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reasonably calculated to arouse in the mother feelings that the infant wishes to get rid of. The mother can then process those feelings, during what Bion calls their sojourn in her, returning them to the infant in digestable form by means of the mother’s ministrations. Her ability to “contain” the toxic material projected onto her relies on her capacity for reverie, i.e. her ability to “think” or “dream” about the projecting subject. Reverie is a factor of the mother’s alpha- function (Bion, 1962b) and the child’s repeated experience of this process enables him/her to develop thougths and a thinking mind capable of managing emotional distress. In contrast to this situation, when the infant’s pre-conception of a satisfying breast is repeatedly disappointed with a negative realization (i.e. deprivation) , a bad object (no breast) is formed. If the mother is unable to receive and contain the baby’s defensive negative projections, or if the infant has a low tolerance for frustration, the bad object, fit only for evacuation (Klein’s projective identifcation) will remain in place. For Bion, the ways in which mother and infant manage these projective identifications will determine the developing child’s capacity to regulate affect and maintain effective ego functioning. Bion’s conceptual model has had vast implications for the psychoanalytic process and for our understanding and use of the countertransference in the clincal setting. Returning to Melanie Klein, she described – as mentioned above – projective identification as closely linked to the primal set of defenses. She thus opened up the exploration of the vast field of part-object relationships and, in addition to her own contributions to the study of the pathology of these defenses, she was then able to give a more realistic and complete picture of the psychic world, both of the infant and of the unconscious functioning all lifelong. Today, it is possible to be more precise from a conceptual point of view: due to the heterogeneous complexity of the concept described above, projective identification has to be considered as a primitive psychic function produced by the first set of defenses. Projective identification is the means of communication par excellence of the Preconscious. From a conceptual point of view, it is inappropriate to mix up the unconscious fantasies arising from the various situations of projective identification with the function that allows them to appear. At the beginning of life, such a function fills a vital aim: to allow the helpless newborn to survive and to have a relationship with his first environment. From birth to death, projective identification is used to maintain the feeling of existence and of object cathexis, in particular by internalizing the absent or lost object. It is the central tool in any situation of mourning. In melancholia, the function of projective identification has been totally destroyed by the attacks of the Superego against the Ego and the Id. Being a function of the mind that develops according to the characteristics of each person, projective identification may result in empathy for, – or in a paranoid grip on, – the object involved; a rich communication of feelings and thoughts – or a dictatorial submission of one protagonist to the other; an increase of discoveries in the common field of interest of the two persons – or a phobic flight from the relationship by the subject to avoid any proximity with the elements he/she has projected into his/her protagonist. Klein’s discovery of projective identification is an answer to the question of the object in
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