Towards the logic of projective identification

Abstract

This paper is devoted to the ‘logic of the unconscious’ and its application to the analysis of projective intentionality in psychoanalysis.Subjective assumptions concerning the existence and identity of intentional objects are often unconscious. They result from personal experience through its assimilation and transformation in further psychological (e.g. defensive) processes. Formal aspects of these subjective assumptions and their influence on our judgment and action have been studied by a number of psychoanalytic authors, in particular by Silvano Arieti, Ignacio Matte-Blanco and their followers who tried to develop ‘logic of the unconscious’. My project consists in the reformulation, clarification and elaboration of the logic of the unconscious using contemporary modal and relevant logics, in particular Graham Priest's logic of intentionality. An important advantage of this logic is that it allows for truth indeterminacy and paraconsistency of the propositional content of intentional states. In this article I explore the logic of projective identification, which I assume plays the central role in the logic of the unconscious.Special attention is given to the logical analysis of the notion of an internal object, and to a logical reconstruction of the fantasy of projective identification.