ABSTRACT
A great deal has been written about projective identification and the counter-transference reactions of the analyst. This chapter outlines some of the processes that lead to enactment. Rosenfeld further distinguished between defensive, communicative and empathic projective identification. Analytic empathy would be a benign form of projective identification in which there is no loss of a sense of reality or confusion of boundaries. An account of the analyses of both twins by the same analyst graphically indicates the way each twin used the analyst as a transference twin at a time when he was faced with both actual and psychic separation from the other twin. Lacombe claims that this enactment and analysis brought about a successful resolution of the twinship and the development of a separate identity by the patient who was no longer a twin. Britton also regards regression as a retreat to a pathological organization that reiterates the past and evades the future.
