Role Of Projective Identification Research Articles

A psychoanalytic understanding of the couple relationship: the Tavistock Relationships approach

This article describes a psychoanalytic approach to understanding and treating couple relationships, developed from the pioneering work at the Tavistock Institute of Marital Studies, now called Tavistock Relationships. The approach focuses on the influence of the past on relationships, the nature of couple relationships developmentally and dynamically in the present, and the potential for the creative development of the couple in the future. It focuses on unconscious elements including shared unconscious fantasy, the wish to repeat from the past, and the wish to create something new. It explores the central role of projective identification and mutual projective systems in couples. It concludes with an illustration of a couple treatment in which repetitive ways based on unconscious gridlock and shared unconscious fantasy are reworked in the setting of the couple therapy.

La « surprise » et le cerveau bayésien : conséquences pour la théorie et la pratique de la psychothérapie

The free energy principle (FEP) has gained widespread interest and growing acceptance as a new paradigm of brain function, but has had little impact on the theory and practice of psychotherapy. The aim of this paper is to redress this. Brains rely on Bayesian inference during which “bottom up” sensations are matched with “top down” predictions. Discrepancies result in “prediction error.” The brain abhors informational “surprise,” which is minimized by (1) action enhancing the statistical likelihood of sensory samples, (2) revising inferences in the light of experience, updating “priors” to reality-aligned “posteriors,” and (3) optimizing the complexity of our generative models of a capricious world. In all three, free energy is converted to bound energy. In psychopathology energy either remains unbound, as in trauma and inhibition of agency, or manifests restricted, anachronistic “top down” narratives. Psychotherapy fosters client agency, linguistic and practical. Temporary uncoupling bottom up from top down automatism and fostering scrutinized simulations sets a number of salutary processes in train. Mentalising enriches Bayesian inference, enabling experience and feeling states to be “metabolized” and assimilated. “Free association” enhances more inclusive sensory sampling, while dream analysis foregrounds salient emotional themes as “attractors.” FEP parallels with psychoanalytic theory are outlined, including Freud's unpublished project, Bion's “contact barrier” concept, the Fonagy/Target model of sexuality, Laplanche's therapist as “enigmatic signifier,” and the role of projective identification. The therapy stimulates patients to become aware of and revise the priors’ they bring to interpersonal experience. In the therapeutic “duet for one,” the energy binding skills and non-partisan stance of the analyst help sufferers face trauma without being overwhelmed by psychic entropy. Overall, the FEP provides a sound theoretical basis for psychotherapy practice, training, and research.

"Surprise" and the Bayesian Brain: Implications for Psychotherapy Theory and Practice.

The free energy principle (FEP) has gained widespread interest and growing acceptance as a new paradigm of brain function, but has had little impact on the theory and practice of psychotherapy. The aim of this paper is to redress this. Brains rely on Bayesian inference during which “bottom-up” sensations are matched with “top-down” predictions. Discrepancies result in “prediction error.” The brain abhors informational “surprise,” which is minimized by (1) action enhancing the statistical likelihood of sensory samples, (2) revising inferences in the light of experience, updating “priors” to reality-aligned “posteriors,” and (3) optimizing the complexity of our generative models of a capricious world. In all three, free energy is converted to bound energy. In psychopathology energy either remains unbound, as in trauma and inhibition of agency, or manifests restricted, anachronistic “top-down” narratives. Psychotherapy fosters client agency, linguistic and practical. Temporary uncoupling bottom-up from top-down automatism and fostering scrutinized simulations sets a number of salutary processes in train. Mentalising enriches Bayesian inference, enabling experience and feeling states to be “metabolized” and assimilated. “Free association” enhances more inclusive sensory sampling, while dream analysis foregrounds salient emotional themes as “attractors.” FEP parallels with psychoanalytic theory are outlined, including Freud’s unpublished project, Bion’s “contact barrier” concept, the Fonagy/Target model of sexuality, Laplanche’s therapist as “enigmatic signifier,” and the role of projective identification. The therapy stimulates patients to become aware of and revise the priors’ they bring to interpersonal experience. In the therapeutic “duet for one,” the energy binding skills and non-partisan stance of the analyst help sufferers face trauma without being overwhelmed by psychic entropy. Overall, the FEP provides a sound theoretical basis for psychotherapy practice, training, and research.

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.

From Container to Claustrum: Projective Identification in Couples

This paper is a contribution to the growing literature on the role of projective identification in understanding couples' dynamics. Projective identification as a defence is well suited to couples, as intimate partners provide an ideal location to deposit unwanted parts of the self. This paper illustrates how projective identification functions differently depending on the psychological health of the couple. It elucidates how healthier couples use projective identification more as a form of communication, whereas disturbed couples are inclined to employ it to invade and control the other, as captured by Meltzer's concept of "intrusive identification". These different uses of projective identification affect couples' capacities to provide what Bion called "containment". In disturbed couples, partners serve as what Meltzer termed "claustrums" whereby projections are not contained, but imprisoned or entombed in the other. Applying the concept of claustrum helps illuminate common feelings these couples express, such as feeling suffocated, stifled, trapped, held hostage, or feeling as if the relationship is killing them. Finally, this paper presents treatment challenges in working with more disturbed couples.

"Collusive infidelity," projective identification, and clinical technique.

The author presents the concept of "collusive infidelity" and the role of projective identification as ubiquitous in the unconscious encouragement of infidelity through triangulation. He also discusses how to work with this dynamic in couples therapy, particularly by attending to the clinician's own countertransference reactions. To illustrate these ideas he provides a commentary on a session where collusion dynamics were observed. Finally, he examines how the concept of collusive infidelity can provide a link between psychoanalytic and family systems theories and suggests that the concept of collusive infidelity can be helpful when working with a couple who are in the wake of an affair.

The role of projective identification in constructing the “Other”: Why do Westerners want to “liberate” Muslim women?

This commentary offers a cultural psychological understanding of the traditionally psychoanalytic notion of projective identification to explore the ironic way that majority and minority cultures can influence each other. In the target paper (Wagner, Sen, Permanadeli, & Howarth, 2012), the Western gaze operates ironically by constructing minority Muslim women as needing liberation. This leads to their resistance, through increased religious observance, which requires giving up their individual freedom. Understood as a circular and monological process of projective-identification designed to protect off-limit areas of meaning making, dialogue requires each culture to take ownership of these areas.

Why Analysts Need Their Patients’ Transferences

This lead article to the Special Issue of the American Journal of Psychoanalysis, celebrating Charles Rycroft's life and work, was originally published in 1993. It is republished here with the generous encouragement and permission of Rycroft's widow, Jenny Pearson. This article is part of many, written by Rycroft on the psychoanalytic process and the role of projective identification in psychoanalytic training relationships. Here, Rycroft continues his thoughts in his previous paper, “On Ablation of Parental Images” (I965–1973), on the illusion of having created oneself. In the process of ablation of one's parental images and a search for replacement of them, the psychoanalyst is vulnerable to enact grandiose phantasies to become the new omnipotent parent in the analytic relationship. An overemphasis on the role of the transference can contribute to such phantasies of both analysts and their patients, interfere with the healthy growth of candidates, and become a process in which candidates surrender their healthy judgements and individual voices. The challenge in psychoanalytic training relationships is to reach a state of independence of thought, while at the same time achieve an ability to recognize the immense debt all analysts have to their analysts, teachers and even patients.

Scapegoating in Group Psychotherapy

The purpose of this paper is to describe and illuminate the phenomenon of scapegoating in group psychotherapy. Specifically, the role of projective identification—on both individual and group–wide bases—in the evolution of the deviant is delineated. Individual, interpersonal, and whole–group interventions are presented along with the technique of functional subgrouping, a relatively new and particularly potent group intervention. Several case vignettes are detailed for illustration.

Psychoanalysis, terrorism and fundamentalism

The article considers the interrelations among psychoanalysis, fundamentalism and terrorism, drawing principally on the writings of Melanie Klein and W. R. Bion on relations between the inner and outer worlds. Particular attention is paid to the role of projective identification in the process of becoming socialized into fundamentalist beliefs.

About parallel work with latency children and their parents

SUMMARY This paper deals with the role of projective identification in the transmission of psychopathology from generation to generation, and its implications for the treatment of latency children. A case-history of an 8-year-old boy with emotional and cognitive problems is presented. He participated in weekly psychoanalytically-oriented psychotherapy sessions parallel to monthly sessions with his mother. Working separately with mother and son has helped us to understand better the intense projections of each into the other. Interpretation led to symptom-improvement in the boy and to a positive change in their relationship. This kind of intervention differs from the classical individual or family-therapy approaches, and may have implications for the concept of parental guidance in child psychotherapy. This type of work requires a theoretical oscillation between an intrapsychic understanding in the individual setting, and an interpersonal context in work with parents.

The institute as container of unconscious feelings: The therapeutic challenge of adolescents in residential care

Abstract The origins of the failure of many residential institutions caring for adolescents are explored. The changing social and economic context over the past 20 years is outlined as a contributory factor. The unconscious processes within institutions caring for very damaged young people are examined in detail, with particular emphasis on the role of projective identification. A comparative study is made of two contrasting institutions a psychodynamic therapeutic community, and a Social Services Community Home from the perspective of their different approaches to unconscious processes. Implications for practice are drawn, illustrated with case studies. The significance of some of these issues for Social Work managers is noted as they are increasingly being required to provide residential treatment for damaged adolescents.

Why Analysts Need Their Patients’Transferences

This lead article to the Special Issue of the American Journal of Psychoanalysis, celebrating Charles Rycroft's life and work, was originally published in 1993. It is republished here with the generous encouragement and permission of Rycroft's widow, Jenny Pearson. This article is part of many, written by Rycroft on the psychoanalytic process and the role of projective identification in psychoanalytic training relationships. Here, Rycroft continues his thoughts in his previous paper, “On Ablation of Parental Images” (I965–1973), on the illusion of having created oneself. In the process of ablation of one's parental images and a search for replacement of them, the psychoanalyst is vulnerable to enact grandiose phantasies to become the new omnipotent parent in the analytic relationship. An overemphasis on the role of the transference can contribute to such phantasies of both analysts and their patients, interfere with the healthy growth of candidates, and become a process in which candidates surrender their healthy judgements and individual voices. The challenge in psychoanalytic training relationships is to reach a state of independence of thought, while at the same time achieve an ability to recognize the immense debt all analysts have to their analysts, teachers and even patients.

Transpersonal processes and the Oedipal phase of development

This paper is an extension of previous theoretical work in which a bimodal theory of the psychology of relationships and personality function was elaborated. The two modes are, essentially, the traditional intrapsychic individual mode derived from dyadic and introspective methods of observation, and a transpersonal mode, derived in the main from family and group process observations. The role of projective identification and other so-called primitive mechanisms are explored and their defensive and adaptive role in transpersonal transactions in small and large groups examined. The implications for the theory of the mother-infant relationship, and in particular the separation-individuation phase, is reviewed and the further development of the transpersonal concept summarized. These ideas are developed in an examination of the influence of these processes on Oedipal phase conflicts in an eight-year-old boy, with illustrative case material. The conclusion is drawn that manifest Oedipal phase anxieties and conflicts are frequently, if not always, an expression of transpersonal elaboration in the family group. In these circumstances, the transpersonal processes are defensive rather than adaptive and impair the child's normative individuation and the usual repression and resolution of the Oedipal complex. Freud's study of Little Hans is re-examined from this viewpoint. The implications for therapy are noted.