Projective Identification and

Intersubjectivity
Michael A. Forrester
University of Kent

Abstract. The issue of what might constitute intersubjective relations

during infancy and early childhood remains something of a puzzle within
and beyond psychology. This paper considers whether the psychoanalytic
concept of projective identification might supplement or enrich theoretical
efforts in this domain. Following introductory comments on distinctive
characteristics of Merleau-Ponty’s commentary on intersubjectivity, atten-
tion turns to psychoanalytic assumptions and presuppositions underpinning
projective identification. Complementary and contrastive themes are drawn
out, specifically those which highlight alternative metaphysical positions
taken up within these approaches. Discussion touches on the processes
involved in the emergence of projective identification and what implica-
tions the concept may have for contemporary theories of intersubjectivity
in developmental psychology.
Key Words: Merleau-Ponty’s theory of intersubjectivity, projective
identification

Within contemporary social science the question, or rather puzzle, of what

constitutes intersubjectivity during infancy and childhood remains un-
answered. This paper discusses whether any theoretical possibilities might
be opened up by placing the concept of projective identification alongside
Merleau-Ponty’s philosophical observations on intersubjectivity, and from
that position considers contemporary theories of intersubjectivity found in
developmental psychology and psychoanalysis. Deliberation turns on
whether Merleau-Ponty’s particular version of intersubjectivity, identified in
his later writings, resonates with the concept of projective identification. The
discussion is organized in three parts: first, an outline of elements of
Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy with particular focus on the background to
his theory of intersubjectivity, for example the related conception of the
chiasm; second, an explication of the concept of projective identification
within psychoanalysis highlighting elements which may bear on theories of
intersubjectivity; and, third, a consideration of contrasting views of inter-
subjectivity, including Trevarthen and Aitken (2001), Stern (1985) and
Merleau-Ponty (1968).

Theory & Psychology Copyright © 2006 Sage Publications. Vol. 16(6): 783–802
DOI: 10.1177/0959354306070530 www.sagepublications.com
784 THEORY & PSYCHOLOGY 16(6)

Foundational Elements of Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy of

Intersubjectivity

Certain noteworthy ideas underpin and inform Merleau-Ponty’s view of

intersubjectivity: the background assumptions of his existential philosophy,
subject–object relations, reversibility, the chiasm and ‘flesh’, and his inter-
pretation of the unconscious. Any discussion of intersubjectivity presup-
poses the question of subjectivity and we can begin by reflecting on certain
assumptions of the dominant model of mind within psychology. The sense
of intersubjectivity outlined in this paper emerges from a consideration of
Merleau-Ponty’s work, which questions certain presuppositions commonly
found in psychology. Recent commentators have noted that the classical
‘problem of other minds’ question central to cognitive developmental
psychology can be traced to the uncritical adoption of the Kantian logo-
centric assumption regarding consciousness and separateness (Costall &
Leuder, 2004). From a phenomenological perspective, Merleau-Ponty
(1964) sought to clarify a number of points regarding the implicit, and for
him mistaken, assumptions concerning the individuated subject or psyche
of classical psychology. Discussing the origin of intersubjective relations,
he notes:
What classical academic psychology calls ‘functions of cognition’—
intelligence, perception, imaginations, etc.,—when more closely examined,
lead us back to an activity that is prior to cognition properly so called, a
function of organizing experiences that imposes on certain totalities the
configurations and the kinds of equilibrium that are possible under the
corporeal and social condition of the child himself. (p. 99)
His phenomenology of perception emphasizes the fundamentally corporeal
nature of human existence, a corporeality that requires an essential inter-
relatedness of ‘being’-ness and the world. To paraphrase Langer’s (1988)
insights on the topic, Merleau-Ponty’s argument is that we are primordially
of the natural world and therefore fundamentally at home in it; that we
similarly enjoy a pre-reflective bond with others and the human world. The
first ‘subjectiveness’ for Merleau-Ponty is with the organism’s experience of
objects, events and things of the world. This is an intersubjective theory that
focuses first and foremost on the ‘inter’relationship of the subject with (all)
objects. Descombes (1980) makes that point, with reference to the phenom-
enology of perception and the relation to things seen:
Consequently we must include the actual conditions under which the object
is given to us in our definition of it. Just as the trip to the holiday home is part
of the holiday, the route towards the object is a part of the object. This is the
fundamental axiom of phenomenology. And so perspective, for example,
should not be considered as the perceiving subject’s point of view upon the
object perceived, but rather as a property of the object itself. (p. 64)
This is a philosophy emphasizing the intrinsic interconnectedness of all
FORRESTER: PROJECTIVE IDENTIFICATION AND INTERSUBJECTIVITY 785

things. Similarly, Hoeller (1993) notes that Merleau-Ponty’s focus initially

centred on the perceptual world and approached the question of inter-
subjective perceptual relations by emphasizing that, in order to perceive
others, one must first be able to perceive anything at all:
‘It [the perceived object] is already in front of us as an other, thereby
helping us to understand how there might be perception of other people.’
Merleau-Ponty then goes from there to cultural objects [a relationship to
life] and then to other people. (p. 11)
We need to distinguish between at least two meanings of intersubject-
ivity, one which focuses on the ‘body-subject’ (inter)acting on the world,
another which signifies interpersonal relations. As Barral (1993) com-
ments, there is a basic relationship between the two meanings which is
correlative, not synonymous. Merleau-Ponty uses the term ‘intersubjective’,
but in doing so points out that ‘intersubjective’ really means ‘objective’, or,
to quote Barral:
An object is intersubjective when it is known by several subjects in the
same way—that is, when it is a shared experience. The perceived object is
known to a number of subjects not as an idea, but as a concrete thing.
There is a relation between the body-subject and the thing (object); thus,
‘intersubjective’ means ‘common to body-subjects.’ When an object is thus
known to several subjects, it appears to be objectively true; it is inter-
subjective, that is to say, objective. (p. 158)
Failing to recognize these distinct senses of the term ‘intersubjective’ may
help explain why the concept is used or understood in quite different ways
within the social sciences and beyond. Another problem here, though, is that
while Merleau-Ponty’s level of analysis focused on perception of other
people, as Hoeller (1993) comments, this perception of others was described
as a kind of Gestalt ‘direct contact’. This seems to conflate perception with
interpersonal perception and does not really explain how early interpersonal
intersubjectivity was established. Merleau-Ponty’s later writings (1968),
however, did begin to fill out the manner in which intersubjective ‘object–
world’ relations should be understood, in his outline of three interrelated
ideas, reversibility, the chiasm and ‘flesh’. Starting with reversibility, this
notion underpins a move away from the constraints of the bifurcation of the
‘consciousness of’ and the object ‘in itself’ to a conception of consciousness
that cuts across and yet simultaneously interpenetrates body-ness and object-
ness, by:
. . . admitting that my synergic body is not an object, that it assembles into
a cluster the ‘consciousnesses’ adherent to its hands, its eyes, by an
operation that is in relation to them lateral, transversal; that ‘my conscious-
ness’ is not the synthetic, uncreated, centrifugal unit of a multitude of
‘consciousnesses of . . .’ which would be centrifugal like it is, that it is
sustained, subtended, by the prereflective and preobjective unity of my
body. (Merleau-Ponty, 1968, p. 142)
786 THEORY & PSYCHOLOGY 16(6)

Not only is consciousness not to be seen as a kind of centrifugal entity, in

addition the relation between ‘for Itself’ and ‘for the Other’ is described as
one of reversibility, somewhat akin to the finger in a glove that is turned
inside out—there being no need of a spectator who would be on each side.
Moreover (to quote Merleau-Ponty’s original conception):
It suffices that from one side I see the wrong side of the glove that is
applied to the right side, that I thought the one through the other (double
‘representation’ of a point or plane of the field) the chiasm is that: the
reversibility—It is through it alone that there is passage from the ‘For
Itself’ to the ‘For the Other’—In reality there is neither me nor the other
as positive, positive subjectivities.[1] There are two caverns, two open-
nesses, two stages where something will take place—and which both
belong to the same world, to the stage of Being. There is not the For Itself
and the For the Other. They are each the other side of the other . . .
—[Chiasm: I–the world; I–the other]—Chiasm my body—the things,
realized by the doubling up of my body into inside and outside—and the
doubling up of the things (their inside and their outside). (Merleau-Ponty,
1968, pp. 263–264)
This conception of the chiasm outlined in Merleau-Ponty’s last publication
as working notes articulates a body-focused, yet ‘criss-crossed’ with the
Other and/or world, phenomenology of intersubjectivity. Merleau-Ponty
refers to haptic perception as a model of the meaning of reversibility and its
relationship to the chiasm—touch: the situation where my hand feels itself
touching my other hand. So, incarnate being is not simply somebody looking
or touching, but, simultaneously and interconnectedly, also something
touched and something seen. As Olkowski (1993) puts it, the body sensed
and the body sentient are the obverse and reverse: to touch one’s own hand
is, for the hand being touched, to lose contact for a momentary instant with
the world, but then it immediately becomes an object, part of the world
being touched by the touching hand. What spans the gap between these two
experiences is our experience of our body and this gestalt Merleau-Ponty
(1968) called ‘flesh’.
Flesh should be understood as a noun similar to the term ‘Being’, as it
implicates a kind of universal, analogous to a primal element out of which is
born both self and the world. The relation of chiasm to flesh is not outlined
by Merleau-Ponty in a formal-structural manner. Instead, Wynn (1997)
describes it as some form of circuit, citing Merleau-Ponty’s description of
flesh as a kind of ‘coiling over of the visible upon the visible that traverses
us but of which we are not the origin’ (p. 258). Olkowski (1993) presses us
to understand that the seeing body and the visible body are two simultaneous
aspects of being which inhabit the fissures between the visible body and the
seer: ‘this flesh belongs to the world’ and:
The flesh of the world, because of its depth, is the interior horizon of all
sensibles. We reach this depth through the perceptual gestalt which can be
FORRESTER: PROJECTIVE IDENTIFICATION AND INTERSUBJECTIVITY 787

simultaneously a Freudian gestalt. This depth is not mere emptiness or

‘nothing,’ but its meaning is available to us only through the experiences of
our bodies . . . [and] if we are of the world, we must participate in every
articulation of the world flesh. The presence of the world to our bodies is
the presence of its flesh, its dimensionality and possibility, a sustaining
fissure out of which beings are individuated. (p. 112)
Although some psychoanalysts consider that Merleau-Ponty’s notion of the
‘flesh-as-the-self and world-flesh’ is his implicit articulation of the uncon-
scious, Pontalis (1993) notes that his phenomenology points more to the
‘other side’—the invisible dimension of each visible—rather than to the
‘other place’ that is the Freudian unconscious. Tangentially, and more
recently, the psychoanalytic theorist André Green (2000a), when discussing
the limits of infant observation research, notes in passing, ‘it seems that
those who plead for genetic continuity know only the preconscious, not the
unconscious. Their perspective is phenomenological rather than psycho-
analytical’ (p. 65).
These introductory comments serve to highlight Merleau-Ponty’s phe-
nomenological framework. There are at least two dimensions of inter-
subjectivity which together focus on an inherent and intractable
interdependence of subject–world–other. Consciousness should not be
viewed as a centrifugal entity and there is an ever-present invisibility
permeating or interpenetrating all experience—akin to the unconscious but
not a Freudian unconscious. As one reviewer of this paper noted, there is a
certain correspondence between Merleau-Ponty’s conception of conscious-
ness and Jacques-Alain Miller’s (1988) idea of extimité—the notion that
what is most intimate, internal, hidden and obscured from consciousness is
the presence of the Other: ‘at the heart of my assent to my identity to myself,
it is he who stirs me—where the extimicy of the Other is tied to the
vacillation of the subject’s identity to himself’ (p. 123).
It is also important to recognize that Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological
metaphysics is one of positivity, forward-directedness and most of all
intentionality. There is only, and always, human activity. The chiasm/
reversibility/flesh conception of ‘all that is not visible’ is one suffused with
a trajectory of intentionality. Ultimately, what might be said to constitute the
‘inside’ and ‘outside’ (self/other) of phenomenological experience is action,
engagement and use. Whatever else is going on there is nothing ‘lurking
behind’. We will see that psychoanalytic theory is based on a rather different
metaphysics, and with this in mind we can turn to considerations of
projective identification.

Projective Identification
The aim now is to provide an outline of the concept of projective identifica-
tion found in psychoanalysis, articulating what it might imply for theories of
788 THEORY & PSYCHOLOGY 16(6)

intersubjectivity. After comment on prevailing definitions, we turn to

consider what underpins this concept, particularly Melanie Klein’s ideas
regarding the drive(s), phantasy and anxiety. This leads on to the work of
Bion, and the interdependence of projection/introjection in early infancy and
discussion of how best to describe the processes said to be involved in the
emergence of projective identification.
One question here is the extent to which projective identification presup-
poses one or other particular form of intersubjectivity (interpersonal or
subject–world). We might begin with Hinshelwood’s (1989) definition of
projective identification supplemented by Schafer’s (1997) more recent
comments highlighting communication:
Projective identification was defined by Klein in 1946 as the prototype of
the aggressive object-relationship, representing an anal attack on an object
by means of forcing parts of the ego into it in order to take over its contents
or to control it and occurring in the paranoid-schizoid position from birth.
It is a ‘phantasy remote from consciousness’ that entails a belief in certain
aspects of the self being located elsewhere, with a consequent depletion
and weakened sense of self and identity, to the extent of depersonalization;
profound feelings of being lost or a sense of imprisonment may result.
(Hinshelwood, 1989, p. 179)
Projective identification . . . centers on an aspect of the self or an internal
object that is ascribed to another person in fantasy, in behaviour, and in
other subtle forms of communication. (Schafer, 1997, p. 8)
There are at least three distinct forms of projective identification, according
to the Freudian Joseph Sandler (1988). One is defined as a phenomenon
which occurs in phantasy, a process of change in the mental representation
of self and object occurring at an unconscious phantasy level: ‘the real
object employed in the process of projective identification is not regarded as
being affected—the parts of the self put into the object are put into the
fantasy object, the “internal” object, not the external object’ (Sandler, 1988,
pp. 16–17). A second type of projective identification Sandler associates
solely with countertransferential processes in analysis. This form is best
represented by ‘the analyst’s identification with the self- or object repre-
sentation in the patient’s unconscious fantasies, and with the effects of this
on the countertransference’ (p. 18).
A third form of projective identification presupposes intersubjectivity in a
more obvious manner. Projective identification is now described ‘as if the
externalization of parts of the self, or of the internal object, occurs directly
into the external object’ (Sandler, 1988, p. 18). He clarifies this meaning of
the definition:
[It is] the capacity of the caretaking mother to be attentive to and tolerant
of the needs, distress, and anger as well as the love of the infant, and to
convey, increasingly, a reassurance that she can ‘contain’ these feelings,
FORRESTER: PROJECTIVE IDENTIFICATION AND INTERSUBJECTIVITY 789

and at an appropriate time, respond in a considered and relevant way.

(Sandler, 1988, p. 23)
Through this process, described in the literature as the mother’s ‘reverie’, the
infant learns that his/her distress is not disastrous, and by internalizing the
‘containing’ function of the mother (through introjection or identification)
s/he gains an internal source of strength and well-being.
Although these definitions serve as a useful outline of projective iden-
tification, it is important to note that the concept is underpinned by a
particular theory of the drives and the associated manner in which phantasy
relates to primitive elements in the human psyche. Phantasy is a central
aspect of Klein’s understanding of unconscious processes. We need to
recognize the difference between the term ‘phantasy’ in the folk psycho-
logical sense of unrealistic, dream-like and amorphous aspects of the mind,
and the meaning of phantasy for projective identification, that is, as a central
component or aspect of the human psyche out of which symbolization,
thinking and associated cognitive processes emerge. Unlike Freud, who
considered phantasy, especially phantasy which is partly conscious, as an
expression of wish fulfilment, Klein considers phantasy and the unconscious
as interdependent phenomena, phantasy synonymous with unconscious
thought. With regard to how phantasy begins to take shape or express itself
in the infant’s early life, Hinshelwood (1989) draws attention to one way of
thinking about phantasy and early development when he comments:
An unconscious phantasy is a belief in the activity of concretely felt
‘internal objects’. This is a difficult concept to grasp. A somatic sensation
tugs along with it a mental experience that is interpreted as a relationship
with an object that wishes to cause that sensation, and is loved or hated by
the subject according to whether the object is well-meaning or has evil
intentions (i.e., a pleasant or unpleasant sensation). (pp. 34–35)
The interrelationship between phantasy and reality in Kleinian thought bears
on the issue of projective identification. Klein assumes that phantasies affect
the perception of reality, but equally, external reality affects phantasies, or,
to quote Spillius (2001) on this point: ‘there is a continual interplay between
them’ (p. 367), that is, a basic premise of Kleinian thought is that pre-
existing phantasies exert an influence of ongoing external events and how
they are experienced, and, likewise, phantasies will and can be modified so
as to accommodate to external events. This process helps account for the
changes said to occur as the infant moves from the ‘omnipotent’ phantasy-
based paranoid-schizoid position to the depressive position. Phantasy can be
seen as the direct expression of unconscious primitive drives and central to
projective identification is the interdependence of drive and object.
Green (2000b), when discussing the relationship between drive and
object, suggests that initially the psyche is of a rudimentary form, and is
threatened with disorganization, and ‘forced not to abandon its somatic
790 THEORY & PSYCHOLOGY 16(6)

source but to search for ways of reducing the tension . . . clamouring for
satisfaction’ (pp. 14–15). We might also say, following Lacan (1973) in
what is sometimes described as the ‘project doomed to failure’, that in the
infant’s unconscious efforts at overcoming the originary ‘lack’ s/he is
compelled to develop phantasy, subsequently becoming part and parcel of
imagining that what is demanded by the Other is what is required. It is
phantasy that is the basis for our imaginings of the Desire of the Other. To
quote Green (2000b):
This formulation may become clearer if, in place of the drive, we put the
infant, and in place of the object we put the mother and/or the breast. We
will then be obliged to recognize that, in order for the system to work,
shared aims must exist: the desire for satisfaction in the child being echoed
by the mother’s desire that he or she be satisfied. It may be added that
satisfaction achieves two things at once by incorporating both that the
object provides, and, by metonymic and metaphorical transference, the
object itself. . . . to this description one may add that the act of incorpora-
tion not only eliminates the waiting intrinsic to dissatisfaction, but creates
satisfaction through phantasy. (p. 15)
The view of the unconscious in this account is certainly not what one might
call positive and infused with an ongoing forward-focused intentionality. We
need to remember that the Freudian conception of mind is of an entity
(conscious/unconscious) split against itself. The instinct-derived demands of
the unconscious constantly seek to undermine whatever might constitute
ego-identity as it develops, and beyond. The somewhat insidious and ever-
present ‘destructive-drive’ orientation of the dynamic unconscious (the
Kleinian life/death drive contrast) provides the backdrop to an ever-present
and enduring sense of anxiety in the organism.
Highlighting a specifically intersubjective reading of projective identifica-
tion requires some consideration of Bion (1962) and the ‘container–
contained’ model of early experience, one which parallels elements of
Winnicott’s (1987) concept of maternal holding and the ‘good-enough’
mother. It is the idea of the mother being a ‘container’ for the infant’s
projections that is most associated with Bion (1962), who also employed the
notion of ‘normal’ projective identification as the basic building block for
generating thoughts out of experiences and perceptions. His model of
containing and the ‘alpha function’ is probably best seen as an elaborate
attempt to link together the intersubjective process of ‘reverie’ (where the
mother is able to contain projected identifications emanating from the infant)
and the containing of the infant’s intolerable experiences through her
transformative words and actions. Symington (1986) provides an apt com-
ment on the mother’s reverie and ‘containment’, noting:
But what does it really mean when we say that the mother is able to
contain these projections? Negatively it means that she does not herself
become so depressed that she is unable to respond to her baby, or that she
FORRESTER: PROJECTIVE IDENTIFICATION AND INTERSUBJECTIVITY 791

fears her baby, or that she is disgusted by the baby or envious of the baby
. . . . now if the baby gets [such] a negative response, he feels that he is too
much for his mother and himself internalizes a bad sense of himself.
Positively, on the other hand, the presence of reverie in the mother enables
her to ‘tune in’ to her baby so that when he makes gestures, looks at her,
gurgles to her she is in turn able to respond with gestures which meet his.
The baby feels comforted and satisfied. That is what we mean . . . when we
say that the baby’s anxieties are contained and returned to him in modified
form. (p. 291)
Hinshelwood (1989) describes Bion’s model as a psychic structuring pro-
cess somehow analogous to the mathematical concept of a function identifi-
able from the behaviour of variables. Bion’s (1962) distinction between
‘alpha’ function and ‘beta’ elements meant the ‘separation of elements
of perception into those usable for thinking and dreaming (alpha), and
others, unconsciousness and unassimilable raw data, which he called beta-
elements’ (Hinshelwood, 1989, p. 190). In the mother’s state of ‘reverie’ she
performs this initial separation through her own use of her alpha function.
Bion (1962) again:
The mother’s capacity for reverie is here considered as inseparable from
the content for clearly one depends on the other. If the feeding mother
cannot allow reverie or if the reverie is allowed but is not associated with
love for the child or its father this fact will be communicated to the infant
even though incomprehensible to the infant. . . . The term reverie may be
applied to almost any content. I wish to reserve it only for such content as
is suffused with love or hate. Using it in this restricted sense reverie is that
state of mind which is open to the reception of any ‘objects’ from the loved
object and is therefore capable of reception of the infant’s projective
identifications whether they are felt by the infant to be good or bad. In
short, reverie is a factor of the mother’s alpha-function. (p. 36)
To some extent, projective identification might be interpreted as an inter-
subjective theory of emotion and thinking, and of all the post-Kleinians,
Bion’s (1962) model appears the most intersubjective, that is, in Merleau-
Ponty’s interpersonal sense of the term. However, Bion also maintained that
projective identification represents an omnipotent phantasy where disliked or
unwanted parts of oneself can be expelled and projected onto, and into,
another object (person). His emphasis on the notion of ‘container–contained’
figuring intersubjectivity nevertheless remains resonant with Freud’s origi-
nal focus on the role of constitutional factors in the organism, as indicated
by these comments on the infant’s tolerance of frustration:
An infant endowed with marked capacity for toleration of frustration
might survive the ordeal of a mother incapable of reverie and therefore
incapable of supplying its mental needs. At the other extreme an infant
markedly incapable of tolerating frustration cannot survive without break-
down even the experience of projective identification with a mother
capable of reverie; nothing less than unceasing breast feeding would serve
792 THEORY & PSYCHOLOGY 16(6)

and that is not possible through lack of appetite if for no other reason.
(Bion, 1962, pp. 36–37)
This conception of projective identification emphasizes the significance of
early ‘self–other’ differentiation. There is, though, the puzzle of whether the
very act of defending against instinctual ‘death-drive’ forces is part and
parcel of what helps sediment the ego’s boundaries, which brings us to
the question of how we are to understand the processes involved in the
emergence of projective identification.
The aim of projective identification mechanisms at the ‘abnormal’ end of
the psychological spectrum is, to paraphrase Hinshelwood (1989), to evacu-
ate violently a painful state of mind leading to forcibly entering an object, in
phantasy, for immediate relief, and often with the aim of an intimidating
control of an object. As part of ‘normal’ development, the aim is to
introduce into the object a state of mind, as a means of communicating with
it about this mental state. How is it, then, that the infant child possesses the
capacity to engage in even the most primitive introjections and projections,
prior to projective identification processes? There is a danger of theoretical
circularity here—it is through introjective and projective processes that
boundaries between self and object are first constructed, yet the ability to
introject or project presupposes intersubjectivity and associated self–other
boundary conditions. Hinshelwood (1989) points out that although Klein
described how the ego disintegrates under certain conditions, she did not
explain how such an extremely fragile ego could introject and project in the
first place, especially given that ‘these are functions which require a firm
degree of ego-stability and boundary’ (p. 426).
The post-Kleinian Esther Bick (1968), whose work is based in part on
infant observation studies, provides one account of what might take place.
Consciousness or experience begins interdependently with exposure to the
‘first object’. Keeping in mind the central Kleinian assumption that conflict-
ing drives (life and death instincts) are ever-present in the infant organism,
and with reference to what seems to be involved in holding together even the
first elements of what might constitute a personality or ego, this ‘keeping
together’ experience is ‘performed initially from outside’. Bick (1968)
argues that:
. . . in its most primitive form the parts of the personality are felt to have no
binding force amongst themselves and must therefore be held together in a
way what is experienced by them passively, by the skin functioning as a
boundary. (p. 484)
Bick suggests that the baby has to struggle for the capacity to introject, and
that this achievement of both infant and mother is related to embodiment:
‘The stage of primal splitting and idealization of self and object can now be
seen to rest on this earlier process of containment of self and object by their
respective “skins”’ (p. 484). Embodiment presupposes containment and the
FORRESTER: PROJECTIVE IDENTIFICATION AND INTERSUBJECTIVITY 793

establishment of boundaries, and it would seem that, before the infant can do
anything at all, it has to experience an object in such a way that it intuits the
concept of a space that can hold things. Hinshelwood’s (1989) summary of
the significance of skin is worth quoting in full:
The skin: The infant, in gaining the nipple in his mouth, has an experience
of acquiring such an object—an object which closes the hole in the
boundary that the mouth seems to represent. With this first introjection
comes the sense of a space into which objects can be introjected. Through
her observations of the infant, it became clear to Bick that once he has
introjected such a primary containing object, he identifies it with his skin—
or to put it another way, skin contact stimulates the experience (uncon-
scious phantasy) of an object containing the parts of his personality as
much as the nipple in the mouth does. (p. 427)
This experience is the creation of an ‘inside’:
. . . the first introjection is the introjection of an object which provides a
space into which objects can be introjected. Before projection can happen
there has to be an internal object capable of containing which can be
projected into an object before that object can be felt to contain a
projection. (p. 194)
Thus a unified space is created where before there was none. What we are
considering in these very early moments of life is said to be the infant’s
unconscious. Alongside there is the significance of the organism’s earliest
‘passive experience’, which itself gives rise to the possibility of the creation
of an internal space. Only with the existence of an internal psychologically
enclosing space can the capacity to introject emerge. It is on the basis of this
initial introjection that projection and projective identification can then
occur. At the same time the whole process is engendered by the inherent and
chronic anxieties arising from within—the very process of splitting and
projection enabling the infant to disperse the destructive forces of the death
instinct. As Klein (1946) put it:
I found that concurrently with the greedy and devouring internalisation of
the object—first of all the breast—the ego in varying degrees fragments
itself and its objects, and in this way achieves a dispersal of the destructive
impulses and of internal persecutory anxiety. (p. 23)
Keeping in mind earlier comments on alternative definitions of projective
identification, it would seem that, however else we are to understand this
phenomenon, it appears to imply intersubjectivity. However, it is not
interpersonal in a transparently dyadic fashion, that is, there is an interde-
pendence between projective identification and underlying conceptions of
the unconscious, drives and internal motivational processes. At the same
time, certain ambiguities become apparent: for example, on the one hand, it
is the danger of disintegration that impels the drives (the infants) to search
out the object, yet, on the other hand, the ego is said to protect itself from
794 THEORY & PSYCHOLOGY 16(6)

internal destructive elements by partially fragmenting itself and thus dis-

sipating such forces. In part this is resolved in that it is the sensation of skin,
the world as flesh, metaphorically and literally, which provides the condi-
tions for the production of unconscious phantasy, the phantasy that a
bounded space has come into existence. For now, we might say that, in
contrast to Merleau-Ponty’s intersubjective phenomenology, the inter-
subjectivity that is interdependent with projective identification is by defini-
tion interpersonally focused prior to any ‘self–world/object’ orientation. The
drive(s) seeking outward expression moves towards not the world of things
but to a human (object).

Implications for Contemporary Theories of Intersubjectivity

We move finally to three theories of intersubjectivity and consider whether

the concept, and associated presuppositions, of projective identification
might further extend or inform the theoretical framework each inhabits. In
turn, we shall consider Stern’s (1985) psychoanalytically informed theory,
Trevarthen and Aitken’s (2001) conception from developmental psychology
and finally, Merleau-Ponty’s formulation of intersubjectivity expressed in
such work as Wynn (1997), Barral (1983) and Mallin (1989).2 With regard
to the intersubjective theory of Stern (1985), we can make a number of
points which seem to distinguish his theory from more traditional psycho-
analytic theorists who are often more cautious about the specifics of the pre-
verbal subjective life. There is considerable focus on what Stern terms
invariant self-awareness, a form of non-reflexive consciousness said to
emerge as a result of the infant’s sensory-motor-affective-perceptual matrix
of organization—a kind of internal emerging self-consciousness which
arises as a by-product of the organism’s ability to recognize distinctions
between consistent and inconsistent patterns of experience. This brings
together the realist ideas of the perceptual psychologist James Gibson
(1979)—particularly the idea of the affordance—research findings from
ethology and developmental psychology (e.g. Trevarthen & Hubley, 1978)
and certain elements of object-relations theory—particularly Winnicott
(1974)—all alongside Stern’s (1985) idea of affect attunement. This he
describes as:
. . . the performance of behaviours that express the quality of feeling of a
shared affect state without imitating the exact behavioural expression of the
inner state. . . . imitation is the predominant way [parents] teach external
forms and attunement the predominant way to commune with or indicate
sharing of internal states. Imitation renders form; attunement renders
feeling . . . they seem to occupy two ends of a spectrum. (p. 142)
On the emergent sense of self, Stern comments, in a manner not dissimilar to
Merleau-Ponty’s Gestalt notion of ‘direct contact’:
FORRESTER: PROJECTIVE IDENTIFICATION AND INTERSUBJECTIVITY 795

By ‘sense’ I mean simple (non-self-reflexive) awareness. We are speaking

at the level of direct experience, not concept . . . an invariant pattern
of awareness (which is) a form of organization. It is the organizing
subjective experience of whatever it is that will later be verbally referenced
as ‘self’. (1985, p. 7)
Leaving aside the observation that to have an experience at all presupposes
an entity who can experience, this developmental account locates inter-
subjectivity (or at least intersubjective experience) as emerging somewhere
between 6 and 15 months, itself resting on, and developing from, a ‘core’
subjective self, preceded by a kind of emergent self-subjectivity. For Stern,
intersubjectivity is conceived of as a domain of relatedness where mental
states can now be read, matched, misaligned or misattuned. We also find a
representational cognitive dimension. In his account of how intersubjective
experiences actually operate, Stern (1985) borrows from Tulving’s (1983)
model of memory, specifically the episodic ‘repetitive-realist’ formulation,
maintaining that actions which are both partly repetitive and partly altered
become laid down as action schemata in the child’s mind, forming
representations-of-interactions-that-have-become-generalized (RIGs). RIGs
play an important role in Stern’s feedback-formulated explanation of how
the organizing principle of ‘sense-of-self’ awareness moves from the core-
self stage through the subjective stage and finally into a verbal sense of self.
Ultimately this way of thinking presupposes the significance of the in-
tegrative properties of memorial representations—dynamic memory objects
which bring together all those generalized event representations of inter-
active moments with significant others.
One surprising aspect of this psychoanalytically informed theory is that
there is no place for, or discussion of, projective identification. Instead the
specific details regarding intersubjectivity are transformed into cognitive-
representational processes—particularly with respect to the ‘emergent self’
stage—and for all intents and purposes intersubjectivity does not exist as
such during the first year of life. There also seems something of an
overemphasis on one party—the mother, and the significance of her attune-
ment to the infant. The metaphor of attunement, while emphasizing the
positive tenor of the processes described by the theory, places too much
reliance on simply accepting Stern’s (1985) subjective ‘core-self’ self-
organizing principle, something both Merleau-Ponty and the post-Kleinians
discount. Although there may be grounds for thinking that Stern’s (1985)
approach could be supplemented or informed with ideas central to projective
identification, to help inform the somewhat vague concept of interiority
within his framework, the question of ‘why identification at all?’ would
remain unanswered without significant modification of the assumptions
underlying the approach.
Trevarthen and Aitken’s (2001) more recent article on infant inter-
subjectivity provides a useful overview of an influential intersubjectivity
796 THEORY & PSYCHOLOGY 16(6)

theory in developmental psychology, and a rare example in that part of the

discipline of a theory which predicates the significance of the social over the
individual. Seeking to redress the cognitive dominant view of the infant in
psychology, they outline a theoretical framework aimed at integrating recent
neuropsychological evidence with imitation research, incorporating work on
early interaction analysis and, in a similar way to Stern (1985), the realist-
perceptual ideas of Gibson (1979). Here the internal psychic life of the infant
is conceptualized in terms of emergent neuronal and neuro-psychological
system processes, coupled with the evolutionary significance of the infant’s
predispositions to recognize and respond to human signals, and alongside
intrinsic motivational processes. The focus is on how intersubjective pro-
cesses are not only important but also essential for cognitive processes,
We believe that the existence of specialised innate ‘human-environment-
expectant’ social regulatory and intersubjective functions in the infant mind
has been firmly established [by research evidence], and argue that the
corresponding anticipatory motives constitute an essential framework for
the regulation of all human cognitive development; guiding, limiting,
extending, and evaluating what the individual can discover inside and
outside his or her body. (Trevarthen & Aitken, 2001, p. 4)
There are a number of difficulties in assuming a priori the significance of the
individual. We noted above a discourse of ‘infant discovery’ which begs the
question of individuation once again, and intersubjectivity is now a func-
tional component of (the infant’s) mind. For Trevarthen and Aitken (2001),
infant survival and development depend on communication with a caregiver
to service the baby’s needs for an emotional attachment, ‘but also to
maintain and develop an intimate emotionally expressed companionship in
changing purposes and conscious experiences’ (p. 7)—here they cite the
significance of imitation. Again, and in contrast to Merleau-Ponty (1962),
who emphasizes the unlearned instinctive nature of infant mimicry, the
significance of mutuality is marked. The approach exhibits a particular
psychosocial orientation to evolutionary theory as a presuppositional frame-
work, but the conceptual distance between this form of intersubjectivity and
either Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy or projective identification remains con-
siderable. To that extent the concept of projective identification has no
obvious implications for Trevarthen and Aitken’s (2001) model except that
it constitutes something of an explanatory challenge in that the psycho-
analytically informed conceptual rationale underpinning projective identi-
fication exhibits fewer metaphysical lacunae and in that sense may be
theoretically more fertile.
Needless to say, any consideration of projective identification with respect
to intersubjectivity should address itself to Merleau-Ponty’s original for-
mulations of the self–other relationship, noting, as we did earlier, that a
distinction needs to be made between the ‘inter’subjective relationship of
self to world-objects, and an interpersonal ‘self–other’ intersubjectivity.
FORRESTER: PROJECTIVE IDENTIFICATION AND INTERSUBJECTIVITY 797

Consider how Merleau-Ponty (1968) outlines this formulation in his later

work, which here warrants an extended quotation:
As soon as we see other seers . . . for the first time also, my movements no
longer proceed unto the things to be seen, to be touched, or unto my own
body occupied in seeing and touching them, but they address themselves to
the body in general and for itself (whether it be my own or that of another),
because for the first time, through the other body, I see that, in its coupling
with the flesh of the world, the body contributes more than it receives,
adding to the world that I see the treasure necessary for what the other
body sees. For the first time, the body no longer couples itself up with the
world, it clasps another body, applying itself to it carefully with its whole
extension, forming tirelessly with its hands the strange statue which in its
turn gives everything it receives; the body is lost outside of the world and
its goals, fascinated by the unique occupation of floating in Being with
another life, of making itself the outside of its inside and the inside of its
outside. (p.144)
There is an interdependent relationship here between ‘self-seeing-world’
and ‘world-through-other-seers’, and one that signifies movement from
one to the other. In this discourse one can recognize pervasive idioms of
shared/sharing, intentionality, positivity and ‘other-self-identity’. The met-
aphor of contributing ‘treasure’ as part and parcel of interpersonal inter-
subjectivity is a good example of this. Interpreting the specifically
interpersonal intersubjective elements of this approach, Wynn (1997) argues
that incorporating Merleau-Ponty’s concept of flesh and the chiasm can
overcome ambiguous aspects of psychoanalytic thinking on early develop-
ment. Such an interpretation of the chiasm describes the mother–infant
relationship as one where they ‘flex and bend towards each other and
inscribe each other, yet retain their own particularity’ (p. 253). Every
relationship is ‘spread-out’ with reversibility never complete, both sides of
the chiasm not fully interlacing, bending yet remaining distinct. Paraphras-
ing Mallin’s (1989) complementary view, Wynn (1997) suggests that it (the
infant–mother chiasm) is a relationship not of possession but of disposses-
sion, contending that:
. . . independence is a central constituent of any chiasmic relationship
because the chiasm can continue to be generated only if its members can
remain separate enough to bend toward each other (and continue to
articulate themselves and the relationship through such bends) without
collapsing, being absorbed or broken in the process. (p. 258)
Essentially, Wynn (1997) argues that the ‘becoming-a-person’ is dependent
on the mother–infant relationship and what she calls the intertwining and
dehiscence of the circle of touching–being touched, feeling–being felt,
hearing–being heard that is the ‘particular history of each particular mother-
infant field’ (p. 258). In this way the infant’s innate body structures become
specified and differentiated, that is, through contact with the mother, who in
798 THEORY & PSYCHOLOGY 16(6)

turn initiates the ‘deepening and specification’ of the mother’s perception.

Wynn’s reading of Merleau-Ponty’s ‘interpersonal’ theory of intersubjectiv-
ity resonates with her psychoanalytic perspective on the early mother–infant
relationship; however, her interpretation rests more with Winnicott’s (1974)
concept of maternal ‘holding’ and containment than with the conceptually
more challenging notion of projective identification.

Concluding Comment

This paper set out to examine whether there are any fruitful or realizable
theoretical openings from placing together Merleau-Ponty’s views on inter-
subjectivity and the psychoanalytic concept of projective identification.
These concluding points serve by way of a short commentary. With regard
to the actual processes involved in the emergence of projective identifica-
tion, it seems to matter a great deal how we are to understand Bick’s (1968)
description of those very fragmentary components said to precede ego
formation and the initial construction of an internal space. Within Merleau-
Ponty’s philosophy it is hard to detect any subsidiary issue which indicates
there is an existential problematic underpinning the very fact that fragmenta-
tion is an originating issue for the human psyche. Again we are reminded, as
indicated above, that there are two contrasting metaphysical positions at
work here: one focused solely on intentionality, movement and activity (on
and in the world); the other where the human condition is essentially one of
potential disjunction and disintegration with an associated sense of enduring
potential trauma, or at least ever-present anxiety. For one, the infant’s
earliest experiences are described as a body-subject ‘fascinated by the
unique opportunity of floating in Being with another life’; for the other, the
infant is required to develop the phantasy of the internal object so as to
protect him- or herself from ever-present potentially destructive elements
from the unconscious. To some psychoanalytic theorists, Merleau-Ponty’s
later philosophy may give the impression of articulating what they would
term the unconscious, but it turns out to be quite different from the Freudian
conception. The concept of projective identification carries with it a set of
associated terms and ideas, particularly the significance of the drive and the
object, which together call into question whether we can talk sensibly about
‘infant’ intersubjectivity.
It would also seem that Merleau-Ponty’s intersubjectivity is concerned
with subject–world first, before consideration moves to the intersubjectivity
of self–Other. It just so happens that his version of subject–world inter-
subjectivity is deeply anti-individualistic and non-centrifugal with respect to
consciousness, given, as Descombes (1980) points out, that the programme
of this phenomenology was to describe precisely what lies between the ‘for
itself’ and the ‘in itself’, between consciousness and the thing (object). At all
FORRESTER: PROJECTIVE IDENTIFICATION AND INTERSUBJECTIVITY 799

times it is only the intentional act, perceptual-tactile-embodied-symbolic,

which provides the conditions within which an ‘outside/inside’ boundary is
established, and one that is constantly provisional and contextual. From this
point of view one might surmise that whatever else projective identification
is, it is by definition social—a kind of fragmented potentiating connected-
ness with physical-social reality. Certainly it would seem that the earliest
moments of whatever we understand as the infant’s introjected ‘passive
experience’ are infused with something akin to Merleau-Ponty’s ‘self-to-
world’ conception of intersubjectivity. Furthermore, if it is the case that the
infant is dependent on an Other to ‘intuit’ an internal conceptual space
before projective identificatory processes can begin, then it also implies that
whatever we understand as the self will be part and parcel of the prevailing
discourse of the self germane to the Other’s cultural discourse. Conceptions
of the self are forever cultural phenomena calling into question conceptions
of a universal or core self.
Considered from the perspective of projective identification, however,
intersubjectivity is somewhat different. Green (2000b) notes that within
psychoanalysis there is a danger of oversimplification of intersubjective
relations if one forgets the mutual relation of object and the drive. Noting
that the construction of the object (intra-psychically, and initially through
the introjective creation of an ‘space-that-becomes-unified’) leads retro-
actively to the construction of the drive which constructs the object, he
asserts:
Construction of the object is only conceivable if it is cathected by the drive.
However, when the object has been constructed in the psyche, this leads to
construction of the drive après coup, the missing object giving birth to the
conception of the drive as an expression of the subject. One then sees that
there is a possibility of conceiving desire or of being aware of the instinctual
animation that has given birth to desire and to the object. (p. 17)
By way of summing up, this essay has brought into focus something of
the conceptual background of Merleau-Ponty’s theory of intersubjectivity
and highlighted the importance of recognizing different senses of the
concept. One observation that emerges when we consider projective identi-
fication alongside intersubjectivity is the metaphysical contrast between a
more positive-oriented conception of embodied infant intentionality in
Merleau-Ponty and the more existentially problematic psychoanalytically
informed intersubjectivity presupposed by the idea of projective identifica-
tion. Interestingly, the conceptual framework found within child psycho-
analysis appears to offer more theoretical promise as regards understanding
something of the detail of the earliest moments of the infant’s life. Whether
one orients towards psychoanalytic or phenomenological presuppositions,
intersubjectivity pre-figures a theory of the ‘subject’ and the question of
separateness and individuation demands theoretical consideration. Contem-
porary theories of intersubjectivity in developmental psychology for the
800 THEORY & PSYCHOLOGY 16(6)

most part appear to evade this particular question or instead orient towards
the pre-eminence of those classic psychological entities, the functions of
cognition, that were the subject of Merleau-Ponty’s original critique over
fifty years ago.

Notes
1. This sentence as in original quotation (Merleau-Ponty, 1968, p. 264).
2. For reasons of space we leave aside, yet recognize, other conceptions of
intersubjectivity, for example ethnomethodologically inspired intersubjectivity.
This is, by definition, a member’s method, or set of methodic procedures oriented
to by participants. Within the conversation analytic framework it would seem,
though, that we cannot speak of pre-linguistic intersubjectivity, given that, in
respect of the conditions necessary for attributing accountability, the infant does
not possess the ability to produce a ‘methodic method’. With reference to adult–
adult intersubjectivity, Schegloff (1992) describes intersubjectivity in terms of the
procedural infrastructure of interaction, emphasizing the technicalities of what is
known in conversation analysis as third-position repair, essentially descriptions of
methodical procedures that people orient to and produce to indicate that they
share an understanding of their ongoing dialogue (or not).

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Acknowledgements. The author would like to thank Kareen Malone,

three anonymous reviewers and David Reason (University of Kent) for
their helpful comments.
802 THEORY & PSYCHOLOGY 16(6)

Michael A. Forrester teaches psychology at the University of Kent. His

research interests focus on children’s conversational skills, psychoanalysis
and conversation analysis. His publications include Psychology of Lan-
guage (Sage, 1996) and Psychology of the Image (Routledge, 2001).
Address: Department of Psychology, Keynes College, University of Kent,
Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NP, UK. [email: m.a.forrester@ukc.ac.uk]