Simultaneous Identifications

This paper presents the notion that in intense clinical moments, when the transference is at its peak, we identify at the same time with the patient’s various forms of identificatory communications, through various channels, in different levels of experience and with several object-representations and self-representations. We do not stand for just one central role (the depressed mother/the abusive father, etc.), but rather we unconsciously come to identify with various aspects that are projected into us and characterize the patient’s internal experiences as well as his internal objects and self-representations. Most of the time, it is only in retrospect that we can trace back the internal psychic complexity of the patient that we unconsciously identified with and reacted to. It is only then that we can further work through the different levels of anxiety and identifications, unconscious phantasies and internal object relations that were involved in the transference and counter-transference situations. This is illustrated by a clinical example in which I was drawn by the tremendous pulling power of various contradictory identifications with my patient, which eventually gave us an opportunity to work through the dense and rich kaleidoscopic simultaneity, which is embodied in the total situation of the transference