Chapter 11 Projective Identification: The Fate of the Concept in Germany

In order to outline the reception of the concept of projective identification, I began by looking in the index of key words to the psychoanalytic journal Psyche to see when this term first started to appear in articles there. It is first mentioned in 1957 with the translation of Melanie Klein's Envy and Gratitude, followed in 1960 by Klein's ‘Some theoretical conclusions regarding the life of the infant’ (Klein, 1952c). These in turn are followed by Betty Joseph's ‘Some characteristics of the psychopathic personality’ (Joseph, 1961), as well as A. Bonnard's ‘Pre-body ego types of (pathological) mental functioning’ (Bonnard, 1961), and J. O. Wisdom's ‘A methodological approach to the problem of hysteria’ (Wisdom, 1962). The first German contribution to make use of the key term projective identification was published in 1962. It was by Wolfgang Loch and bore the title ‘Anmerkungen zur Pathogenese und Metapsychologie einer schizophrenen Psychose’ (Loch, 1962). It was followed by H. A. Thorner (1963). In 1963, Bion's Theory of Thinking was made available in translation, followed by another contribution by Wolfgang Loch on the subject of identification-introjection.

During the period up to 1992, the term projective identification appeared in a total of 40 articles in the journal Psyche. In 1985, R. Zwiebel wrote a report about a conference in Jerusalem organized

by Joseph Sandler on the theme ‘Projection, Identification and Projective Identification’ (Zwiebel, 1985) and, in 1988, a first original work by the same author was published using the term projective identification in the title (Zwiebel, 1988). This paper offers a sound theoretical overview of the concept of projective identification. It was followed in 1989 by a clinical presentation by Hinz with the title: ‘Projektive Identifizierung und psychoanalytischer Dialog’ (Hinz, 1989).

As early as 1965, Wolfgang Loch was giving projective