Projective Identification

Well, here's a different bone upon which to chew:

We use a phenomenological approach in which the way a person perceives his or her experience impacts the significance they attribute to any given component of that experience, especially one's interactions with other people. We say, when one takes his own such construction and attributes that to someone else, that he or she is projecting. So far so good. You are over there on that sofa, and I'm back here in the rocker. No matter how much I say you're scared (because I perceive you to be scared), you tell me I'm all wet, cuzz you've never been more relaxed. My experience and my meaning are mine, sealed up inside my person. Yours are yours, way over there on that sofa.

Enter the notion of projective identification in which I somehow take my feelings and implant them in your body, then try to control myself in you. Does this seem possible to anyone else? I can agree that I may think you feel such and such, and act accordingly, but I have a hard time really embracing with any enthusiasm the idea that one person can actually determine the experience of another in this intrusive manner. Furthermore, I believe it has more to do with interpretive theoretical structures such as object relations.

I also think I am in the minority on this one, because projective identification seems so widely accepted. I was wondering if there were any other Gestalt people out there who have views on this subject. If so, could you give a distinctively Gestalt perspective on projective identification?

Phil Brownell

• Requires projection and confluence by Mark Williams, 11/21/96
  • Coercion is the key ingredient by Stuart Stawman, 12/10/96
    • To be coerced is to be confluent? by Mark Williams, 1/7/97
      • To respond is to identify? by Stuart Stawman, 1/22/97
        • Invoking the Actual by Brian O'Neill, 1/22/97
          • Projective Invokiation by Stuart Stawman, 1/29/97
            • Reply to Stuart...Brian polishing his mirrors by Brian O'Neill, 1/30/97
              • Table by Brian O'Neill, 1/30/97
          • Projection part of perception process by Mark Williams, 2/8/97
          • Projection part of process, part 2 by Mark Williams, 2/8/97
        • Both/And? by Mark Williams, 2/8/97
        • Gestalt theory and Projective Identification by Thomas Fuchs, 2/26/97
          • My Summary (so far). by Stuart Stawman - sjstawman@msn.com, 3/8/97
• sexual projection by c271edx@semovm.semo.edu, 4/13/98
• (No title) by c271edx@semovm.semo.edu, 5/1/98