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unconscious is introjected. In order to understand another, we need not to feel our way into his mind but to feel him unconsciously in the ego” (ibid, p 464) and continued: “What I said was that these unconscious impulses in the one mind induce impulses of the same kind in the other- in this case in the analyst” (ibid, p 468). However, a great addition to the understanding of unconscious communication occurred in the discovery of the mechanism of projective identification described by Klein in 1946. Initially conceived as a patient’s phantasy, the concept was further developed by several authors: Bion, Heimann, Racker and others. In this phantasy, the patient puts something that is not tolerated inside himself into the analyst’s mind, thereby temporarily freeing himself from that aspect of his personality. Though the effect is temporary, the patient can then get rid not only of the content but also of an entire part of himself with a resultant impoverishment, an emptying, of his own mind. In “Attacks on Linking” (1959) Bion developed the concept in its communicative aspect between analyst and patient. An interaction process between the two psyches ensues: an intention of the analysand to produce an effect on the analyst’s psyche. In “Learning from Experience” (1962), Bion went a step further by proposing the concept of realistic projective identification in which the analyst really is affected by the projective identification of the patient. About this point, Ogden writes (1980, p. 517): “projective identification is inherently a concept dealing with the interface of the intrapsychic and interpersonal, i.e. the ways that fantasies of one person are communicated to and bring pressure to bear upon another person.” It is worth emphasizing that although Klein had worked on projective identification as a phantasy, in her view, instincts were object-seeking from the start. In this way, her theory carried already the germ of Bion’s development on the communicative aspect of projective identification. There is an inherent instinctual knowledge of the object and the instinct searches for it. Bion’s works on alpha’s function, reverie, container-contained and the dream work sketched out unconscious mechanisms in the mother’s mind which furthered our knowledge of her role, as well as that of the analyst, in facilitating the development of the baby-patient’s ability to think, so that he can learn from the experience. Bion’s ideas mapped an interplay between minds. Alongside these developments, the concept of projective identification has enhanced insight into countertransference, presenting it not only as an unconscious manifestation of the analyst as Freud postulated, but as an essential tool for the understanding of the analytical material. In this direction, Paula Heimann and Heinrich Racker papers are influential milestones (See also the separate entries COUNTERTRANSFERENCE and PROJECTIVE IDENTIFICATION). For Heimann (1950), since countertransference is the result of the patient’s unconscious desire to transfer to the analyst affects that he cannot recognize, nor experience as his own, the analyst can mine his countertransference for insight. For Racker (1953), the main source of the analyst’s feelings comes from the patient’s mind which transforms the setting into a bi-personal field. Racker develops the concept of concordant identification in which the analyst introjects different objects of the internal world of the patient so he can put himself in the patient’s shoes. It is essential for emphatic comprehension and will
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