Concepts Of Projective Identification Research Articles

Collective Trauma and Mystic Dreams in Zabuzhko’s “The Museum of Abandoned Secrets”

The 20th century of human history was overshadowed by the horrifying events of world wars and totalitarian regimes, with their traumatic experiences becoming the very focus of today’s modern globalized society. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy is one of the ways of dealing with this overwhelmingly violent phenomenon. This article will discuss an historical traumatic event through literature, using psychoanalytic theories of trauma. The problem is discussed on the level of the actual theoretical landscape including the relation between transgenerational transmitted trauma, collective trauma, and cumulative trauma inscribed in a “foundation matrix” (Foulkes). As a clinical vignette, the novel “Museum of Abandoned Secrets” by modern Ukrainian writer Oksana Zabuzhko is used. The author addresses the functions of dreams, scrutinizing the psychodynamics of the novel using concepts of projective identification, mourning, the need for repair, and epigenetic and fractal theory. It is suggested that the novel facilitates the characters’ journey through trauma and its integration by the large groups (of readers).

Plutocratic Fears and Fantasies: Projective Identification and Enactment in a Market Society

Recently, the fears and violent fantasies of some of the wealthy elite in the United States have become public. In this article, I claim that these fantasies, which emerge from and are linked to neoliberal capitalistic narratives, are signifiers of a systemic and often hidden social reality of class relations. Moreover, they are social-cultural symptoms of unconscious material, dynamics, and communications taking place between classes. I use the concepts of projective identification and enactment to tease out the psychosocial dynamics and communications of these class-based fantasies and consider briefly the implications of this perspective.

Chronic pain clinic as a haven for difficult patients: the role of projective identification

Difficult patients - or those with difficult personalities - are frequently encountered in the treatment of chronic non-oncologic pain, overburdening the doctor-patient relationship far beyond the complexities of their illness and treatment. The present review/experiential report discusses the role that projective identification, as a psychological process of communication, puts the doctor-patient relationship in within the multi-professional chronic pain team. The concepts of projective identification are reviewed both in their benign and their malignant forms. Two clinical vignettes exemplify each of them. Some situations in the setting of doctor-patient communication are presented in which projective identification appears and complicates the therapeutic relationship. Some recommendations are offered regarding the handling of patients that communicate mainly by means of projective identification, and some ideas are offered to the multi-professional team. In our chronic pain clinic, difficult patients as a whole seem to prefer to communicate by means of a malignant form of projective identification and present with immature types of personality organizations. Within the chronic pain teams, doctor-patient relationships (as well as relations among the professionals) can be enriched if projective identification is detected early and appropriately handled. Long-term psychotherapy is the treatment that should be chosen for such patients.

Chronic pain clinic as a haven for difficult patients: the role of projective identification

Difficult patients - or those with difficult personalities - are frequently encountered in the treatment of chronic non-oncologic pain, overburdening the doctor-patient relationship far beyond the complexities of their illness and treatment. The present review/experiential report discusses the role that projective identification, as a psychological process of communication, puts the doctor-patient relationship in within the multi-professional chronic pain team. The concepts of projective identification are reviewed both in their benign and their malignant forms. Two clinical vignettes exemplify each of them. Some situations in the setting of doctor-patient communication are presented in which projective identification appears and complicates the therapeutic relationship. Some recommendations are offered regarding the handling of patients that communicate mainly by means of projective identification, and some ideas are offered to the multi-professional team. In our chronic pain clinic, difficult patients as a whole seem to prefer to communicate by means of a malignant form of projective identification and present with immature types of personality organizations. Within the chronic pain teams, doctor-patient relationships (as well as relations among the professionals) can be enriched if projective identification is detected early and appropriately handled. Long-term psychotherapy is the treatment that should be chosen for such patients.

THE CONTRIBUTION OF SYSTEMS AND OBJECT‐RELATION THEORIES TO AN UNDERSTANDING OF THE THERAPEUTIC RELATIONSHIP IN SOCIAL WORK PRACTICE

This paper will describe a piece of social work practice from a systemic perspective before exploring in more depth the contribution of psychoanalysis to the relationship between professionals and service users. It will focus on the object‐relation school and in particular Melanie Klein's concepts of projective identification and splitting, together with ideas from Bion about containment. It will consider how these concepts, which have been developed to make sense of the inner world of infants, can be applied to the wider professional system and to organisations. It will then consider attempts at integrating systemic and psychodynamic approaches, and explore whether these two very different models which have developed in opposition to each other can be integrated to provide additional layers of meaning to the family's position within the child protection system and the legal framework.

Psychoanalytic Insight-Oriented Parent Counseling Based on Concepts of Projective Identification and Reparative Repetition: An Object Relations Perspective

Working with parents of children in therapy is very challenging. Parents seek advice rather than insight into their relationship with their children. This places considerable pressure on the therapist, who is striving to provide psychodynamic understanding without implying blame. Doing so requires considerable tact. One needs to learn first about the parents' history with their own parents. This paper considers the process of developing rapport with the parents to help make them aware of the role of their own histories and its impact on their relationship with their children.

Psychodynamics and intersubjectivity in management organisations

The modern origins of organisation theory probably date from the work of Taylor and Weber at the beginning of the twentieth century. It was Freud, however, who elaborated how early identification processes influence the form of adult association, and this was elucidated further by Klein's concepts of developmental positions and projective identification. Expanding Kleinian theory, Bion was probably the first to develop a comprehensive psychoanalytic view of group and organisational behaviour. This paper describes briefly the contributions of Klein and Bion to organisation theory and, with the use of a vignette, illustrates how their approach might describe a typical management situation. A further company case study is presented in which this approach is used to elucidate the organisational dynamics that were experienced by the author/consultant. An alternative account is also given using an existential phenomenological perspective, making tentative links between the concepts of projective identification and intersubjectivity. The paper concludes that managers and consultants must understand the psychodynamic or existential nature of anxiety and its influence on interpersonal relations if they are to effect real organisational change.

Affect, language and communication. 41st IPA Congress plenary session.

The author discusses Hernández's enriching and clarifying paper, which directs us to the limitations of language with regard to affective movements that barely attain the condition of thinkability and thereby to the important and confusing topic of enactments, which are the lingua franca for the communication of dangerous and repudiated affects. Enactments bridge the interface between what is expressible, and inexpressible, between what is forgotten and what is pressing for revival, between reality and fantasy and also between one-person and two-person psychologies. Conceptually the term enactment facilitates the integration of the concepts of fantasy, projective identification and countertransference. Steiner's richly detailed and moving clinical report demonstrated the value of the concept of projective identification for understanding his patient's communication of affects. The concept has been neglected until recently by many US analysts; one source of confusion has been the assumed reliability of the analyst's emotional reactions as an indicator of what the patient is feeling. The author asks whether Steiner is speaking loosely or literally when he says that his patients put their feelings into him, citing examples to demonstrate that the value of the concept of projective identification would be enhanced by a clarification of this question.

Parterapi og terapeutiske begreber

Jorgensen, E.F.: Marital therapy and therapeutic concepts. Nordisk Psykologi, 1987, 39 (2), 115–126. Application in therapy with couples of the concepts of projective identification, collusion and parataxical disturbances is discussed. These concepts are seen in relation to the containing function in psychotherapy with couples where one party is psychotic. It is argued that the concepts are useful also in the understanding of other dynamic disturbances in couples.