Comments on Projective Identification

Dissociation and Internal Models of Protection: Psychotherapy With Child Abuse Survivors.

“…Finally, challengers may be influenced by projective identification, a mechanism proposed by psychoanalytical theorists. According to the projective identification hypothesis, individuals disidentify with internal states that they find uncomfortable but communicate them nonverbally to people in their immediate environment, who resonate with the disowned states and are induced to experience them (Goldstein, 1991; for a related concept, see Mindell, 1985). Survivors, because of their trauma histories, are likely to disown the internal abuser role; thus, challengers who trigger this role in the survivor may be induced to enact it.…”