Inadmissible Evidence: An Example of Projective Identification

Abstract

Sometimes our patients cause us to struggle with emotions and sensations that are invaders, they come from elsewhere and yet feel as if they are our sole possession. The same thing occurs in many different settings. This experience of projective identification can influence the recipient and he or she then becomes the changed person in the mind’s eye of the initiator. One of the reasons for psychotherapists to be in analysis during their training is that this gives them a better chance of being aware when such psychological parasites are present. And one of the reasons that theoretical models are important is that they can help us to decode what we feel at such times. In this paper I describe an example of projective identification from work with a 6-year-old adopted boy, where I found myself almost completely unable to function for several sessions. A traumatic past experience belonging to my patient, which he could have had no conscious knowledge of, had been pushed out of his unconscious to lodge in mine; and then, in turn, I acted out a version of that experience.