MODES OF IDENTIFICATION: FREUD'S CONCEPTS REORGANIZED

The author examines Freud's conceptualizations of identification, Melanie Klein's projective identification, and Anna Freud's identification with the aggressor and altruistic surrender of one's own instinctual impulses. After demonstrating that Freud's concept primary identification refers not to a process but to the state of being identified, he suggests the substitution of it with Sandler's term “oneness”. He notes that hysterical identification, narcissistic identification, and introjection are unconscious processes that lead to a state of oneness and that they can be distinguished clinically in terms of the emotional meaning that an object holds for the individual. Furthermore, it is shown that the concept of identification with the aggressor represents a defense mechanism of its own and a specific mode of narcissistic identification, which together with projections and hysterical re-identification play a decisive rôle in projective identification and altruistic surrender of one's own instinctual impulses.     

The Meaningfulness of Helping Others: Loren Eiseley's “The Star Thrower”

Freud and Klein describe projective processes—projection, projective identification, and the repetition compulsion—that cause interpersonal distortions not only in the psychotherapy relationship but in adult intimate relationships as well. Winnicott's theory of the use of an object describes a way of relating that is free of the distortions of projection, opening up the possibility of differentiation between intimate partners. Two case examples illustrate how addressing projective processes assisted one patient in extricating herself from a psychologically abusive relationship and helped a couple in treatment to move from object relating to object use. It is argued that the use of these psychoanalytic theories has an important role within a modern relational social work practice.     

Some comments on the narcissistic aspects of self-righteousness: defensive and structural considerations.

An analysis of the structural and defensive aspects of the self-righteous personality has been presented. Some genetic factors leading to the development of such a personality were considered. Analysis indicated that introjection of the idealized, righteous parent and identification with this introject was motivated by the need for narcissistic supplies. Fusion with this introject occurs during outbursts of self-righteous indignation directed towards an object cathected to a great extent with narcissistic libido. For the unconscious of the patient such an object represents in large measure the repressed aspects of his devalued self-representation. Some dynamic constellations encountered during treatment have been described.     

The deconstruction of primary narcissism

The author examines Winnicott ’s contribution to Freud ’s concept of primary narcissism. In Mourning and melancholia, Freud laid the foundations for this contribution, but it was Winnicott who turned it into a clinically useful concept. There are three of Winnicott’s ideas that can be seen as preliminary stages to his theory of transitional phenomena and illusion. They serve as an introduction to thinking about the analysis of the analysand ’s primary narcissism and the theoretical prerequisites that make the interpretation of primary narcissism possible. Through the exploration of three main points in Winnicott’s writings the author shows how Winnicott’s conceptualizations are both new and a continuation of Freud ’s thinking. His ideas are thus part of the overall theoretical pattern of Freud ’s metapsychology. The three main points are as follows: 1. In bringing maternal care and the presence of the psychic environment into the construction of primary narcissism, Winnicott made it possible to analyse narcissism. His ideas enable us to stand back from the characteristic solipsism of narcissism, which holds that everything comes from the self and only from the self. The latter concept tends to eliminate the role of the object and environment in the construction of the self. At the same time, by deconstructing the way in which the self is infiltrated by a certain number of narcissistic postulates, Winnicott made it possible to interpret the theory of narcissism itself. 2. Between the individual and the sense of self, Winnicott inserted the maternal object and her function as a mirror of affects who acts as a medium for the organization of self-identity. Primary identity is established through the construction and elimination of a narcissistic identification that becomes meaningful in the context of a primary homosexual relationship functioning as a ‘double’. 3. A process of differentiation that governs the discovery of the object is in a dialectical relationship with narcissistic identification. That process can be understood only in terms of the responses made by the primary psychic environment to the baby’s primary aggression.     

Hysteria,A Century Later: Post-Kleinian Theory and Technique

ABSTRACT

Freud developed many of his theories and technique while attempting to help hysterical patients. This article approaches hysteria not just as a syndrome consisting of a group of signs and symptoms, but primarily as an inner world configuration that fuels object relations patterns. The internal world hysterical profile informs the transference/countertransference experience and the therapeutic process. I attempt to describe some of the technical problems psychoanalysts have to deal with while working with these patients. Hysterical object relations do not necessarily manifest themselves as somatic symptoms—epileptic-like, paralysis, blindness, etc.—even in patients that show the relational hysterical patterns. These object relations modes can appear in any analysis irrespective of the primary diagnostic conceptualization.     

The Narcissistic dynamics of submission: the attraction of the powerless to authoritarian leaders

Ferenczi’s conception of identification with the aggressor, which describes children’s typical response to traumatic assaults by family members, provides a remarkably good framework to understand mass social and economic trauma. In the moment of trauma, children instinctively submit and comply with what abusers want—not just in behavior but in their perceptions, thoughts, and emotions—in order to survive the assault; afterwards they often continue to comply, out of fear that the family will turn its back on them. Notably, a persistent tendency to identify with the aggressor is also typical in children who have been emotionally abandoned by narcissistically self-preoccupied parents, even when there has not been gross trauma. Similarly, large groups of people who are economically or culturally dispossessed by changes in their society typically respond by submitting and complying with the expectations of a powerful figure or group, hoping they can continue to belong—just like children who are emotionally abandoned by their families. Not surprisingly, emotional abandonment, both in individual lives and on a mass scale, is typically felt as humiliating; and it undermines the sense that life is meaningful and valuable.

But the intolerable loss of belonging and of the feeling of being a valuable person often trigger exciting, aggressive, compensatory fantasies of specialness and entitlement. On the large scale, these fantasies are generally authoritarian in nature, with three main dynamics—sadomasochism, paranoid–schizoid organization, and the manic defense—plus a fourth element: the feeling of emotional truth that follows narcissistic injury, that infuses the other dynamics with a sense of emotional power and righteousness. Ironically, the angry attempt to reassert one’s entitlements ends up facilitating compliance with one’s oppressors and undermining the thoughtful, effective pursuit of realistic goals.

     

Terrified by suffering,tormented by pain*

Ferenczi’s understanding of the primitive defenses required to cope with trauma, such as introjection, identification with the aggressor, atomization and reckoning, supports the author’s clinical observations of patients who introject a pain mother. Introjecting a pain mother assures that the terrorism of the original external event of a suffering mother keeps the internal suffering going, resulting in being tormented by pain. Such an introjection creates technical difficulties for the analyst. A clinical case is presented to demonstrate.     

The concept of identification in the work of Freud, Ferenczi, and Abraham: a review and commentary

The development of the concept of identification in the work of Freud, Ferenczi, and Abraham is reviewed and analyzed from the standpoint of the development of the psychoanalytic object concept in general. Problems in the theory are seen to be related to ambiguity of the terms, ego and object, especially as reflected in the idea of introjection. The concept of identification, on the other hand, is shown to have undergone consistent evolution and expansion.     

A case of phallic-narcissistic personality

A case of phallic-narcissistic personality is presented to demonstrate the intermingling of oedipal and narcissistic transferences and to suggest a therapeutic rationale for the analytic treatment of similar cases. The therapeutic approach to dealing with the narcissistic configurations involves: Empathic and receptive listening to the patient's material relating to and reflecting narcissistic motifs. This early objective extends only to gaining access to the detailed scope of the narcissistic material in its multiple aspects. Clarifying and identifying the relevant narcissistic configurations, both superior and inferior aspects, so that the patient becomes increasingly aware of their pervasive influence, and increasingly able to identify the respective motifs. Interpretively linking the narcissistically inferior and superior configurations into a common gestalt, so that the patient comes to understand that these opposing aspects are mutually linked, defensively interconnected, and reciprocally reinforcing. Identification and interpretation of interlocking patterns of projection and introjection, particularly as they reflect and express narcissistic configurations. Modification of patterns of projection and introjection through the medium of the ongoing interaction (partly interpretive, partly extra-interpretive) that characterizes the relationship between analyst and patient. Patient projections are thus modified and replaced by more autonomous and adaptive introjections derived from the analytic relation that facilitate the alteration of pathogenic narcissistic formations.     

FERENCZI’S EVOLVING CONCEPTION OF NARCISSISIC PATHOLOGY AND ITS BASIS IN TRAUMA*

Ferenczi’s landmark contributions to understanding and treating psychological trauma are inseparable from his evolving conception of narcissism, though he grasped their interrelationship only gradually. Ultimately, he saw narcissistic disorders as the result of how children cope with abuse or neglect, and their aftermath—they identify and comply with the needs of the aggressor, and later of people more generally, and dissociate their own needs, feelings, and perceptions; and they compensate for their submission and sacrifice of self by regressing to soothing omnipotent fantasies—which, ironically, may facilitate continued submission. Ferenczi’s experiments in technique were designed to help patients overcome their defensive retreat to omnipotent fantasies and regain their lost selves. His earliest experiment, active technique, in which he frustrated patients, was a direct attack on their clinging to omnipotent fantasy. But as he came to see such narcissistic personality distortions as a way of coping with the residue of early trauma, his focus shifted to the underlying trauma. His loving and indulgent relaxation technique was intended as an antidote to early emotional neglect. His final experiment, mutual analysis, characterized by the analyst’s openness and honesty in examining his own inevitable insincerities, was an attempt to heal the damage from parents’ hypocrisy about their mistreatment, which Ferenczi came to see as most destructive to the child.     

Striving Toward Useful Interpretation While Managing Countertransference Enactments: Encounters With a Thick-Skinned Narcissistic Person

Narcissistic patients tend to push the analyst to work harder than usual to contain, understand, translate, and utilize their countertransference states. This is because of the unusually extreme reliance on denial, devaluation, projective identification, and control that these individuals exhibit. Defenses against loss, envy, greed, and dependence create difficult transference states in which symbolic or creative material is flattened, stripped, and neutralized. Feelings are out of the question. This clinical paper explores the narcissistic lack of connection to self and other that endures in the transference as well as in all aspects of these patients' lives. With thick-skinned narcissistic patients, there is a subtle lack of engagement, an underbelly of control, and a complete uncoupling of feeling or link between self and object. Envy is often a cornerstone of such difficult clinical problems and is part of an internal desolation that fuels an emotional firebombing of any awareness of interest in self or other. Detailed case material is used to show how confusing, alarming, and demanding such narcissistic patients can be, trying the very essence of the analytic process. They enter treatment looking for help, wanting a quick fix to their suffering, but resist the deeper understanding, learning, and change that psychoanalytic treatment offers.     

Transformations of Emotional Experience

In this paper the author approaches mental pain and the problems in a psychoanalytic treatment of patients with difficulties in the psychic transformation of their emotional experiences. The author is interested in the symbolic failure related to the obstruction of development of phantasies, dreams, dream‐thoughts, etc. She differentiates symbolization disturbances related to hypertrophic projective identification from a detention of these primitive communications and emotional isolation. She puts forward the conjecture that one factor in the arrest of this development is the detention of projective identifications and that, when this primitive means of communication is re‐established in a container–contained relationship of mutual benefit, this initiates the development of a symbolization process that can replace the pathological ‘protection’. Another hypothesis she develops is that of inaccessible caesuras that, associated with the detention of projective identification, obstruct any integrative or interactive movement. This caesura and the detention of projective identifications affect mental functions needed for dealing with mental pain. The personality is left with precarious mental equipment for transforming emotional experiences. How can a psychoanalytical process stimulate the development of creative symbolization, transforming the emotional experiences and leading towards mental growth? The author approaches the clinical problem with the metaphor of the psychic birth of emotional experience. The modulation of mental pain in a container–contained relationship is a central problem for the development of the human mind. For discovering and giving a meaning to emotional experience, the infant depends on reverie, a function necessary in order to develop an evolved consciousness capable of being aware, which is different from the rudimentary consciousness that perceives but does not understand. The development of mature mental equipment is associated with the personality's attitude towards mental pain. The differentiation between psychotic, neurotic or autistic functioning depends on what defences are erected to avoid mental pain. The primary link between infant and mother is where the building of mental equipment takes place, through communicational forms that, to begin with, are not verbal. The author suggests the need for the development of an ideo‐grammar (in gestures, paralinguistic forms, etc.) in primary relations, as the precursor forms that will become the matrix for the mental tools for dealing with emotional experiences in a mature way. The paper stresses the significance of the parental containing function for the development of symbolization of prenatal emotional experiences. This containment develops ideograms, transformations of sense impressions into proto‐symbols, instruments that attenuate the traumatic experiences of helplessness. The author takes Bion's ideas about extending the notion of dream‐work to an alpha function that goes on continually, day and night, transforming raw emotional experiences in a ‘dream’. In order to acquire a meaning, facts need to be ‘dreamed’ in this extended sense. Meaning and truth are the nurture of the mind. Mental growth, the development of adequate tools – including reverie – for dealing with mental pain, seen from a psychoanalytic perspective including reverie, implies that the object becomes a provider of meanings. Analysis begins to aim primarily at the generation or expansion of the mental container, instead of predominantly working on unconscious contents as such.     

Unconscious phantasy as a structural principle and organizer of mental life: The evolution of a concept from Freud to Klein and some of her successors

Starting with Freud's discovery of unconscious phantasy as a means of accessing his patients’ internal world, the author discusses the evolution of the concept in the work of Melanie Klein and some of her successors. Whereas Freud sees phantasy as a wish fulfilling imagination, dominated by primary process functioning and kept apart from reality testing, Klein understands phantasies as a structural function and organizer of mental life. From their very beginnings they involve object relations and gradually evolve from primitive body‐near experiences to images and symbolic representations. With her concept of projective identification in particular, Klein anticipates the communicative function of unconscious phantasies. They are at the basis of processes of symbolization, but may also be put into the service of complex defensive operations. The author traces the further evolution of the concept from the contributions of S. Isaacs, the theories of thinking proposed by W.R. Bion and R. Money‐Kyrle, Hanna Segal's ideas on symbolization and reparation all the way to the latest approaches by R. Britton, J. Steiner and others, including the understanding of transference and counter‐transference as a ‘total situation’. Points of contact with Freud are to be found particularly in connection with his concept of ‘primal phantasies’. In the author's view, the idea of the transmission and communicative potential of unconscious phantasies enabled these authors to overcome the solipsistic origins of drive theory in favour of a notion in which unconscious phantasies both set down the coordinates of the inner world and form and reflect the matrix of inter‐subjective relations.     

Ferenczi’s Concept of Identification with The Aggressor: Understanding Dissociative Structure with Interacting Victim and Abuser Self-States

No one has described more passionately than Ferenczi the traumatic induction of dissociative trance with its resulting fragmentation of the personality. Ferenczi introduced the concept and term, identification with the aggressor in his seminal “Confusion of Tongues” paper, in which he described how the abused child becomes transfixed and robbed of his senses. Having been traumatically overwhelmed, the child becomes hypnotically transfixed by the aggressor’s wishes and behavior, automatically identifying by mimicry rather than by a purposeful identification with the aggressor’s role. To expand upon Ferenczi’s observations, identification with the aggressor can be understood as a two-stage process. The first stage is automatic and initiated by trauma, but the second stage is defensive and purposeful. While identification with the aggressor begins as an automatic organismic process, with repeated activation and use, gradually it becomes a defensive process. Broadly, as a dissociative defense, it has two enacted relational parts, the part of the victim and the part of the aggressor. This paper describes the intrapersonal aspects (how aggressor and victim self-states interrelate in the internal world), as well as the interpersonal aspects (how these become enacted in the external). This formulation has relevance to understanding the broad spectrum of the dissociative structure of mind, borderline personality disorder, and dissociative identity disorder.     

Commentary on “deconstructing difference: Gender,splitting, and transitional space”;

This essay identifies Kohut's major contribution as methodological: that psychoanalytic inquiry entails the sustained empathic immersion in the patient's psychological experience. Kohut's consistent employment of this method enabled him to discover that it was not instinctual drive derivatives but selfobject needs that were central to all psychological relationships. This discovery was the basis for the transformation of analysts’ approach to the “narcissistic”; aspects of a wide variety of disorders—a transformation whose theoretical and therapeutic importance rivals the revolutionary approach taken by Freud to the vicissitudes of psychosexuality and its disturbances. The author describes the major areas of progress in self psychology—much of which centers on the growing recognition that the health and vitality of the self depend on complex relational, or intersubjective, selfobject experiences. He indicates how this recognition is changing our perspectives on transference and countertransference and is improving our ability to respond optimally to our patients. He describes how optimal responsiveness constitutes the guiding principle for therapeutic work, and how it may both constitute, and be different from, “being empathic.”;     

Introduction to object relations group psychotherapy.

The author shows how object relations group therapy focuses on primitive defense mechanisms that shape the group-entity image or "basic assumptions group." Such primitive defense mechanisms as splitting, projective identification, omnipotent denial, projection, and introjection are the mental resources to protect the endangered self and the threatened objects from the fantasized imminent destruction. Object relations group psychotherapy addresses those defenses and the underlying psychotic anxieties, offering members opportunities to search for other ways to respond to their primitive fears. The author introduces two extensive clinical vignettes to illustrate how object relations group methods are different from other group-centered psychoanalytic techniques. He concludes by commenting on future theoretical refinements and on the problems in the professional practice of this modality.     

Innen, Außen, Zwischen

The so-called “intersubjective turn” (or “relational turn”) in psychoanalysis is closely associated with the work of Winnicott. It was him who added a new dimension to the psychoanalytic theories of a separate inner world, a dimension focussing on the mediating processes between the separate spheres of psychic and external reality: a space between subject and object, drive and civilisation, Ego and reality — the “potential space” that unconsciously connects our self to the Other as well as to a shared physical and social world we live in. Winnicotts paradoxical notions of the self are traced in this paper and unwrapped from their often enigmatic, developmentally and epistemologically confusing veils: the infant who does not exist without a holding mother; who is not aware of his/her being held because of its evidence, and only has an experience when falling; who him-/herself creates that reality which is already there; who must destroy the object in order to use it; who can only be alone when another person is present. The author, starting from apparently narcissistic phenomena of the media society, rehabilitates the term of “in-between” in contemporary psychoanalytic discussion which for a long time was considered as suspect, as being part of a “non-psychoanalytic” superficial social psychology (as the intersubjective, the interpersonal or the interactive). Under the strong influence of Winnicott, and overarching the different schools, contemporary psychoanalysis is focussing on intersubjectivity and relationality. The paper is an appeal for reformulating classical intrapsychic concepts — including the theory of the unconscious—in intersubjective terms, thus unfolding a relational approach inherent in Freud’s metapsychology.     

Countertransference and Projective Identification Revisited and Applied to the Practice of Group Analytic Supervision

Countertransference and projective identification are two concepts that are very useful when describing the dynamics of atmospheric processes and also more explicit issues in supervision groups. Researching both aspects of interpersonal relationship helps the group analyst to better identify and understand the emotional reactions in the group experience. However, it is important to see the different approaches of these two concepts. Projective identification deals with keenly involuntary and often unperceivable ego-syntonic actions and unconscious thinking related to early identificatory feelings.

While other instances of countertransference are often comparatively easy to perceive, projective identification is considerably more difficult to recognize and therefore more difficult to work through. Concrete examples of countertransference and projective identification predominating countertransference respectively, as well as to commonly occurring, mixed forms of these emotional answers to supervision groups illustrate this.     

Immersion in the surface1

In order to treat patients with a narcissistic structure showing a rigid shell of defence together with a lack of inner differentiation – insufficient subject/object constitution – one has to deal with a split kind of transference. Their compelling need for distance corresponds to their fragile self‐esteem. They feel threatened by the analysis and the analytic relationship. Because the seeming normality of these patients’ thinking and language is deceptive, a variation of psychoanalytic technique to facilitate the work with them is described and explained in detail. To transform their two‐dimensional ‘inner’ world, which functions in a PS modus, it is helpful to show them, with changing viewpoints step by step, their own manoeuvres, misconceptions and manipulative use of language within the analytic relationship. The gratifying extension of their self‐awareness leads to the introjection of the analyst’s alpha‐function. This makes possible a more distinct separation of subject and object representations and a transformation to a three‐dimensional, oedipally structured world with a strengthened capacity to symbolize. This method of working is grounded in Bion’s theory of thinking. A case vignette illustrates a development of this kind.     

The Patient-Staff Community Meeting: A Tea Party with the Mad Hatter

The author shows how object relations group therapy focuses on primitive defense mechanisms that shape the group-entity image or “basic assumptions group.” Such primitive defense mechanisms as splitting, projective identification, omnipotent denial, projection, and introjection are the mental resources to protect the endangered self and the threatened objects from the fantasized imminent destruction. Object relations group psychotherapy addresses those defenses and the underlying psychotic anxieties, offering members opportunities to search for other ways to respond to their primitive fears. The author introduces two extensive clinical vignettes to illustrate how object relations group methods are different from other group-centered psychoanalytic techniques. He concludes by commenting on future theoretical refinements and on the problems in the professional practice of this modality.