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Klein, the British debates and object relations · Chapter 12
Projective identification: from unconscious phantasy to an interpersonal process
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Chapter contents
- A concept with more than one history
- Projection and identification are not physical mechanisms
- The interpersonal extension
- Heimann and Racker changed what analysts did with their reactions
- A worked supervision example
- Bion: communication and containment
- Positive as well as negative processes
- A usable standard
- Source and reading notes
A concept with more than one history
Klein introduced projective identification in her 1946 account of schizoid mechanisms. Later clinicians expanded its interpersonal and communicative meanings. The term does not have one universally agreed definition. The Klein Trust’s account includes a phantasy of locating aspects of self or an internal object in another, with or without behavior that evokes a corresponding response. A definition requiring the therapist to feel what the patient cannot feel is therefore too narrow for every use of the term. [59]
In plain English: a person may relate as if an unwanted or valued part of experience belongs to someone else. Sometimes the interaction also pressures the other person toward a matching role. Neither process involves literal transfer of mental contents.
Projection and identification are not physical mechanisms
A patient who cannot tolerate feeling helpless may experience the clinician as helpless. A patient who cannot own aggressive wishes may experience the other as persecutory. But noticing a match is only the beginning of a hypothesis. The clinician may actually be unprepared, frightened or angry for reasons of their own.
In plain English: feeling something in the room is information about your experience, not proof about who put it there.
The temptation to use the term as blame is especially strong when the therapist feels ashamed of their reaction. “The patient projected incompetence into me” can become an elegant way to avoid acknowledging that the clinician did not understand the material or failed to make an adequate plan.
The interpersonal extension
In an interpersonal account, a pattern of communication may invite, pressure or reward a particular response. Every offer is dismissed; every pause is treated as abandonment; each independent thought is called disloyal. The other person begins to feel trapped in a narrow role. This does not imply deliberate manipulation. It also does not eliminate the other person’s capacity and responsibility to respond differently. [59] [78]
In plain English: the relationship can begin to organize itself so that one person carries the hope and the other the hopelessness, one the competence and the other the failure, or one the anger and the other the innocence.
A clinical formulation must describe the sequence rather than simply name the roles. What exactly was said? What did the therapist feel tempted to do? What did they actually do? How did the patient respond? What alternative account also fits?
Heimann and Racker changed what analysts did with their reactions
Paula Heimann in London and Heinrich Racker in Buenos Aires made important, partly independent contributions to recognizing countertransference as potentially useful. Their proposals developed in the late 1940s; the familiar publications and the original presentations do not always have the same year. A later historical comparison distinguishes their positions rather than treating them as one discovery. [131]
In plain English: the analyst’s emotional response need not be only an obstacle to remove. It can also raise questions about the relationship, provided the analyst examines rather than simply expresses it.
Racker’s distinction between concordant and complementary identifications remains useful. In a concordant identification, the analyst may feel something resembling the patient’s own position. In a complementary identification, the analyst may find themselves in the position of an internal other: the accusing parent, disappointed dependent or rejecting authority. These are interpretive possibilities, not a way to establish facts from feelings alone. [131] [132]
A worked supervision example
A separate fictional client asks the therapist to solve a career decision. Every suggestion is rejected as simplistic. The therapist begins to feel incompetent and wants to deliver a more impressive explanation.
Supervisor: Give me the exchange before you tell me what the patient projected.
Therapist: He said I would have an answer if I really understood. I gave him three options. He explained why each was impossible.
Supervisor: What happened to his own uncertainty while you were producing options?
Therapist: He became very certain that I was missing the point.
Supervisor: And what happened to yours?
Therapist: I felt I was failing and needed to prove I could help.
Supervisor: So you may have become the one who had to solve it, while he could judge the solution. What part did your response play?
Therapist: I accepted that job immediately.
The next intervention is not, “You are making me feel incompetent.” It might be: “We have arrived at a position where I produce an answer and you show me why it cannot work. I wonder what gets lost about your own dilemma when we do that.”
The clinician describes a jointly observable pattern and offers a question. The patient may recognize it, reject it, or reveal that the suggestions really were unrealistic. A useful hypothesis survives only by remaining open to those possibilities.
Bion: communication and containment
Bion developed an account in which projective processes can be understood as attempts to communicate experiences not yet manageable in thought. The receiving person’s capacity to bear, make sense of and respond to experience becomes central. This is one route into container–contained, developed more fully later in the pathway. [76]
In plain English: a person may need an experience to be met and made thinkable, not merely told that it is theirs and handed back as a label.
This is not permission to absorb unlimited hostility. An adequate frame, assessment and supervision remain essential. Containment involves the clinician’s mental work, not silent endurance of danger.
Positive as well as negative processes
Projective identification can involve valued aspects of self as well as rejected ones. A person may locate hope, creativity or competence almost entirely in the therapist and feel unable to retain it themselves. The clinical task may involve recognizing what the patient contributes and making those capacities more available to them. [59]
In plain English: “Only you can think clearly” may hide not just dependence but a difficulty experiencing one’s own thought as valuable.
A therapist who enjoys being indispensable can reinforce the problem. Returning agency means more than praise. It may involve tracking an idea the patient formed, giving it time, and not replacing it with the therapist’s more polished version.
A usable standard
Before using this concept in a formulation, specify the proposed internal meaning, the observable interaction and the clinician’s own contribution. Keep all three distinct. Use the concept when it helps understand a repeated difficulty and choose a more useful response, not because it makes an uncomfortable feeling sound theoretically sophisticated.
Source and reading notes
Independent educational synthesis. Fictional conversations illustrate reasoning. Review scopes describe the material consulted; they do not certify all clinical claims.
Projective identification (opens in a new tab)
Review scope recorded
See the pathway review note for the exact material consulted.
Read phantasy, attribution/acquisition and possible interpersonal induction. The entry explicitly does not require a provoked response in every use of the term.
Recorded check: 2026-10-15. Source used for this record (opens in a new tab)
Pathway source review: carried forward
official-concept-page: Read phantasy, attribution/acquisition and possible interpersonal induction. The entry explicitly does not require a provoked response in every use of the term.
carried-forward; not independently rechecked in finishing pass · Recorded date: 2026-10-15
Scope concerns what was consulted; it is not approval of every claim or author endorsement.
Further reading for psychodynamic history, theory and practice.
Access depends on the destination; saving a link does not unlock paid material.
Betty Joseph (opens in a new tab)
Review scope recorded
See the pathway review note for the exact material consulted.
Consulted microprocess, patient/analyst pressures and psychic equilibrium; no dialogue reproduced.
Recorded check: 2026-10-15. Source used for this record (opens in a new tab)
Pathway source review: carried forward
authored-institutional-conceptual-essay: Consulted microprocess, patient/analyst pressures and psychic equilibrium; no dialogue reproduced.
carried-forward; not independently rechecked in finishing pass · Recorded date: 2026-10-15
Scope concerns what was consulted; it is not approval of every claim or author endorsement.
Further reading for psychodynamic history, theory and practice.
Access depends on the destination; saving a link does not unlock paid material.
Racker and Heimann on Countertransference: Similarities and Differences (opens in a new tab)
Abstract checked
Abstract or official summary reviewed. Full paper not appraised.
Original historical comparison; abstract checked, including independent development and distinctions rather than treating the two writers as identical.
Recorded check: 2026-10-15. Source used for this record (opens in a new tab)
Pathway source review: carried forward
abstract: Original historical comparison; abstract checked, including independent development and distinctions rather than treating the two writers as identical.
carried-forward; not independently rechecked in finishing pass · Recorded date: 2026-10-15
Scope concerns what was consulted; it is not approval of every claim or author endorsement.
Further reading for psychodynamic history, theory and practice.
Access depends on the destination; saving a link does not unlock paid material.
Countertransference: a condensed history and personal view of the subject (opens in a new tab)
Abstract checked
Abstract or official summary reviewed. Full paper not appraised.
Author’s historical and clinical viewpoint; full article not appraised, and personal clinical claims are not outcome evidence.
Recorded check: 2026-10-15. Source used for this record (opens in a new tab)
Pathway source review: carried forward
abstract: Author’s historical and clinical viewpoint; full article not appraised, and personal clinical claims are not outcome evidence.
carried-forward; not independently rechecked in finishing pass · Recorded date: 2026-10-15
Scope concerns what was consulted; it is not approval of every claim or author endorsement.
Further reading for psychodynamic history, theory and practice.
Access depends on the destination; saving a link does not unlock paid material.
Wilfred Bion (opens in a new tab)
Review scope recorded
See the pathway review note for the exact material consulted.
Consulted group work, container–contained and learning from experience. No claim that the developmental metaphors are neuroscience.
Recorded check: 2026-10-15. Source used for this record (opens in a new tab)
Pathway source review: carried forward
authored-institutional-conceptual-essay: Consulted group work, container–contained and learning from experience. No claim that the developmental metaphors are neuroscience.
carried-forward; not independently rechecked in finishing pass · Recorded date: 2026-10-15
Scope concerns what was consulted; it is not approval of every claim or author endorsement.
Further reading for psychodynamic history, theory and practice.
Access depends on the destination; saving a link does not unlock paid material.