This clear and thoughtful book by Robert Waska provides an accessible introduction to Projective Identification and the role it plays in internal and external life. Waska explores how Projective Identification is the foundation for much of psychic life, driving internal phantasy, influencing interpersonal behavior, and contributing to the transference/countertransference environment. This book contains several case studies which explore and expand on the concepts described and which demonstrate how a psychotherapist can understand, contain, and interpret the states patients seek help with. Additionally, this book introduces a clinical technique which is intended to tame the underlying emotional conflicts. Part of the popular Routledge Introductions to Contemporary Psychoanalysis series, this book will be essential to students of psychoanalysis, as well as academics and practitioners familiarising themselves with Projective Identification in a clinical setting.

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 They describe Klein's published and unpublished views on the topic, and then consider the way the concept has been variously described, evolved, accepted, rejected and modified by analysts of different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.

In this landmark work on object relations, Dr. Jill Savage Scharff addresses the psychological processes of projective and introjective identification and countertransference. She carefully traces the debates about projective identification_the neurotic versus psychotic arguments and the intrapsychic versus interpersonal views. She holds that disagreements stem from unrecognized shifts in meaning of the term identification and unacknowledged differences of opinion as to where the identification takes place. For her, projective identification is an umbrella term for phenomena that can affect the self, the object inside the self, and the external object. Dr. Scharff brings fresh insight to the neglected concept of introjective identification and a new understanding of the therapeutic action of projective and introjective identification. The book's unique distinction is in the author's integration of object relations theory and practice, particularly with regard to the handling of countertransference. The clinical material is written in the vivid and personally candid style that is a hallmark of her work. Dr. Scharff demonstrates how to understand and utilize projective and introjective identification, making this work indispensable for every dynamically oriented therapist.

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.

Seeking to mediate between the "classical" view of countertransference as a neurotic impediment to the treatment process and the more recent "totalist" perspective, which assumes that the therapist's emotional response necessarily reveals something about the patient, Tansey and Burke stake out a thoughtful middle ground. They submit that the therapist's utilization of adequately processed countertransference reactions is in fact integral to treatment success, while arguing against the totalist assumption that the therapist's emotional to the patient must be revelatory in a direct and immediate way.