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Encyclopedia of Couple and Family Therapy pp 2362–2366Cite as

Projective Identification in Psychoanalytic Couple and Family Therapy

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Name of Concept

Projective Identification in Couple Therapy

Introduction

Projective identification (PI) offers a powerful lens through which to view chronic marital conflict and unhappiness from a psychoanalytic perspective. Although PI was previously considered solely a feature of serious personality disorders, it is now recognized to be manifest in healthier people, including distressed couples.

PI is a complex concept that originated in the work of Melanie Klein (1946), whose early ideas have been refined as applied to couples by (in chronological order) Dicks (1967), Willi (1984), Wachtel and Wachtel (1986), Scarf (1987), Slipp (1988), Zinner (1989), Catherall (1992), Siegel (1992, 2010), Berkowitz (1999), Middelberg (2001), Donovan (2003), Stern (2006), Lansky (2007), Gurman (2008), and Ringstrom (2014).

PI is a form of interpersonal defensein which people recruit others to help them tolerate their own painful intrapsychic states of mind. This contrasts with purely intrapsychic...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Family Institute at Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, USA

    Arthur C. Nielsen

  2. Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, USA

    Arthur C. Nielsen

  3. The Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, Chicago, IL, USA

    Arthur C. Nielsen

Authors
  1. Arthur C. Nielsen
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Arthur C. Nielsen .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. The Family Institute at Northwestern University, Center for Applied Psychological and Family Studies, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

    Jay L. Lebow

  2. The Family Institute at Northwestern University, Center for Applied Psychological and Family Studies, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

    Anthony L. Chambers

  3. The Family Institute at Northwestern University, Center for Applied Psychological and Family Studies, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

    Douglas C. Breunlin

Section Editor information

  1. California School of Professional Psychology, Alliant International University, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Molly Gasbarrini

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Nielsen, A.C. (2019). Projective Identification in Psychoanalytic Couple and Family Therapy. In: Lebow, J.L., Chambers, A.L., Breunlin, D.C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Couple and Family Therapy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49425-8_18

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