ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes three modes of therapeutic action – each one of which involves a different positioning of the therapist in relation to the patient. It also proposes the usage of the concept of introjective identification to describe what happens not when the patient initiates the therapeutic action by exerting pressure on the therapist to take on some aspect of the patient's unmastered experience but rather when the therapist initiates the therapeutic action by entering into the patient's internal world and taking on some aspect of the patient's unmastered experience. Introjective identification takes place in not only the patient-therapist relationship but the infant-mother relationship. The concept of countertransference comes into play, and the therapist's capacity to tolerate what the patient finds intolerable then becomes the linchpin of the treatment. Projective identification involves the patient as initiator of the therapeutic action, introjective identification involves the therapist as initiator of the therapeutic action. Projective identification has two phases: induction phase and resolution phase.
