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theoretical framework, there will be between him and his patient, a two-way continuous stream of projective identifications. Projective identification is a dynamic concept to describe the means by which a human relation is developing, including the way any analytic relationship is processing As such, it facilitates reflection around more classical and static concepts such as “transference and countertransference”, “transference neurosis”, “countertransference neurosis” and so on. It further emphasizes the analyst’s self-analytic capacity as a spontaneous ongoing self- observation of the impact of the continuous flux of projective identification; how the analyst’s own character and neurosis influence projective identification, and what is the impact of the patient’s specific movements of projective identification on the analyst. It may be possible to discern the analyst´s own defensive movements against psychic pain and try then to detect with which internal object or part of the patient’s Self the analyst is projectively identified in this moment of suffering, anger, or compassion. The advantage to thinking about analytic work in progress during any psychoanalytic session in terms of projective identification lies in the better use that can be made of the analyst’s own experience of analysis and auto-analysis to discern the nature, the intensity and the pathology of the patient’s projective identifications, in relation to the various internal objects – generally part-objects – that s/he projects onto the analyst in a given moment of the session, as well as the causality of such a movement. Bion’s work with groups and psychotic patients led him to propose important developments in the concept of projective identification. In the clinical field, through the conceptualization of the pair container/contained, the violence or excessiveness of projective identification became a function of the receiving container too, i.e. the unconscious psychic functioning of the analyst, including his character, mode of object relations and theoretical background It also led him to rethink the concept of “negative therapeutic reaction” and to add to the classical components of such a pathology – such as envy, masochism, jealously and unconscious guilt – the pathology of the relation container/contained (Bion, 1970). By observing the patients’ need for a particular kind of containment, he recognizes in them a structural defect, mainly linked to a poor capacity to install basic organizing defenses by healthy splitting, denial and idealization, and a tendency to regress to confusion. From 1990 onwards, psychoanalytic infant research has been developing new observations and new links with neurosciences on the topic of projective identification and the container/contained configuration (see in particular the team of the Tavistock Clinic created in Italy by Donald Meltzer and Martha Harris, with the works of Suzanna Maiello (2012) Michael Rustin and Margaret Rustin (1989, 2016, 2019). In the field of autism, the outstanding work of Geneviève Haag (2018) is studying in full detail the difference between projective identification and adhesive identity in autistic pathologies.
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