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ABSTRACT: Projective identification is commonly recognized as a primitive defense. In group work with ego-impaired preadolescent boys with significant environmental deficits, projective identification is used to communicate a need for a relationship previously unavailable to them. These boys project unwanted aspects of themselves in order to have them contained by the therapist. They induce feelings in the therapist in order to share their internal experience. As the feelings are modified by the therapist and reintrojected by the boys, the boys receive the parenting they missed and are able to form more stable attachments.
KEY WORDS: group; bays; projective identification; Bian; aggression.
Projective identification is a primitive defense mechanism in which an individual projects an unwanted thought or feeling onto another and identifies the projected material as belonging to that other (Klein, 1964). Projective identification is also appreciated by some as a means of communicating internal experience to an empathic other (Malin & Grotstein, 1966). This paper proposes that projective identification may also constitute a request for a developmentally necessary relationship. It will show how ego-impaired boys in group therapy use projective identification to acquire relationships previously unavailable to them in their environment.
A brief description of one particular preadolescent boys' group will be provided followed by an account of the developmental consequences of the environmental failures suffered by these ego-impaired boys. Next, there will be a brief review of the literature on projective identification and a discussion on how the boys used this defense in the group. Bion's (1959) group theory will give structure to the clinical examples, which illustrate how these underprivileged fatherless boys employ projective identification to rid themselves of distressing affect related to unmet needs, while simultaneously attempting to forge relationships designed to satisfy those needs.
THE GROUP
The group met in a mental health clinic of the Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services in the northeast Bronx. The group's purpose was to support developing ego structures and modify distorted object relations. It was run over a nine month period and was comprised of six males ages 11 to 13, two African-Americans and four Latinos. The boys had been raised in impoverished single-parent homes in the northeast Bronx. They presented with behavior problems at home and at school. Having...