Discussion of Frederick Kurth's Article, Projective Identification, Analyzability, and Hate

This is a striking and persuasive paper. Clarification of theory always has to be tested by practical experience. Thus Dr. Kurth's theses seem to me to demand evaluation by clinical evidence from as many working psychiatrists as can provide relevant material to corroborate, modify, or offer alternative hypotheses. Although here I can be of little help, my former practice having consisted almost entirely of psychoneurotic and character cases, some of these patients naturally exhibited psychotic traits, e.g., they were obsessionals with persecutory tendencies or anxiety types with schizoid difficulties in maintaining relationships. Some of the latter were inhibited by fear of destroying their objects—Dr. Kurth aptly phrased this “consuming love.” But I can recall no instance of the kind of confusion of identity he illustrates.

The obsessionals' persecutors were always felt to be distinct from themselves, enemies with whom they had to contend. Indeed, in 1945, when I discussed the variety of identificatory relationships, I was interested in a more positive aspect that had come to my notice, namely, that projective identification could be the narcissist's route to good object relationships. Hence I suspect that even if this violent projective identification is a very early and universal mechanism, it is chiefly psychotics who succumb to it, though this can only be a surmise on my part.

On general grounds it is well to be wary of suggestions that any one phase of development or any single mechanism is of equal importance in all cases. Pathogenic situations do vary in level of origin from person to person. Certainly the earlier they occur, the more disastrous they are likely to be, since what happens first necessarily affects all that happens later.

The patients Dr. Kurth described were indeed helpless and totally dependent upon his recognition of their condition and his ability to help them; otherwise their analyzability would

have come to an end. But do not such crises