Sociological explanations of racism tend to concentrate on the structures and dynamics of modern life that facilitate discrimination and hierarchies of inequality. In doing so, they often fail to address why racial hatred arises (as opposed to how it arises) as well as to explain why it can be so visceral and explosive in character. Bringing together sociological perspectives with psychoanalytic concepts and tools, this text offers a clear, accessible and thought-provoking synthesis of varieties of theory, with the aim of clarifying the complex character of racism, discrimination and social exclusion in the contemporary world.

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 They describe Klein's published and unpublished views on the topic, and then consider the way the concept has been variously described, evolved, accepted, rejected and modified by analysts of different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

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.

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.

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.