ABSTRACT
Analytic contact is a therapeutic process that holds the transference as the primary vehicle of change, but also considers the elements of containment, projective identification, counter-transference, and interpretation to be critical to therapeutic success. Analytic contact is about finding a foothold into the transference and as well as into the core phantasy states that are having the greatest impact on the patient's feelings, thoughts, and actions. Making analytic contact with such patients can be difficult and fraught with setbacks. In treating these individuals, the internal struggles with persecution, primitive loss, and fragmentation emerge quite quickly and need to be addressed as they unfold. The focus of analytic contact is the working through of phantasies and the multiple manifestations of love, hate, and knowledge that involve anxiety towards self and/or other. Projective identification is very often the primary climate in the analyst situation.
