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I believe that nowadays most Kleinian analysts would agree with Klein herself in thinking that although projective identification is important, it is not the most central and distinctively Kleinian concept. Pride of place is reserved for the comprehensive ideas of the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions. Indeed, the term ‘projective identification’ was first defined by Klein in her paper ‘Notes on some schizoid mechanisms’ (1946), which is her definitive statement of the paranoid-schizoid position.
Nevertheless many papers by contemporary Kleinian British analysts use the idea of projective identification clinically and a somewhat smaller number of papers have been specifically devoted to conceptual discussion of the concept (the main discussions occur in Bell, 2001; Bion, 1959; Britton, 1998b; Feldman, 1992, 1994, 1997; Hinshelwood, 1991; Joseph, 1987; Rosenfeld, 1964b, 1971, 1983; Segal, 1964; Sodré, 2004; see particularly Edna O'Shaughnessy's Chapter 9 in the present book; Spillius, 1992). In addition there have been unpublished contributions by Ruth Riesenberg Malcolm, Hanna Segal, Edith Hargreaves, Priscilla Roth, Robin Anderson and Edna O'Shaughnessy. There have also been two conferences on the topic of projective identification, one
It is not possible to give a precise definition of a ‘British Kleinian analyst’. In general usage it means an analyst whose training analyst has been a Kleinian. However, a few analysts in all three British psychoanalytic groups, the Kleinians, the Independents and the Contemporary Freudians, have changed their affiliation after qualification in one group to that of one of the other groups. A few British analysts prefer to identify themselves as ‘non-aligned’.
organised by Joseph Sandler in Jerusalem in 1984 (Sandler, 1987b) and one on ‘Understanding Projective Identification: Clinical Advances’ held at University College London in October 1995.
Klein's original delineation of the concept of projective identification has of