Projection, Transference, and Projective Identification

Projection, Transference, and Projective Identification: Reintegrating What Theory Has Pulled Apart

A day-long seminar with Maury Joseph, Psy.D.

In contemporary ISTDP teaching, the concepts of projection, transference, and projective identification are often presented as distinct phenomena with separate mechanisms and clinical implications. Yet in the immediacy of the therapeutic encounter, these distinctions blur.

For example, patients with a compliant transference project their will onto the therapist. Patients with a passive transference project their energy, responsibility, or knowledge. Those with depressive or paranoid transferences may project their superego. The list goes on. To make matters more complex, projective identification can occur within any transference paradigm, e.g., the patient in a dependent transference who evokes heroic, but futile efforts from the therapist. To understand such clinical events and work with them effectively, we need conceptions of projection, transference, and projective identification that account for their co-occurrence, interrelationship, and inseparability.

This seminar invites participants to reconsider the boundaries that have been drawn between these closely related concepts. Through clinical examples and theoretical discussion, we will explore the hypothesis that projection is not distinct from transference, but an aspect of it. We will consider how this perspective can clarify clinical decision-making and offer a conceptual background for demystifying projective identification, a concept that many find elusive.

This seminar is geared toward therapists who want to improve their conceptual and clinical skills so they can detect and think about projection, transference, and projective identification in real time.

Participants will learn to:
• Identify five common transference patterns and the characteristic projections that define each.
• Assess the syntonicity of a projection by observing the patient’s flexibility, conflict, and openness to alternative meanings.
• Grade interventions according to the degree of syntonicity or conflict within a projection.
• Understand projective identification as an aspect of transference.

CEU info

7 CEUs are available for this presentation for Pennsylvania social workers, MFTs, LPCs, and psychologists. Check in advance with your state board to see if they have reciprocity with PA CEUs. Many boards do.

• Phoenix Center for Experiential Trauma Therapy (Lic. #004115) is approved by the Pennsylvania State Board of Social Workers, Marriage and Family Therapists and Professional Counselors to offer continuing education for social workers, marriage and family therapists and professional counselors. The Phoenix Center for Experiential Trauma Therapy (Lic. # PSY000215) is approved by the Pennsylvania State Board of Psychology to offer continuing education for psychologists. Phoenix Center for Experiential Trauma Therapy maintains responsibility for the program.

Confidentiality Agreement

By clicking the button to register for this event, you agree to the following:Safeguarding the confidentiality of clinical material presented at seminars like this is of the utmost importance. Your attendance is contingent on an agreement to adhere to the following guidelines:• Participants must not share this link and must create a secure viewing environment that is utilized solely by the registered participant and protected from intrusion by, or exposure to, unauthorized persons.• Clinical material must not be discussed outside of the session in which it is presented and must not be recorded, conveyed, or disseminated in written or electronic form.• Participants must create a secure viewing environment that is utilized solely by the registered participant and protected from intrusion by, or exposure to, unauthorized persons.• If at any time a participant suspects s/he/they may recognize the identity of a patient in a case presentation, the participant agrees to leave the session immediately.• Failure to observe these guidelines constitutes a breach of the ethical principles of all psychotherapy guilds, is a HIPAA violation, and may be cause for disciplinary or legal action or both.