ABSTRACT
It is traumatic for a baby when a parent’s defensive processes are extensively aroused. In this chapter I explore the psychoanalytic concept of ‘projection’ and its intricately related, particularly invasive, form of emotional defence known as ‘projective identification’ (Freud, 1895; Klein, 1946). Using two cases, I consider the cumulative relational trauma (Khan, 1963) that occurs when a parent misrecognizes their baby due to distorted parental projections and simultaneously creates feelings in the baby that actually belong to the parent, rendering the baby saturated with their parent’s disturbed experience (Hobson et al., 2005). The latter is how ‘projective identification’ works. I illustrate how these processes leave the baby at risk of being thwarted from becoming an individual in his or her own right.
