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PART ONE
Melanie Klein's work
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1
The emergence of Klein's idea of projective
identification in her published and
unpublished work
Elizabeth Spillius
Introduction
I will first describe something of the history of the term ‘projective identification’ followed by discussion of Klein's own ideas about it in the two published versions of her paper ‘Notes on some schizoid mechanisms’ (Klein, 1946, 1952a) and in her 1955 paper ‘On identification’. Then I will discuss two sets of unpublished entries on the concept of projective identification in the Melanie Klein Archive.
History of the concept
Although Melanie Klein was the originator of the definition and usage of the concept of projective identification as we know it today, she was not the first person to use the actual term. It was first used by Edoardo Weiss, in 1925 in a paper called ‘Über eine noch unbeschriebene Phase der Entwicklung zur heterosexuellen Liebe’ in the context of explaining sexual object choice (Weiss, 1925). Klein refers to Weiss's paper in The Psycho-Analysis of Children (Klein, 1932b, p. 250, n. 2) where she explains Weiss's understanding of sexual object choice, using the term ‘projection’ in her explanation but not discussing his use of the term ‘projective identification’ (see also Massidda, 1999 and Steiner, 1999).
There was another precursor to Klein's use of the term projective identification. In 1945, a year before Klein published her first version of ‘Notes on some schizoid mechanisms’, Marjorie Brierley mentions projective identification in a paper called ‘Further notes on the implications of psycho-analysis: Metapsychology and personology’, in which she says
projective identification of ego-ideal with outer object, human or abstract, would appear to be a feature of the economy of all fanatics [. . .] the pedestrian everyday charity that begins at home, as distinct from fanatical devotion of ultra-personal interests, may depend upon projective identification with a fairly well-libidinized operative self.
(Brierley, 1945, p. 96)
Brierley mentions projective identification again in a second paper in 1947. Brierley and Klein do not refer to each other's work, but it looks as if considerable thinking and discussion about introjection, projection and identification was going on among British analysts in the 1940s and that projective identification was not so much a special focus as part of this general discussion.
Klein's published views on projective identification
Klein first mentions the idea of projective identification in her paper ‘Notes on some schizoid mechanisms’ in 1946 but at first only in passing. In the original version of ‘Notes on some schizoid mechanisms’, which was published in the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis in 1946, Klein describes the process of projective identification as follows:
Together with these harmful excrements, expelled in hatred, split off parts of the ego are also projected on to the mother or, as I would rather call it, into the mother. These excrements and bad parts of the self are meant not only to injure the object but also to control it and take possession of it. Insofar as the mother comes to contain the bad parts of the self, she is not felt to be a separate individual but is felt to be the bad self.
Much of the hatred against parts of the self is now directed towards the mother. This leads to a particular kind of identification which establishes the prototype of an aggressive object relation.
(Klein, 1946, p. 102)
In the next paragraph Klein adds:
It is, however, not only the bad parts of the self which are expelled and projected, but also good parts of the self. Excrements then have the significance of gifts; and parts of the ego which, together with excrements, are expelled and projected into the other person represent the good, i.e. the loving parts of the self.
(Klein, 1946, p. 102)
In essence these paragraphs are a definition of projective identification, but the concept is not mentioned by name. The actual name ‘projective identification’ is mentioned not as part of this definition but only in a passing comment two pages later where Klein says, ‘I have referred to the weakening and impoverishment of the ego resulting from excessive splitting and projective identification’ (Klein, 1946, p. 104);1 this is the only mention of the concept of projective identification by name in the 1946 version of the paper. It was not until the 1952 version of ‘Notes on some schizoid mechanisms’ that Klein added the crucial sentence ‘I suggest for these processes the term “projective identification” ’ to the defining paragraphs quoted above.
Somewhat confusingly, it has become customary for this 1952 version of the paper to be cited as ‘1946’ in the Kleinian literature. It is the 1952 version that is reprinted in Chapter 2 in the present book.
The 1952 version of the paper differs from the 1946 version not only in including the term ‘projective identification’ in the definition but also in other respects. There are two new paragraphs, one of which is devoted to projective identification, and there is some rearranging of the order of other paragraphs. There are also thirteen new footnotes, notably one to Paula Heimann thanking her for her ‘stimulating suggestions’ about Klein's paper, one to Ferenczi (1930) on fragmentation, two to Rosenfeld, especially to his papers on depersonalisation (Rosenfeld, 1947) and on male homosexuality and paranoia (Rosenfeld, 1949), and one to an unpublished paper on paranoid attitudes by Joan Riviere which I have been unable to track down (Riviere, unpublished).
According to Hanna Segal (personal communication) the term ‘projective identification’ was suggested to Klein by her colleague (and patient) Roger Money-Kyrle. Segal also said that Klein did not like the term ‘projective identification’ and she added that Klein thought of the term in the context of comparing projection with introjection. In the case of introjection, once an object has been taken in several things may happen to it: it may exist inside the subject as an internal object, good or bad; the subject may unconsciously identify with this internal object or with an aspect of it; or both processes may occur, that is, the internal object may be recognised as separate from oneself but it may also be identified with. Klein, according to Segal, thought of projective identification as a parallel process to introjective identification, meaning that projective identification was only one of several possible outcomes of projection, although Klein does not describe what these other outcomes might be.
After 1952 Klein makes comparatively few mentions of projective identification except of course for her paper ‘On identification’ in 1955 in which identification is the central theme (Klein, 1955). But this paper is an analysis not of a patient but of a character in a novel who projects his whole self into various other people in order to acquire their identity. The idea of this sort of projective identification is still used, but nowadays the concept is more frequently used to describe the projection of aspects of the individual's self into other objects.
Apart from this 1955 paper, the most frequent mentions of projective identification come in 1957 in Envy and Gratitude where Klein notes the projective character of envy and the contribution envy makes to difficulties in making the basic and primal split between good and bad experiences and feelings, this split being essential for the development of integration of the ego. Envy leads to attacks on the good object which take the form of projection of bad parts of the self into the good object, resulting in confusion between the good and the bad self, between good and bad aspects of the object, and between self and object.
Klein's unpublished notes on projective identification in the Melanie Klein Archive2
If one were to know about Klein's views on projective identification only from her published work, one would conclude that she did not think the concept was very important, for she published comparatively little about it. Once one explores the Klein Archive, however, one finds much more material on the topic, both in the form of theoretical thoughts and in clinical illustration. One file of particular importance, B98, dates from 1946/1947 when Klein was working on her important paper ‘Notes on some schizoid mechanisms’ (1946), which she always refers to in the Archive as ‘my splitting paper’, never as ‘my projective identification paper’. The file B98 consists of excerpts of clinical material, sporadic notes and some longer theoretical thoughts especially on splitting and projective identification. Other relevant material occurs in parts of file D17, which probably dates from the late 1950s and includes both theory and clinical illustration. The comments on projective identification in file D17 are scattered here and there throughout the file.
James Gammill (1989), whose work with a three-year-old child was supervised by Klein in the late 1950s, has told me that she talked to him in considerable detail about the way his patient was using projective identification. Thus, although Klein published so little about projective identification, it was important in the thoughts she was formulating and using in her supervisions in the late 1950s.
The notes of file PP/KLE, B98, ‘Patients’ material: theoretical thoughts’
This file of 106 pages dates from 1946 and 1947, the year before and just after the time when Klein's 1946 version of ‘Notes on some schizoid mechanisms’ was first published. Some pages give theoretical formulations, some give clinical material; some are generalisations about several patients; some give the material of a single patient. The pages are not at all systematically arranged and they seem to have been hastily written or perhaps dictated; almost all are typed. One gets the impression that for this file Klein put down or dictated examples and thoughts on splitting, identification, projection and introjection spontaneously as they occurred to her. Because file B98 file is so long it will not be reproduced in the present book, but I will quote from it in some detail.
Although this material of B98 is interesting in itself, it is not of very much help in showing how Klein arrived at the novel formulations of her 1946 ‘splitting’ paper. It seems to me that there is a huge conceptual leap from the notes of B98 to the paper, which describes her formulation of the paranoid-schizoid position for the first time. In addition, only one of the clinical examples given in the published paper is to be found in B98; nor could I find the clinical examples of the paper in any other part of the Archive. I think it likely that the clinical material and theoretical thoughts of B98 formed a general background for Klein's thinking rather than a specific source of inspiration for the new ideas of ‘Notes on some schizoid mechanisms’.
There are certain themes that Klein repeatedly refers to in the notes of B98.
The first theme is that good as well as bad aspects of the self are involved in projective identification. Klein also states this view in her paper ‘Notes on some schizoid mechanisms’, although she puts less stress on it than she does in the Archive notes, and most of the literature since Klein's work has stressed the projection of bad aspects rather than good. Klein gives several examples of the projection of good aspects of the subject's self, as for example in the case of Patient H, who projected good aspects of himself into one person and bad aspects into another, his analyst:
June 25th, 1946
Patient H felt particular gratification in a situation which could have stirred his jealousy and envy through comparison with somebody but in fact was only felt to be gratifying. The enviable object – Mrs. X – not only represented an ally in what was felt to be a good cause which she had particularly well dealt with (that is where envy would have come in); but as a good aspect of H himself. It appeared that he felt that he had put everything good he possessed into her. That is how she came to represent himself. During this hour he had a strange feeling of being quite estranged from himself and could not account for that. He had been very satisfied with progress in analysis and insight gained, and was struggling to maintain an exclusively friendly and grateful relation to me. I could show him that the satisfaction led to an increased greedy wish to get more, and that he was trying to prevent his greed because he felt that he would enter my mind violently to rob me. The interpretation was that he was putting into myself all his valueless products, representing faeces and urine, and in this process taking such full possession of me when his products had also come to represent himself. At this moment he said, ‘I would wish to get out’ with quite a strong physical feeling of breathlessness and oppression. The interpretation being that he would like to withdraw himself out of me which was followed by physical relief. Now we could connect the feeling of strangeness to himself, depersonalisation, with the feeling that he had been inside me, and getting himself out of me had felt that he had left so much of his personality inside me that he was estranged to what he took back. On the other hand, his identification with Mrs. X was based on the feeling that he had put his good things into her and therefore could enjoy without rivalry or envy her accomplishments.
(Klein Archive, PP/KLE, B98)
Klein's second main theme in the notes of B98 is that projection and introjection go together. She says, for example:
To Schizoid paper
Chapter Note (to p.18)
Projective identification is the basis for many anxiety situations of a paranoid nature. Since projection and introjection operate simultaneously, paranoid anxieties focus on persecution within the self and within the object which the self has forcefully entered. The attempts to control an external object by entering it give rise to the fear of being controlled and persecuted by this object. The subject may be unable to withdraw from this object; it is kept imprisoned and subjugated by the object. Once part of the ego, or the whole ego, might be felt to have got lost for ever etc. (I have described formerly, in The Psycho-Analysis of Children, such fears as being not only at the bottom of paranoid anxiety but also as a cause for disturbances in the male's sexuality – impotence – and as a basis for claustrophobia.) In addition, the re-introjection of this object, which now represents a combination of a persecutory object and the bad self, reinforces inner persecution. The accumulations of anxiety situations of this nature – particularly the fact that the ego is, as it were, caught between external and internal anxieties – is one of the basic features in paranoia. (Cf. chapter on ‘Notes on some schizoid mechanisms’ also H. Rosenfeld's paper ‘Analysis of a Schizophrenic state with Depersonalization’, IJPA Vol. XXVIII, 1947, and Joan Riviere's paper. [Title? Published?])
(Klein Archive, PP/KLE, B98)
She puts it more concisely in another entry:
To Theoretical Reflections
Vampire like sucking. In the first sucking of sadistic character you do not only suck out but you put yourself in. Projective identification already there as a complementary process to earliest greedy introjection of the breast.
I believe that persecutory fear of a greedily introjected object – and later the guilt regarding this – contributes to projection and projective identification.
(Klein Archive, PP/KLE, B98)
Klein also gives a specific example, once again from Patient ‘H’.
September 20, 1946
To Splitting paper
Extension into the body, and loneliness derived from the fear of destruction of the object from which one is parting – this has been explained as the fear of loss of the object because of one's own sadistic desires against it. Now in one case, ‘H’ [this phrase and the letter ‘H’ are crossed out] I have found that panic connected with the fear of parting or being left alone derived from the feeling that one part of himself remained in me and that he could not withdraw that before going. The interpretation was that the great grievance and hatred to which parting and being left alone gave rise made the part of himself left inside me particularly vicious. I was therefore not only [left, but left] in great danger. But the feeling of being weakened by such an important part of himself being in me increased the feeling of dependence and anxiety. Correspondingly we found in the same hour again the feeling of bits inside. The interpretation was that to this destruction wrought on me by one part of himself acting so ferociously inside me corresponded a similar state of me as an internal object inside him. This internal ‘me’ was also a source of great persecution and danger to him, as for that matter I was as an external object when I was treated by his being in me in that way. Both relations – me inside him and him inside...
