ABSTRACT
There is a natural continuity between the concept of projection before the notion of "projective identification" and after it, but the latter opened the way to a new idea. This is the notion that projection is not only directed at an internal representation of an object—the infant's image of the breast; the woman's image of the man—but can also involve a real movement of mental materials from infant to mother, from the projecting subject to its object, from one person to another. Considering the interpersonal aspect of projective identification, all of these motivations may be present, to various extents, in each instance, the only question being which of them predominates. In this context, every act of projection into an object involves an evacuation of what is intolerable, includes a degree of aggression, and an attempt to induce an emotional, cognitive reaction in recipient which the recipient himself would not have experienced if it was not for the act of projection.
