. These projective processes usually alternate with introjective ones. Thus the phantasy of forceful entry into the object by parts of the self in order to possess or control the object creates problems with normal introjection, which patients may find difficult to distinguish from forceful entry from the outside, in retribution for their own violent projections (Klein 1946: 11).
The exploration of these unconscious phantasies has increased our understanding of the defensive needs these primitive mental mechanisms satisfy for the patient. While the elucidation of these processes has, in the past, often seemed to emphasize the analyst’s role as a dispassionate observer, the impingement of the patient’s phantasies and actions on the analyst has in fact been recognized from the earliest days of psychoanalysis. Following the early work of Heimann (1950) and Racker (1958) there has been increasing interest in the systematic investigation of the way in which the patient’s phantasies, expressed by gross or subtle, verbal or non-verbal means, may come to influence the analyst’s state of mind and behaviour. Fairbairn (1958) wrote:
Page 34In a sense, psychoanalytical treatment resolves itself into a struggle on the part of the patient to press-gang his relationship with the analyst into the closed system of the inner world through the agency of transference.
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