ABSTRACT
The concept of the chimera is a monstrous entity born of the relationship between the unconscious minds of the protagonists. The chimera activates, in the analyst, the regressive modes of functioning in which there is a volatile state of the distinction of identity for the purpose of understanding the other person and of getting to know the other person. This process is clearly different from that of projective identification. In the latter, the subject seeks to project and control in the other, whom he keeps clearly distinct from him, something that he refuses to recognise in him. The occurrence of an image without any apparent relationship to what is being said is a surprising emergence of primary functioning, which often makes it possible, subsequently, to return to it in a form more redolent of secondary level functioning.
