152 Part II Psychodynamic Theories
behavior, they must then deal with destructive and terrifying impulses in the only
way they can—by repressing them.Projective Identification
A fourth means of reducing anxiety is projective identification, a psychic defense
mechanism in which infants split off unacceptable parts of themselves, project them
into another object, and finally introject them back into themselves in a changed or
distorted form. By taking the object back into themselves, infants feel that they have
become like that object; that is, they identify with that object. For example, infants
typically split off parts of their destructive impulse and project them into the bad,
frustrating breast. Next, they identify with the breast by introjecting it, a process
that permits them to gain control over the dreaded and wonderful breast.
Projective identification exerts a powerful influence on adult interpersonal
relations. Unlike simple projection, which can exist wholly in phantasy, projective
identification exists only in the world of real interpersonal relationships. For exam-
ple, a husband with strong but unwanted tendencies to dominate others will project
those feelings into his wife, whom he then sees as domineering. The man subtly
tries to get his wife to become domineering. He behaves with excessive submis-
siveness in an attempt to force his wife to display the very tendencies that he has
deposited in her.Internalizations
When object relations theorists speak of internalizations, they mean that the person
takes in (introjects) aspects of the external world and then organizes those introjec-
tions into a psychologically meaningful framework. In Kleinian theory, three impor-
tant internalizations are the ego, the superego, and the Oedipus complex.Ego
Klein (1930, 1946) believed that the ego, or one’s sense of self, reaches maturity
at a much earlier stage than Freud had assumed. Although Freud hypothesized that
the ego exists at birth, he did not attribute complex psychic functions to it until
about the 3rd or 4th year. To Freud, the young child is dominated by the id. Klein,
however, largely ignored the id and based her theory on the ego’s early ability to
sense both destructive and loving forces and to manage them through splitting,
projection, and introjection.
Klein (1959) believed that although the ego is mostly unorganized at birth,
it nevertheless is strong enough to feel anxiety, to use defense mechanisms, and
to form early object relations in both phantasy and reality. The ego begins to evolve
with the infant’s first experience with feeding, when the good breast fills the infant
not only with milk but with love and security. But the infant also experiences the
bad breast—the one that is not present or does not give milk, love, or security.
The infant introjects both the good breast and the bad breast, and these images
provide a focal point for further expansion of the ego. All experiences, even those
not connected with feeding, are evaluated by the ego in terms of how they relate