ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the relationship between the technical approach and the principles of technique espoused by analysts of the classical, Kleinian, British Middle, and Modern Psychoanalytic Groups. Until very few therapists or analysts outside of the Kleinian group have used either the term or the concept of projective identification in their clinical thinking. In as much as the phenomena addressed by this concept are an aspect of all psychotherapeutic work, each school of psychoanalytic thought has developed methods of handling this facet of the therapeutic interaction. The chapter focuses on a specialized technique termed "joining the resistance" that Nelson and Spotnitz describe as an aspect of the analysis of narcissistic disorders. Classically, transference is defined in terms of the distortion of a present object representation on the basis of experience in a previous object relationship; one's feelings about a present object are altered in accordance with feelings originating in a previous relationship.
