In this book Elizabeth Spillius and Edna O'Shaughnessy explore the development of the concept of projective identification, which had important antecedents in the work of Freud and others, but was given a specific name and definition by Melanie Klein. They describe Klein's published and unpublished views on the topic, and then consider the way the concept has been variously described, evolved, accepted, rejected and modified by analysts of different schools of thought and in various locations – Britain, Western Europe, North America and Latin America. The authors believe that this unusually widespread interest in a particular concept and its varied ‘fate’ has occurred not only because of beliefs about its clinical usefulness in the psychoanalytic setting but also because projective identification is a universal aspect of human interaction and communication. Projective Identification: The Fate of a Concept will appeal to any psychoanalyst or psychotherapist who uses the ideas of transference and counter-transference, as well as to academics wanting further insight into the evolution of this concept as it moves between different cultures and countries.

An examination of projective identification and its clinical uses from a Kleinian perspective. The author puts forward the hypothesis that identification is the patient's way of mastering significant trauma.

Clinical Lectures on Klein and Bion outlines the basic ideas in their thinking and shows in detail how these ideas can be used to tackle a clinical problem. The contributors correct some common misconceptions about Kleinian analysis, while demonstrating the continuity of their everyday work with seminal ideas of Klein and Bion. Originally given as a series of lectures intended to acquaint the general public with recent developments in psychoanalytic thinking and practice, the papers in this book cover the most fundamental ideas put forward by Klein and Bion; child analysis, Klein's use of the concepts of unconscious phantasy, projective identification, the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions, Bion's study of psychotic thinking, his ideas of the relation between container and contained, and the usefulness of the ideas of reversible perspective in understanding 'as if' personalities. In particular, this book provides an eminently readable and authoritative introduction to some of the most original and controversial concepts ever put forward in psychoanalysis.

This book focuses on all aspects of projection and identification, and addresses the problems and perplexities of projective identification. It is based on the First Conference of the Sigmund Freud Center of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

How does the tendency to crave pleasure and reject pain shape our lives? How does it affect the way we perceive reality, and how is it related to the emergence of suffering and the way it is experienced and transmitted? Can we live free of this tendency, beyond the pleasure principle? This book approaches these questions through an examination of the psychoanalytic concepts of projection and projective identification in the light of early Buddhist thought. It looks at the personal and the interpersonal, at theory, meta-theory, and everyday life. It observes how the mind's habits mould the human condition, and investigates its ability to free itself from their domination. It examines the potential of this liberation: to be in touch with reality as it is and live a less reactive, more ethical life.

Misogyny, Projective Identification, and Mentalization looks at how the psychoanalytic concepts of projective identification and mentalization may explain the construction of society and how they have enabled misogyny to be expressed in social, political, and institutional settings. Karyne E. Messina explores how misogyny has affected the perception and treatment of women through analysis of a range of examples of individual women and groups. The first part explores projective identification as a mechanism for the suppression of women, looking at the origins of the concept in psychoanalysis and its expansion. The author examines the story of Clara Thompson as an example, arguing that her virtual disappearance from the history of psychiatry and psychoanalysis itself is a telling example of this process at work. The second part of the book uses four examples of individuals, including the recent election loss by Hillary Clinton in 2016, to show that projective identification can (particularly in political and cultural settings) overtake and motivate groups as well as individuals, and lead to violence, atrocity, humiliation, and dismissal of and against women. Part three then features case studies of four groups of women from the 20th century, including victims of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, showing how projective identification against groups has occurred. With specific reference to the erasure of women’s contributions in society, both individually and collectively, and the trauma that arises from the many effects of regarding women as a group as "less" or "other", this is a book which sets a new agenda for understanding how misogyny is expressed socially. Misogyny, Projective Identification, and Mentalization will be of interest to psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists as well as scholars of politics, gender, and cultural studies.