Projective identification is closely linked
to projection.
Most people agree that it involves
a
development of projection. So it’s a psychic
action that is in some ways further to projection.
Now in a straight forward projection the object
of the projection may be blissfully unaware
of what’s going on.
But in projective identification
the key difference
is that the object is altered
by the projections and comes in some way to
see themselves as actually
having the attributes
or feelings or thoughts or emotions that
have
been projected into it.
Sometimes people behave
in ways that have
been projected on to them,
because the projection is so powerful and that it’s
identified with.
Sometimes good, and sometimes
bad in
that the qualities that have been put in are
sometimes not necessarily good ones.
In a kind of social setting it may be
that
those undigested, that undigested material,
the
difficult things that people don’t want
to know about themselves such as hate or anger
or
incompetence or weakness, becomes placed in,
in the other.
They become the container for it and then act,
it becomes constitutive of
their subjectivity
in this inter-subjective way.
So they come to see themselves as actually of being
characterised by those, those difficult elements.
