ABSTRACT
This chapter presents some very interesting clinical material, and its relevance for us is for our understanding of processes of internalization and externalization, projective identification in particular. Defensive processes are very important in maintaining that balance. In the fantasy life of the individual, defensive fantasies involving interactions between self and object are created from past and present material in order to maintain balance. Sometimes when patients externalize in the way Betty Joseph has described, they do so knowing unconsciously very well which buttons to press in the analyst in order to get a particular response, and they are capable of making one feel envious. In regard to countertransference, Miss Joseph mentioned that projective identification initiates counter-transference. Other processes permit more concordant types of identification, in which the analyst identifies with the central subjective experience of the patient. It is an introjective type of identification which generates countertransference reactions of a different kind.
