Understanding Projective Identification in Psychotherapy.
Klein derived containment from projective identification, where one person in a sense contains part of another, when a child splits off their fears and contains them in an object. Klein proposed that if these split fears are allowed to repose in the mother for long enough then they can be modified and safely reintrojected, considering this the beginning of mental stability (Hinshelwood, 1991).
Projective identification. Projective identification is an unconsc i ous phantasy in which aspects of the self or an internal object are split off and attributed to an external object. The projected aspects may be felt by the projector to be either good or bad. Projective phantasies may or may not be accompanied by evocative behaviour unconsciously intended to induce the recipient of the.
Defense mechanisms are psychological strategies that are unconsciously used to protect a person from anxiety arising from unacceptable thoughts or feelings. Why do we need Ego defenses? We use defense mechanisms to protect ourselves from feelings of anxiety or guilt, which arise because we feel threatened, or because our id or superego becomes too demanding.
Projective tests also provide benefits in their unique results, wide range of results, and potential usefulness. Examining the historical progression of projective testing over the past decade shows a continual movement towards understanding unconscious processes and formulating empirical methods for testing personality.
Melanie Klein took psychoanalytic thinking in a new direction by recognising the importance of our earliest childhood experiences in the formation of our adult emotional world. Extending and developing Sigmund Freud’s ideas, Klein drew on her analysis of children’s play to formulate new concepts such as the paranoid-schizoid position and the depressive position.
Identification. Identification is the middle level of conformity. Here a person changes their public behaviour and their private beliefs, but only while they are in the presence of the group. This is a usually a short-term change and normally the result of normative social influence. For example, a person may decide to become a vegetarian.
In June of 2015, Chris Piotrowski published his article titled On the Decline of Projective Techniques in Professional Psychology Training in the North American Journal of Psychology. Piotrowski identified the Rorschach Ink Blot Test, sentence completion methods, and the Thematic Apperception Test as some examples of projective assessments in the field of Psychology (Piotrowski, 2015).