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In this article, the authors argue that some analysands must rely on an unconscious fantasy of an omnipotent analyst in order to regress to dependence and to experience containment by the analyst. In support of this argument, they first briefly review the concepts of identification, projective identification, and the containing function. They then detail issues related to the use of the term projective identification, and provide a clinical example that supports their central thesis.
Brunet and Casoni emphasize Freud's view that identification occurs with what is imagined about the other, not with the other's unconscious. They point out how Klein's concept of projective identification uses the idea of identification, emphasizing identification with what is projected. Next, the authors describe how Bion's idea of the container follows from Klein's work, elaborating on what happens to what is projected.
Noting some problems in the diverse definitions of projective identification, the authors propose three usages they find helpful. First is the omnipotent defensive fantasy of intrusive projective identification, in which an internal object is projected onto an external object, which is then perceived as attacked and controlled by it. Second is communicative projective identification, a “non-pathological type of projective identification aimed at communication” (p. 145), involving the fantasy that the other can