Chapter 6 Projective Identification: Some Clinical Aspects34

The concept of projective identification was introduced into analytic thinking by Melanie Klein in 1946. Since then it has been welcomed, argued about, the name disputed, the links with projection pointed out, and so on; but one aspect seems to stand out above the firing line, and that is its considerable clinical value. It is this aspect that I shall mainly concentrate on today, and mainly in relation to the more neurotic patient.

Melanie Klein became aware of projective identification when exploring what she called the paranoid-schizoid position, that is, a constellation of a particular type of object relations, anxieties, and defences against them, typical for the earliest period of the individual's life and, in certain disturbed people, continuing throughout life. This particular position she saw as dominated by the infant's need to ward off anxieties and impulses by splitting both the object, originally the mother, and the self and projecting these split-off parts into an object, which will then be felt to be like, or identified with, these split-off parts, so colouring the infant's perception of the object and its subsequent introjection.

She discussed the manifold aims of different types of projective identification, for example, splitting off and getting rid of unwanted

parts of the self that cause anxiety or pain; projecting the self or parts of the self into an object to dominate and control it and thus avoid any feelings of being separate; getting into an object to take over its capacities and make them its own; invading in order to damage or destroy the object. Thus the infant, or adult who goes on using such mechanisms powerfully, can avoid any awareness of separateness, dependence, admiration, or its concomitant sense of lo