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projective counter-identification. He considered that Racker’s concept derived from the analyst’s identification with some of the patient’s inner objects felt as objects from his/her own childhood past. The analyst’s emotional response was based, then, on his/her own anxieties and conflicts with inner objects similar to those of the analysand. On the other hand, in the projective counter-identification “The analyst’s reaction stems, for the most part, independently of his own conflicts and corresponds in a predominant or exclusive way to the intensity and quality of the patient’s projective identification. In this case, the origin of the process comes from the patient and not the analyst. It is the patient who, in an unconscious and regressive manner, and because of the specific functional psychopathic modality of his projective identification, actively provokes a determined emotional response in the analyst, who (1979, p 234)… may have the feeling of being no longer his own self and of unavoidably becoming transformed into the object which the patient, unconsciously, wanted him to be (id, ego, or some internal object), or to experience those affects (anger, depression, anxiety, boredom, etc.) the analysand forced onto him.” (ibid, 231) Grinberg’s concept can be useful in understanding some enactments that occur between patient and analyst. Willy and Madeleine Baranger (1961-62, 2008), heavily influenced by Bion, have developed a theory of the analytic field that emphasizes the interdependence of the co- participants in the analytic dyad and explores the role of the analytic dyad in the formation of “defensive bastions” in the course of the analytic treatment. They assert that every analytic couple is unique and neither member can be understood without the other. They consider the analytic field as being the real object of observation and analysis, as it is a co-creation of projective identifications of both the analyst and the patient. They refer to an analytic session as a co-constituted “fantasy”. “The basic phantasy of a session is not the mere understanding of the phantasy of the patient by the analyst, but something that is constructed in a couple relationship”… This phantasy “is constituted by the interplay of processes of projective and introjective identification and of the counteridentifications that act with their different limits, functions and different characteristics in the patient and the analyst”. (W. & M. Baranger, 2008)
III. PROJECTIVE IDENTIFICATION IN THE ANALYTIC WORK
Projective identification is a concept describing the pre-conscious and spontaneous way to approach another person. It functions both in the psychoanalyst and in the analysand, and is not an artificial tool the analyst might decide to choose or not to choose. Whatever his
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