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To recount the history of projective identification in Chile I will use the publications that have addressed the concept in my country. There are not many of them but they give a fair picture of its development. After an initially uncritical reception the concept has been challenged on the grounds that it is based in a monadic conception of the mind that diminishes the contribution of the analyst to the interactive nature of the psychoanalytic process. However, the acknowledgment of the analyst's contribution to projective identification in a dyadic conception of the analytic process may not suffice to give a full account of projective identification as an intersubjective phenomenon.
Edy Herrera (2000) describes the progressive interpersonalization of the concept and its development from a pathological defense mechanism to its consideration as a normal process of psychic life. Projective identification was at first considered to be an intrapsychic pathological aggressive phantasy and its effect on the recipient was not taken into account. Later, it was linked to a deepening of the theory of object relations and the connection between transference and countertransference. Projective identification is thus linked to the
analyst's countertransference. Hererra highlights León Grinberg's (1985) concept of projective counteridentification. Grinberg distinguishes between the latter and complementary countertransference as defined by Racker. The analyst's neurotic residues are activated by the patient's conflicts in complementary countertransference, whereas in counter-projective identification, the analyst's response is mainly the consequence of the intensity and unconscious intention of the patient's projective identification.
Finally Herrera discusses Bion's contribution to the theory of projective identification through the link he makes between projective identification and the model of the container-contained. Projective identifi