You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Paper published in 1962 by the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 43: 436–440.
In previous papers (3), (4) I have dealt with some changes in the analytic technique resulting from the analysands’ massive use of projective identification. The excessive use of this mechanism, in certain situations, gives rise to a specific reaction in the analyst, who is unconsciously and passively ‘led’ to play the sort of role the patient hands over to him. For this particular reaction, I suggested the term ‘projective counter-identification’.
I then pointed out that it had to do with a very specific and partial aspect of the countertransference. But I consider it especially important to stress this aspect in order to show the difference existing between the response I have in mind and the countertransference reactions resulting from the analyst’s own emotional attitudes, or on his neurotic remnants, reactivated by the patient’s conflicts. With a view to making this difference clearer, I should like to describe in a schematic form the two processes that co-exist in the analyst’s mind.
In process A the analyst is the active subject of the patient’s introjective and projective mechanisms. In this process, and based on Fliess’s remarks (2), three important phases can be described: (i) when the analyst selectively
introjects the different aspects of the patient’s verbal and non-verbal material, together with their corresponding emotional charges; (ii) when the analyst works through and assimilates the identifications resulting from the said identification of the patient’s inner world; and (iii) when the analyst (re)projects the results of this assimilation by means of interpretations.
On the other hand, in process B, the analyst is the passive object of the analysand’s projections and introjections. In this case, however, two further situations may still develop: (i) that the analyst’s emotional response may be due to his own conflicts or anxieties, intensified or reactivated by th