Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-r5d9c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-09-02T20:01:11.818Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A Note on Two Important Aspects of Kleinian Theory ‘Projective Identification’ and ‘Idealisation’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

Philippe M. Ployé
Philippe M. Ployé*
Affiliation:
Cassel Hospital, Ham Common, Richmond, TW10 7JF, and H.M. Youth Custody Complex, Feltham, Middlesex
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Summary

The concept of ‘projective identification’, introduced by Melanie Klein and extensively used by her followers, is still held by many to be highly controversial and difficult to understand. Great importance is also attached by Kleinian workers to what they describe as the infant's early use of ‘idealisation’ as a defence against anxiety. A hypothesis is presented according to which both mechanisms could be seen as the continuation or persistence, in mental form and in early post-natal life, of some of the ways in which the unborn child could be said to relate to the mother physically during the last few months of intrauterine life.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 145 , Issue 1 , July 1984 , pp. 55 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © 1984 The Royal College of Psychiatrists 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Bion, W. R. (1965) Transformations. London: Heinemann Medical Books.Google Scholar
Deutsch, H. (1947) The Psychology of Women, Vol. 2. London: Research Books.Google Scholar
Ferenczi, S. (1933–4) Thalassa: a theory of genitality. Psychoanalytic Quarterly (1933), 2, 361. Psychoanalytic Quarterly (1934), 3, 1.Google Scholar
Klein, M. (1952a) Notes on some schizoid mechanisms. In Developments in Psycho-Analysis (ed. Riviere, Joan). London: Hogarth Press.Google Scholar
Klein, M. (1952b) Some theoretical conclusions regarding the emotional life of the infant. In Developments in Psycho-Analysis (ed. Riviere, Joan). London: Hogarth Press.Google Scholar
Mahler, M. S. (1952) On child psychosis and schizophrenia. Autistic and symbiotic infantile psychoses. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 7, 286–305.Google Scholar
Mahler, M. S. (1967) On human symbiosis and the vicissitudes of individuation. Journal of the Americal Psychoanalytic Association, 15, 740–63.Google Scholar
Ogden, T. H. (1982) Projective Identification and Psychotherapeutic Technique. New York: Jason Aronson.Google Scholar
Rosenfeld, H. (1971) Contribution to the psychopathology of psychotic states: the importance of projective indentification in the ego structure and the object relations of the psychotic patient. In Problems of Psychosis (eds. Doucet, P. and Laurin, C.). The Hague: Excerpta Medica, International Congress Series.Google Scholar
Rosenfeld, H. (1983) Primitive object relations and mechanisms. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 64, 261–7.Google Scholar
Wilson, S. (1983) Book Review of Projective Identification and Psychotherapeutic Technique. By Ogden, T. G. British Journal of Psychiatry, 142, 323.Google Scholar
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.