Projective identification

Having a hard time right now so excuse the ramble, I'm trying to distract myself by waffling about therapy.

Some really bizarre stuff has been going down in my T sessions. I posted about somatic countertransference a while ago - I have hypersomnia and am often tired and sleepy. In my therapy sessions, I'm wide awake but my T often yawns. (Which is a common response to trauma and dissociative energy, so ignore all those articles that say yawning automatically means your T sucks.)

Well, it gets weirder. I have dissociative amnesia and have a lot of memory blanks. My T normally has a really good memory, but he's been really forgetful over the past couple of weeks. I remember things we've talked about, but he's been forgetting whole conversations. I'll refer back to things he's said earlier in the session and he won't remember them.

I asked if he'd caught my memory problems and he said actually, yes, that's kind of what's happening. He knows I like to research and look things up, so he suggested I look up projective identification. This definition seems to explain what's been going on: "Projective identification is examined as an intrapsychic and interpersonal phenomenon that draws the analyst into various forms of acting out."

Last week, he was talking about how the rules are basically turn up, pay and don't bring a gun in and shoot him, and I made a passing, flippant comment about whether a paintball gun would be okay. During the week, I fantasised about messing up his room by actually bringing a paintball gun in and firing red paint at the walls. (I've never been paintballing and don't know what the usual colours would be.) Today, he told me that, during the week, he had found himself having fantasies (as in made-up visions, but not welcome ones!) where I brought a paintball gun in and fired red and yellow paint at the walls.

So I'm often tired and sleepy, but my T is the one who yawns during sessions. I have lots of memory problems, but my T is the one who forgets things during sessions. I made a flippant comment and we both imagined almost exactly the same thing. It's like we've created this joint headspace, he's actually taking on some of my characteristics and there's some kind of unconscious overlap. I wondered if anyone else has experienced something similar.

I have not experienced anything like that, but I find it fascinating! You say his memory loss has only been going on for a couple of weeks; I wonder why it's started now. I've also never heard that yawning is anything other than a biological response (needing oxygen). My xT never actually yawned, but I sure could swear he was stifling one a lot. I don't think it was a response to trauma, though just because I don't think I was talking trauma every time it happened. IDK.

I just wish I had a T who was so attuned to me and I to him.

Re yawning: Body-centred countertransference - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The study referred to is here: http://hse.openrepository.com/hse/bi...redCounter.pdf

I don't think it relates to what you're actually discussing, but to the unconscious signals you might be giving out.

I think his memory loss has started since we came back from the Easter break, but I can't think why now - I don't know if it's because we're better attuned than we were before. Will have to ask him.

I have a slightly different problem. I am aware that my memory is not 100% accurate, but what else can I rely on?

Just for the record, I think dissociative amnesia is when there are parts of your past you do not remember -I don't think it refers to current every day memory difficulties.

It sounds like you're feeling very connected to your therapist -that's great!

This is true, but PTSD also messes with your memory full stop. My mind is basically in bits. I went through a phase where I realised I had PTSD, felt like I'd had a lightbulb moment, researched the symptoms and told my T I thought I'd figured out what I had. THREE times. Each time, it felt like new knowledge, until I remembered I'd thought of it before.

I came back to this post because this has continued and it's really kind of mind-boggling how my subconscious appears to be able to make my T feel certain things. Last Friday, I went for an extra session and, at the end, he was sitting opposite me on the floor, and he kind of bent over and pressed his forehead into the carpet, like he was completely defeated.

Today, I asked him why he did that. He said he felt like he wanted to go and bash his head against a wall. I asked if he meant that he was really angry, frustrated and/or sick of me. And he said no, he didn't feel any of those things, he just felt like he had the urge to do something violent to himself. "Which is how I imagine you must feel."

I was battling sui urges last week, and I told him about it, and apparently he actually felt it. How completely nuts is that.

I actually thought I had replied to this thread, because I find it fascinating!

I haven't talked to my T about this, so I don't know if it was projective identification, but I suspect it was. Last week, I read a letter I wrote about him going on vacation. At the time, I was unaware that I was expressing anger in the letter, I mean oblivious. My T recommended that I keep writing, even if it was going to be critical of him (it happened somehow like this, I'm not sure). Anyway, I reacted saying, "You think I am trying to be mean? or You think I am angry?" At the next session he said that he didn't feel the feelings behind the comment, that the comment had just come up out of the blue.

I think I projected my persecutorial part into him, through my subconsciously expressed anger, and that he responded. I was able to try to combat this part of me while it was on the outside, and it sent me in panic. I don't know if I explained this correctly, or if it even is an example, but I think it might be.

I completely believe in this. I read the book, Social Intelligence, and while it doesn't talk about projective identification, it does talk about how we are all more interrelated than we know, as far as nonverbal/subconscious communication goes. Thanks for the post! The article was a lot of help!

I think it is good that a T can be so in tune with the patient.

"It's like we've created this joint headspace"

yes, this - sometimes my t will say something that's so out of the blue as far as what we're actually talking about, but will be something that I had been thinking about or vice-versa. One time I was sorta daydreaming during a session and envisioned a castle coming up out of the floor and surrounding her and out of the blue she mentions a dream she had about being in a castle. it blows me away every time it happens but when I point it out she just says "This is very common when two people are working so closely together."

"A General Theory of Love" pg. 175

"If a patient's emotional mind would support good relationships, he or she would be out having them. Instead a therapist loosens his grip on his own world and drifts, eyes open, into whatever relationship the patient has in mind - even a connection so dark that it touches the worst in him. He has no alternative.

"When he stays outside the other's world, he cannot affect it. [...] He takes up temporary residence in another's world not just to observe but to alter, and, in the end, to overthrow.

"Through the intimacy a limbic exchange affords, therapy becomes the ultimate inside job."

Page 187
"...if therapy works, it transforms a patient's limbic brain and his emotional landscape forever.

"Thus the urgent necessity for a therapist to get his emotional house in order"

That sounds like really interesting reading.

I saw a Japanese comic book about a "dream consultant". If you are having recurring nightmares, he comes and stays with you and goes into the nightmare and brings it to a happy ending. I saw that a great metaphor for therapy.

Me too, for sure.

Wow. That is amazing! I think in general we - by which I mean society - are quite ignorant of how people can be attuned to each other so it comes to a huge surprise when it happens.

Wow. Thanks for this - I might have to go and read the book it's from...