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(1994) amalgam of such ‘inductions’ together with mother’s/analyst’s ‘touched off’ unconscious conflicts and anxieties, resulting in ‘chimeras’. Such chimeras must be “understood and transformed” by the analyst/mother. This work may be seen as “psychic digestion” both of the projections of the patient/child and of the analyst’s/mother’s own conflicts and affects mobilized by the projection. The analyst/mother must then give back a “digestible content,” while countering a danger of sending to the patient counter-projective identifications (See the separate entry CONTAINMENT). The emphasis here is on the transformative interpretation, which echoes Grotstein’s view, and in a different way also in French Canada influential was André Green (2006), who conceptualizes transformation as a passage from id impulse to unconscious representation.
III. Bg. (Different) Use of the Term in Other Conceptual Frameworks of North American Psychoanalysis
III. Bga. Developmental Transformation Generally, as one of the main concepts of epigenetically conceptualized contemporary psychoanalytic developmental theory, the concept of ‘developmental transformation’ reflects the internal capacity to organize and reorganize experience, and consolidate and reconsolidate new psychic structures and formations , throughout life. As compared to other modes of change, which result from gradual progression and quantitative shifts, developmental transformation is defined as a new way of organizing the antecedent components (Olesker 2011). So broadly defined concept of developmental transformation presents an intense interest for wide range of North American analysts, ranging from contemporary Freudians to Self Psychologists. III. Bgaa. Contemporary Freudian Elaboration of ‘Developmental Transformation’ Developmental Transformation is an heir to studies of complex nature of psychosexual (Freud 1905) and psychosocial (Erikson) development, including Freud’s transformation of pleasure ego into reality ego (1911), re-transcription of memory and transformation of meaning in Nachträglichkeit (1895,1918), transformation of traumatic affects into signal affects (1926); Erikson’s age specific crises (1950, 1956, 1984), as a whole life extension of embryologic concept of epigenesist (successive formation of entirely new structures) throughout the life span of the relations of self with other, Anna Freud’s (1963) developmental lines, and others. Example of second generation of studies of developmental transformations of drive and affectivity, was the area of transformation of the traumatic anxiety into signal anxiety. This approach, pioneered by Schur (1955) and followed by number of contributors (Engel 1962, Schmaele 1964, Krystal 1974, 1985) postulates that affect precursors undergo epigenetic developmental transformation which includes de-somatization, differentiation and
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