ABSTRACT
This chapter describes some reflections on the process of projective identification as a form of intersubjective thirdness. In Melanie Klein's work, projective identification was only implicitly a psychological-interpersonal concept. In projective identification, a distinctive form of analytic thirdness is generated in the dialectic of subjectivity and intersubjectivity that the chapter refers to as "the subjugating third," since this form of intersubjectivity has the effect of subsuming within it the individual subjectivities of the participants. Projective identification is not an experience that occurs in isolation from the rest of the emotional life of the individual. Projective identification involves unconscious narratives involving the fantasy of evacuating a part of oneself into another person. In projective identification, analyst and analysand are each limited and enriched; each is stifled and vitalized. In projective identification, one unconsciously abrogates a part of one's own separate individuality in order to move beyond the confines of that individuality.
