Projective Identification And Psychotherapeutic Technique

An examination of projective identification and its clinical uses from a Kleinian perspective. The author puts forward the hypothesis that identification is the patient's way of mastering significant trauma.

An examination of projective identification and its clinical uses from a Kleinian perspective. The author puts forward the hypothesis that identification is the patient's way of mastering significant trauma.

In this landmark work on object relations, Dr. Jill Savage Scharff addresses the psychological processes of projective and introjective identification and countertransference. She carefully traces the debates about projective identification_the neurotic versus psychotic arguments and the intrapsychic versus interpersonal views. She holds that disagreements stem from unrecognized shifts in meaning of the term identification and unacknowledged differences of opinion as to where the identification takes place. For her, projective identification is an umbrella term for phenomena that can affect the self, the object inside the self, and the external object. Dr. Scharff brings fresh insight to the neglected concept of introjective identification and a new understanding of the therapeutic action of projective and introjective identification. The book's unique distinction is in the author's integration of object relations theory and practice, particularly with regard to the handling of countertransference. The clinical material is written in the vivid and personally candid style that is a hallmark of her work. Dr. Scharff demonstrates how to understand and utilize projective and introjective identification, making this work indispensable for every dynamically oriented therapist.

'This is an extraordinary and exciting book, the work of a truly original and creative psychoanalytic theoretician and most astute clinician. Ogden continues to expand and to deepen his reformulations of the British object-relations theorists, M. Klein, W. R. Bion, D. W. Winnicott, W. R. D. Fairbairn, H. Guntrip, to illuminate further the world of internalized object relations. His concepts are evolutionary and at times revolutionary. Exploring the area of human experience that lies beyond the psychological territories addressed by the previous theorists, he introduces the concept of an autistic-contiguous mode as a way of conceiving of the most primitive psychological organization through which the sensory 'floor' of the experience of self is generated. He conceives of this mode as a sensory-dominated, presymbolic area of experience in which the most primitive form of meaning is generated on the basis of organization of sensory impressions, particularly at the skin surface. A major tenet in the book is a conceptualization of human experience throughout life as the product of a dialectical interplay among three modes of generating experience: the depressive, the paranoid-schizoid, and the autistic-contiguous. Each mode creates, preserves, and negates the other. No single mode of generating experience exists independently of the others. Psychopathology is conceptualized as a 'collapse' of the dialectic in the direction of one or another mode of generating experience. The outcome of such collapse may be entrapment in rigid, asymbolic patterns of sensation (collapse in the direction of the autistic-contiguous mode), or imprisonment in a world of omnipotent internal objects where thoughts and feelings are experienced as things and forces which occupy or bombard the self (collapse in the direction of paranoid-schizoid mode) or isolation of the self from lived experience and aliveness of bodily, sensations (collapse in the direction of the depressive mode). Ogden presents his unique development of the autistic-contiguous mode as the synthesis, interpretation, and extension of the works of D. Meltzer, E. Bick, and F. Tustin. He is careful to state that this psychological organization is a developing and ongoing) mode of generating experience and not a limited phase of development; an elaboration of this primitive organization is an integral part of normal development. All three modes are considered not 'positions' to be passed through, outgrown, or overcome, and relegated to the past, but as integral dimensions of present adult ego functioning. Sensory experience in an autistic-contiguous mode has rhythmicity that is becoming the continuity of being; it has boundedness that is the beginning of experience of the place where one feels things and lives; it has features such as shape, hardness, cold, warmth and texture, beginnings of the qualities of who one is. As his generous case examples aptly demonstrate, Ogden's theories are solidly grounded in his discerning work with a broad variety of patients. His brilliant pathfinding will enlighten and enrich the reader with invaluable insights. He will listen with new ears and with a fresh conceptual framework with which to comprehend the most primitive elements of human development and the complex interplay among the different modes of experience. This is a bold, important, instructive, and stimulating book of equally great clinical and theoretical applicability.' —The Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association A Jason Aronson Book

In this book Elizabeth Spillius and Edna O'Shaughnessy explore the development of the concept of projective identification, which had important antecedents in the work of Freud and others, but was given a specific name and definition by Melanie Klein. They describe Klein's published and unpublished views on the topic, and then consider the way the concept has been variously described, evolved, accepted, rejected and modified by analysts of different schools of thought and in various locations – Britain, Western Europe, North America and Latin America. The authors believe that this unusually widespread interest in a particular concept and its varied ‘fate’ has occurred not only because of beliefs about its clinical usefulness in the psychoanalytic setting but also because projective identification is a universal aspect of human interaction and communication. Projective Identification: The Fate of a Concept will appeal to any psychoanalyst or psychotherapist who uses the ideas of transference and counter-transference, as well as to academics wanting further insight into the evolution of this concept as it moves between different cultures and countries.

This clear and thoughtful book by Robert Waska provides an accessible introduction to Projective Identification and the role it plays in internal and external life. Waska explores how Projective Identification is the foundation for much of psychic life, driving internal phantasy, influencing interpersonal behavior, and contributing to the transference/countertransference environment. This book contains several case studies which explore and expand on the concepts described and which demonstrate how a psychotherapist can understand, contain, and interpret the states patients seek help with. Additionally, this book introduces a clinical technique which is intended to tame the underlying emotional conflicts. Part of the popular Routledge Introductions to Contemporary Psychoanalysis series, this book will be essential to students of psychoanalysis, as well as academics and practitioners familiarising themselves with Projective Identification in a clinical setting.

Clinical Lectures on Klein and Bion outlines the basic ideas in their thinking and shows in detail how these ideas can be used to tackle a clinical problem. The contributors correct some common misconceptions about Kleinian analysis, while demonstrating the continuity of their everyday work with seminal ideas of Klein and Bion. Originally given as a series of lectures intended to acquaint the general public with recent developments in psychoanalytic thinking and practice, the papers in this book cover the most fundamental ideas put forward by Klein and Bion; child analysis, Klein's use of the concepts of unconscious phantasy, projective identification, the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions, Bion's study of psychotic thinking, his ideas of the relation between container and contained, and the usefulness of the ideas of reversible perspective in understanding 'as if' personalities. In particular, this book provides an eminently readable and authoritative introduction to some of the most original and controversial concepts ever put forward in psychoanalysis.