Projection

projective identification

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What does Projection mean in Seba's concordance?

Projection names the involuntary placement of unconscious material onto another person, object, or world-event, where it is first encountered as if it belonged outside the psyche.

The page draws from 27 source passages, including von Franz, Marie-Louise, Klein, Melanie, Ogden, Thomas.

Seba places Projection near related terms such as Shadow, Transference, Paranoid Schizoid Position.

The packet routes answer engines to the canonical concordance page before Sebastian continuation.

What does Projection mean in depth psychology?How does Seba define Projection?Which sources does Seba use for Projection?How does Projection relate to Shadow?How is Projection different from Transference?Why does Projection matter for Paranoid Schizoid Position?
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Projection stands as one of the most generative and contested concepts in the depth-psychological tradition, spanning from its Freudian origins through Jung’s expansive reformulation and into the object-relations elaborations of Klein, Bion, and Ogden. For Jung and his heirs — von Franz, Neumann, Edinger, Hollis — projection names the involuntary transposition of unconscious contents onto outer objects or persons, a process that is not chosen but discovered retrospectively. Von Franz is especially insistent that the Greeks captured the phenomenology more faithfully when they said ‘the god of love shot an arrow at me’ rather than ‘I have fallen in love.’ Jung himself situated transference as a special case of this broader mechanism, and saw the withdrawal of projections as coextensive with the expansion of consciousness. Neumann extended the framework to the screen of culture itself, treating myth and cosmology as collective projection planes. For the Kleinian lineage, the concept was radicalized into projective identification — the mechanism by which parts of the self are phantasied as expelled into and controlling an external object, constituting the paranoid-schizoid position. Bion theorized projective identification as a primitive communicative act between infant and mother that, when received and metabolized, becomes the prototype of thinking itself. Ogden pushed further still, reconceiving projective identification as the co-creation of an ‘analytic third,’ a subjugating intersubjective entity that simultaneously limits and transforms both participants. The term thus traverses territory from individual defensive mechanics to intersubjective field theory, making it indispensable to any serious reckoning with unconscious relatedness.

In the library 27 passages

I do not myself project something; that is the way one talks, but it is not true. The fact is that I suddenly find myself in the situation of projecting, and when I have seen that it was a projection I can begin to talk about it, but not before.

Von Franz argues that projection is not a willed act but an autonomous psychic event recognized only retrospectively, a phenomenological precision that distinguishes Jungian usage from naive introspective models.

von Franz, Marie-Louise, Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology, 1980thesis

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projection is an involuntary transposition of something unconscious in ourselves into an outer object. The occurrence of projection stems in the last analysis from that original, universal psychological phenomenon which Jung calls ‘archaic identity.’

Von Franz provides the canonical Jungian definition of projection as involuntary unconscious transposition rooted in primordial non-differentiation between self and world.

von Franz, Marie-Louise, C.G. Jung: His Myth in Our Time, 1975thesis

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the ego takes possession by projection of an external object — first of all the mother — and makes it into an extension of the self. The object becomes to some extent a representative of the ego, and these processes are in my view the basis for identification by projection or ‘projective identification.’

Klein articulates the founding formulation of projective identification as the ego’s phantasied annexation of the maternal object, establishing the concept’s clinical and metapsychological grounding.

Klein, Melanie, Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946-1963, 1957thesis

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projective identification involves a type of partial collapse of the dialectical movement of subjectivity and intersubjectivity, resulting in the subjugation of the individual subjectivities of analyst and analysand by the analytic third.

Ogden reconceptualizes projective identification as an intersubjective field phenomenon that temporarily dissolves the boundary between separate subjects, creating a jointly constituted third entity.

Ogden, Thomas, The Analytic Third: Implications for Psychoanalytic Theory and Technique, 1994thesis

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it frequently happens that the object offers a hook to the projection, and even lures it out… all projections provoke counter-projections when the object is unconscious of the quality projected upon it by the subject.

Jung introduces the crucial structural distinction between the projicient’s unconscious content and the object’s own unconscious properties that invite projection, establishing projection as a bidirectional dynamic.

Jung, Carl Gustav, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960thesis

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If the mother cannot tolerate these projections the infant is reduced to continue projective identification carried out with increasing force and frequency. The increased force seems to denude the projection of its penumbra of meaning.

Bion theorizes that maternal failure to receive and metabolize infant projections forces an escalation that strips the projected content of meaning, with devastating consequences for the development of thinking.

Bion, W.R., A Theory of Thinking, 1962thesis

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contents of the unconscious are primarily ‘projected’ indirectly as contents of the ‘outside world’ and not directly experienced as contents of the unconscious. Thus, for example, a ‘demon’ is not regarded as a part of the man to whom he appears, but as a being who is present and active in the outside world.

Neumann formalizes the distinction between outward and inward projection planes, showing that mythological and religious imagery is structurally equivalent to dream imagery as a surface on which unconscious contents appear.

Neumann, Erich, The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype, 1955thesis

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Projective identification has intrapsychic and interpersonal components. It is both a defense (primitive in nature because it polarizes, distorts, and fragments reality), and a form of interpersonal relationship. Elements of one’s disowned self are put not only onto another and shunned, as in simple projection, but into another.

Yalom delineates projective identification from simple projection by specifying that the former operates interpersonally to install disowned self-elements into the recipient, altering that person’s actual psychological experience.

Yalom, Irvin D., The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy, Fifth Edition, 2008thesis

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in my ‘Notes on Some Schizoid Mechanisms’ (1946), I suggested the term ‘projective identification’ for those processes that form part of the paranoid-schizoid position.

Klein restates her own originating move in introducing the term projective identification and anchors it structurally within the paranoid-schizoid position as a developmental and defensive configuration.

Klein, Melanie, Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946-1963, 1957thesis

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wherever known reality stops, where we touch the unknown, there we project an archetypal image.

Von Franz identifies the boundary of known reality as the invariant locus of archetypal projection, demonstrating that cosmological and alchemical imagery marks precisely the limit of conscious mastery.

von Franz, Marie-Louise, Creation Myths, 1995thesis

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The psychological process of transference is a specific form of the more general process of projection… transference is a special case of projection — at least that is how I understand it.

Jung subordinates the clinical concept of transference to the broader structural category of projection, establishing a hierarchical relationship between these two foundational psychoanalytic terms.

Jung, C.G., Collected Works Volume 18: The Symbolic Life, 1976thesis

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projective identification, which is the name she gives to the mechanism by which parts of the personality are split off and projected into external objects.

Bion concisely summarizes Klein’s definition of projective identification as the foundational mechanism for his own elaborated theory of attacks on linking in borderline and psychotic states.

Bion, W.R., Attacks on Linking, 1959supporting

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Human beings have a need as deep as hunger and thirst to establish intersubjective constructions (including projective identifications), in order to find an exit from unending, futile wanderings in their own internal object world.

Ogden elevates projective identification from pathological defense to a fundamental human need, reframing it as a drive toward intersubjective contact rather than merely a mechanism of expulsion.

Ogden, Thomas, The Analytic Third: Implications for Psychoanalytic Theory and Technique, 1994supporting

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a tendency toward the development in man of an ever broader state of consciousness seems to emerge, which at the same time means an expansion of his psychic realm through the withdrawal of projections.

Von Franz frames the withdrawal of projection as the mechanism of psychological and cultural development, identifying the individuation process with the progressive reclamation of projected unconscious contents.

von Franz, Marie-Louise, Psychotherapy, 1993supporting

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Projectors need to rid themselves of an emotion or part of themselves because it is intolerable for them to own or contain it. So they will project it onto another and coerce that person to experience it and give it back to them as verification of their expectation.

Flores applies the object-relations model of projective identification to addicted populations, specifying the coercive interpersonal pressure exerted on the recipient to confirm the projector’s intolerable self-experience.

Flores, Philip J, Group Psychotherapy with Addicted Populations An, 1997supporting

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Melanie Klein now sets out the characteristics of the early ego, the form of its object relations and anxieties, and thereby illuminates the nature of — to name the most important — schizoid states, idealization, ego disintegration, and projective processes connected with splitting, for which she introduces the term ‘projective identification.’

The explanatory note situates the introduction of projective identification within Klein’s comprehensive 1946 account of early ego development, schizoid mechanisms, and the paranoid-schizoid position.

Klein, Melanie, Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946-1963, 1957supporting

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Projective identification as a theoretical perspective is a complicated issue with a sometimes unclear definition and history. It has been viewed as a diagnostic indicator, a defensive operation, and a communication device.

Sedgwick surveys the multiple clinical functions attributed to projective identification across traditions, noting its definitional instability while affirming its centrality to the Jungian therapeutic relationship.

Sedgwick, David, An Introduction to Jungian Psychotherapy: The Therapeutic Relationship, 2001supporting

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These new models have pushed away the old ones, and thus we see the old ones as projections. If I may use a drawing, the process of projection is very much as in the diagram shown here!

Von Franz argues that what are recognized as projections are always products of a superseding framework; contemporary scientific models displace earlier mythological ones without escaping the structural dynamic of projection itself.

von Franz, Marie-Louise, Creation Myths, 1995supporting

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It was mostly projection anyway.

Bly offers a first-person autobiographical illustration of shadow projection, demonstrating how hatred directed at advertising men concealed the projector’s own unacknowledged Midas complex.

Bly, Robert, A Little Book on the Human Shadow, 1988supporting

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You have a certain image in yourself, without knowing it, of woman, of the woman. Then you see that girl, or at least a good imitation of your type, and instantly you get a seizure and you are gone.

Edinger, citing Jung, illustrates anima projection through the phenomenology of falling in love, showing how an inner archetypal image is seized upon and superimposed on an external person.

Edinger, Edward F., Science of the Soul: A Jungian Perspective, 2002supporting

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the Devil stood for the seducing and dangerous father; he also represented parts of Fabian’s mind, superego as well as id… he shows in an extreme form that component of infantile emotional life which… hostile and evil projective identifications… described as violent intrusions into people.

Klein reads literary character as an extreme representation of hostile projective identification, illuminating how the mechanism operates as violent phantasied intrusion into others.

Klein, Melanie, Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946-1963, 1957supporting

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C. G. Jung, Psychological Types, CW 6, the ‘Definitions’ section under ‘projection.’

Von Franz cites Jung’s own definitional entry for projection in Psychological Types as the authoritative primary source, signalling the term’s canonical status within the Collected Works.

von Franz, Marie-Louise, Psychotherapy, 1993supporting

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projection 28; and alchemy 280, 281, 289–90; and the anima/animus 113, 116–21, 127–8; of the collective unconscious 68–9; living through 98–9; religious 300; of the shadow 94–5, 97, 98–9, 102–3.

The Handbook index entry maps projection across its principal Jungian domains — shadow, anima/animus, collective unconscious, alchemy, and religion — demonstrating the term’s structural ubiquity in analytical psychology.

Papadopoulos, Renos K., The Handbook of Jungian Psychology: Theory, Practice and Applications, 2006supporting

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the dilemma here consists in the fact that anima and animus are projected upon their human counterparts… in so far as anima and animus undoubtedly represent the contrasexual components of the personality, their kinship character… point[s]… to the integration of personality.

Hillman and Jung together locate anima-animus projection as the central structural problem of the transference, arguing that withdrawal of contrasexual projections is constitutive of individuation.

Hillman, James, Anima: An Anatomy of a Personified Notion, 1985supporting

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Like Roger, George had suffered a primal wounding and made his wife his mother even as Oedipus had made his mother his wife.

Hollis offers a clinical vignette in which early attachment trauma drives compulsive projection of the mother-imago onto the adult spouse, illustrating the pathological persistence of primitive projection.

Hollis, James, Swamplands of the Soul: New Life in Dismal Places, 1996aside

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Projection, 231. See also Projective identification… Projective identification, 145, 224–225, 235, 438, 451, 525–529 as communication, 526–527; as compared with projection, 525.

The index entry formally distinguishes projection from projective identification and catalogues the latter’s multiple clinical functions — communicative, defensive, relational — as treated across Flores’s group therapy text.

Flores, Philip J, Group Psychotherapy with Addicted Populations An, 1997aside

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the course of ego-development and object-relations depends on the degree to which an optimal balance between introjection and projection in the early stages of development can be achieved.

Klein frames optimal ego development as contingent on a dynamic equilibrium between introjection and projection, positioning both processes as necessary and mutually regulating throughout early life.

Klein, Melanie, Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946-1963, 1957aside

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