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SUMMARY:You can get here from there: 'thick' communication\, interpretatio
 n\, and projective identification explained - Louise Braddock (Girton Coll
 ege)
DTSTART:20120307T130000Z
DTEND:20120307T140000Z
UID:TALK35485@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:22487
DESCRIPTION:'How exactly does a patient succeed in imposing a phantasy and
  its corresponding affect upon his analyst in order to deny it in himself 
 is a \nmost interesting problem..... In the analytic situation\, a peculia
 rity of communication[s] of this kind is that\, at first sight\, they do n
 ot seem as \nif they had been made by the patient at all. The analyst expe
 riences the affect as being his own response to something. The effort invo
 lved is in \ndifferentiating the patient's contribution from his own.' Bio
 n (1955) 'Language and the schizophrenic'.\n\nThe term projective identifi
 cation originates with the work of Melanie Klein\, and names a psychoanaly
 tic concept at the centre of Kleinian psychoanalytic psychology. The activ
 ity of the mind it refers to has the dual functions of communication and d
 efence\, while implicated also in curiosity\, coercion and control. Psycho
 analysts who employ the concept of \nprojective identification are able to
  describe the 'micro-moments' of these human interactions with a high degr
 ee of sensitivity\, and of consensus. The \nsociologist Michael Rustin has
  written of the 'craft skills' of clinical psychoanalysis as the ability o
 f psychoanalysts to train and be trained in the detection of those psychol
 ogical processes which fall under the concept of projective identification
 . This training proceeds however unaccompanied by an adequately clear theo
 retical account\, the concept remaining in need of clarification for the f
 ollowing reasons.\n\nFirst\, questions about the methodological validity o
 f these skills\, and about the reality of the mental activities they claim
  to detect\, become acute when the issue arises as to how to explain proje
 ctive identification (which analysts reliably and confidently discern in t
 he clinical setting) to: the lay person\, the sceptical mental health prof
 essional\, the philosopher\, and others who may have little inclination to
  be tolerant of psychoanalysis. Second\, within psychoanalysis itself proj
 ective identification has become a portmanteau concept suffering from over
 -use to the point of forfeiting its explanatory usefulness: in explaining 
 everything it explains nothing.\n\nThe paper's title 'You can get here fro
 m there' promises to show a way of clarifying the concept. 'Here' is where
  we ordinarily stand in our psychological understanding\; 'there' is the p
 roblematic psychoanalytic concept. Getting here from there means both retr
 ieving the concept of projective identification in an form explanatorily u
 seful for lay people and for clinicians\, and showing how \, with an under
 standing of what projective identification is\, the analyst enables the pa
 tient to communicate his state of mind . My approach follows the 'extensio
 n of ordinary psychology' strategy pioneered by Wollheim for the defence o
 f psychoanalysis. Its methodological claim is that we can only investigate
  \nthe phenomena referred to by the theoretical terms of psychoanalysis by
  building on our ordinary practices of psychological observation.\n\nThe p
 aper's first part is (mostly) psychoanalytic and provides an expository ac
 count of projective identification which\, while based in Kleinian psychoa
 nalytic theory and clinical material draws only on accessible psychoanalyt
 ic theses. I show how two psychological processes\, projection and identif
 ication\, come together in projective identification and how this makes pr
 ojective identification a form of communication. In the second and third (
 mostly philosophical) parts I clarify the two component psychological conc
 epts. In the second part I draw on the theory of the speech act to describ
 e the 'thick' communication formed out of the \npatient's projections\, hi
 s identifications\, and his psychoanalyst's response. I answer Bion's ques
 tion about how the patient 'succeed(s) in imposing a phantasy and its corr
 esponding affect upon his analyst in order to deny it in himself'\, by exp
 licating projective identification as a complex piece of linguistic commun
 ication involving the analyst's imagination.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 1\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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