ABSTRACT
Projective identification has become a widely used concept in the mental health field but still suffers from categorical confusion in its usage. Splitting and projective identification are associated with a dis-integration of the self, whereas the propensity towards integration enforces a return of the projections. In manipulative projective identification the subject, in unconscious phantasy, magically manipulates the image of the object in order to control the latter. Subjects who use defensive projective identification have an omnipotent unconscious phantasy in which they believe that they no longer possess those particularly painful aspects of themselves and feel that the object—whether internal or external—now possesses them. In projective transidentification the analyst, upon experiencing the evocative or provocative induction stimulus from the analysand, summons within himself those corresponding symmetrical phantasies that match the analysand’s experience.
