ABSTRACT
The title of this chapter places together empathy, one of the central topics of interest in self psychology, and projective identification, a key concept in Kleinian psychoanalysis. To what degree do they coincide or differ? What is their respective place in analytic therapy and the acquisition of analytic understanding? Before I attempt any survey of the literature, I will begin with a clinical vignette. It comes from my own experience, very early in my psychoanalytic training, so I trust you will forgive its naiveté. It was one of my first experiences of a powerful countertransference response that I was able to understand partially and use to the patient’s benefit, and it remains important to me for that reason. Of course, there have been many occasions before and since when there have been countertransference responses I have not been able to understand or use, or even become aware of, and I am obviously in no position to talk about these.
