Om Projektiv Identifikation; Fem Psykoanalytiker Tillämpar Begreppet Utifrån Olika Perspektiv. (On projective identification; five psychoanalysts apply the concept from different perspectives).: Hans Camitz, Ludvig Igra, Arnc Jemstedt, Lena Teurnell and Bengt Warren. Stockholm:  Mareld, 2000.

My review of this book on projective identification focuses on Ludvig Igra's article, because it is the most analytical in the narrow sense of the word.

The book opens with Arne Jemstedt's excellent introduction. A compact history of the concept of projective identification is complemented by a wellchosen collection of examples from literature and films. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome (1889) is an excellent choice, because it allows us to integrate Freud's concept of Nachträglichkeit (“deferred action”, which French psychoanalytic theory translates as après-coup) with the concept of projective identification. The former concept is central to our understanding of historicity, i.e., how transference bears the mark of the successive moments of integration or symbolisation and how the self experiences the after-effects of its infantile sexuality throughout life. In the story, George misunderstands time, because he forgets to wind his watch in the evening. He wakes up in the middle of the night and rushes out, thinking that he is late for work. When he understands that he has been mistaken, he becomes terrified of the police and feels persecuted by the law like a criminal. The acceptance of a past experience and its repetition is of central value to our understanding of a situation and the projective identification it involves.

Bengt Warren offers us some very descriptive clinical vignettes to describe how we should understand projective identification in marital situations. Warren uses Freudian and Kleinian concepts in a very understandable way, which enables us to follow his work with couples. His clinical experience opens us rich scenery, as he helps the couples to protect and develop their relationships into a mutual respect for otherness. Through finding the couples' shared unconscious phantasies and helping them to understand and contain them within the therapy, it becomes possible in the depressive position to integrate the dissociated and vulnerable parts