The Concept of Projective Identification

Abstract

Projective identification has manifold aims: it may be directed towards the ideal object to avoid separation, or it may be directed towards the bad object to gain control of the source of danger. It is possible to cite many other ways in which the concept of projective identification has been employed, and it is clear that its collective and necessarily elastic nature must render any precise definition implausible. When Melanie Klein introduced the term projective identification in 1946, she wrote: Much of the hatred against parts of the self is now directed towards the mother. Projective identification involves projection in that it is an identifying of the object with split-off parts of the self. Projective identification has given an added dimension to what we understand by transference, in that transference need not now be regarded simply as a repetition of the past.