ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the projective identification as a phenomenon that illustrates how permeable the boundaries between one mind and another are, and how much people are subject to the interdependence of conditioned arising. In projective identification, states of merging between self and others arise where self parts and mental functions are "deposited" with an other. Psychoanalytic thinking about how the boundary between self and other is achieved relies on different assumptions than Buddhism's not-self and conditioned arising. Psychoanalysis's main position on the need to constitute interpsychic boundaries and a distinction between self and non-self is a dialectic one that tries to accommodate a variety of mental phenomena, some extremely pathological ones along with normal, everyday ones. Buddhism's guiding principle is encapsulated in the law of kamma(karma), which pre-existed the Buddha's teaching but underwent important change.
