Misogyny, Projective Identification, and Mentalization

Psychoanalytic, Social, and Institutional Manifestations

Karyne E. Messina

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429576683
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Corruption & Misconduct
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Misogyny, Projective Identification, and Mentalization looks at how the psychoanalytic concepts of projective identification and mentalization may explain the construction of society and how they have enabled misogyny to be expressed in social, political, and institutional settings. Karyne E. Messina explores how misogyny has affected the perception and treatment of women through analysis of a range of examples of individual women and groups.

The first part explores projective identification as a mechanism for the suppression of women, looking at the origins of the concept in psychoanalysis and its expansion. The author examines the story of Clara Thompson as an example, arguing that her virtual disappearance from the history of psychiatry and psychoanalysis itself is a telling example of this process at work. The second part of the book uses four examples of individuals, including the recent election loss by Hillary Clinton in 2016, to show that projective identification can (particularly in political and cultural settings) overtake and motivate groups as well as individuals, and lead to violence, atrocity, humiliation, and dismissal of and against women. Part three then features case studies of four groups of women from the 20th century, including victims of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, showing how projective identification against groups has occurred.

With specific referenceto the erasure of women's contributions in society, both individually and collectively, and the trauma that arises from the many effects of regarding women as a group as "less" or "other", this is a book which sets a new agenda for understanding how misogyny is expressed socially. Misogyny, Projective Identification, and Mentalization will be of interest to psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists as well as scholars of politics, gender, and cultural studies.

PART I

One mechanism that explains our violent world

1

A mechanism that harms

Projective identification as a force that destroys

Early developments; formation of the idea

Women have accomplished so much, yet our voices are not always heard. When we do manage to rise to the top, we are often silenced. Why does this happen? Do we allow this phenomenon to occur, do we encourage it or is it foisted upon us? My major hypothesis suggests that there is a psychological mechanism at play that causes us to stop short of the finish line or slow down toward the end of the race, primarily because of unconscious forces that push against our forward movement.

At times women are behind the wish to undo the accomplishments of other women, but most often it is men, because of their historical position of power. They perpetuate this process of elimination because of an unfamiliar and unwanted sense of badness, one that they must thrust onto another to preserve themselves.

That said, neither men nor women are inherently bad, but inherent in all of us are aggressive impulses and tendencies that are fraught with explosive possibilities. We can destroy our children, families, and countries, not because we are evil, but rather because we have not modulated, or had modulated for us, aspects of ourselves that are unknowable, aspects we cannot bear. Hence, we project these things outwardly, ridding ourselves of unwanted feelings and ways of being that we do not or cannot accept: the “not-me” parts of ourselves. We see this phenomenon occurring on the current world stage, where all types of actions that are hard to comprehend are directed toward others, from vindictive verbal attacks to horrendous acts of terror. How and why do these things occur? Why are such happenings so ubiquitous? Do we not know what we do to others? How does simple conflict escalate into attempts to annihilate individuals, groups of people, and entire countries?

In an attempt to better understand how these things happen, I will examine this key psychoanalytic concept that is so relevant when trying to make sense of what we see in our world today. Ideas developed by Melanie Klein (1946) can help explain the tendency to disavow and then attribute to others what we cannot tolerate within. The major mechanism that destroys the other is called projective identification. It is primarily a primitive process, one wherein an unacceptable or even monstrous aspect of an individual’s internal world must be expelled.

While Klein did not coin the term herself, since it was used earlier by Edoardo Weiss to describe choice of sexual partners (Spillius, 2007), the specific process to which I am referring was described by Klein in 1946 as she was developing her ideas about intrapsychic states of mind she called “positions.” Simply put, she was talking about ways in which people experience and relate to each other. In what she called the “paranoid-schizoid” position, Klein (1946) talked about the need to mentally “get rid of” bad, threatening aspects of the self that are too much to bear. From this perspective, others are not experienced as complete or whole with good and bad qualities, but rather as fragmented, i.e., the entirety of that person’s being is not acknowledged. In this state, one’s own unbearable feelings and thoughts are projected outwardly and thereafter attributed to the other because they cannot be tolerated. In the paranoid-schizoid position, wherein anxiety is intense and mostly persecutory, people figuratively or literally retaliate, seek revenge, hurt, or otherwise “get back at” a person or people with no understanding of what is occurring. It is a state in which raw aggression and aggressive tendencies are ever-present. Thinking is distorted and action without thought predominates; in other words, action replaces thought (Klein, 1946).

In discussing the paranoid-schizoid position, Klein (1946) also described the infant’s need to mentally erase aspects of the self that are threatening to his or her sense of security, aspects that are too much to bear. In the paranoid-schizoid position, anxiety is intense because the projector fears persecution for what he or she has expelled onto another.

When movement or growth occurs, however, when aggression and other unbearable feelings are modulated, modified, or made tolerable in some manner, the way of experiencing the self and others shifts. In this second state or way of relating to the world, the position Klein (1946) called the “depressive position” (not to be confused with clinical depression), feelings are “taken back” or reclaimed. They no longer have to be projected, but can be experienced as belonging to the self. Others are experienced as whole people, with various qualities and characteristics; some may be appreciated and some not, but good and bad qualities can coexist within the same person without one or more parts having to be eradicated or disavowed. In this position, opportunities for mourning, repair, and learning from past experience become possible. Thinking also emerges or is restored in this state. This process of change occurs in the context of a relational world wherein one’s initial raw aggression is modified and made bearable with the help of another or others.

Although Klein’s (1946) ideas were originally conceptualized as a way to describe how children develop intrapsychically, they were later woven into her understanding of adult patients. Today they are used as they were originally conceived, and have also been elaborated upon by various people to describe how groups of people interact (e.g. Bion, 1962). This includes infant and mother dyads, reigning rulers and their people, patient and therapist pairs, as well as couples and families. Other theorists, for example Donald Meltzer (1973) and C. Fred Alford (1989), have used these concepts to describe aspects of internal terror and social theory.

Since Kleinian concepts have evolved to include many situations and now have wide-ranging appeal in terms of describing the human condition, I believe their application should be considered when thinking about all interactions that are perceived as having gone awry, whether they be interpersonal exchanges, historical, recent political developments, or global issues of war. When communication between two people or among many breaks down, or has not occurred at all, varying degrees of difficulty ranging from simple misunderstanding to massive acts of terror can result as individuals or groups of people rid themselves of negative feelings. They then project these feelings onto others and proceed by navigating in the world as if the original feelings emanated from another or others in the first place. This in turn provides justification for the projector(s) to engage in violence against the perceived enemy or enemies, whether in thoughts, words, or deeds. Hence, while many factors are involved in conflict of any type, I believe the mechanism of projective identification is a major component of the process. When any type of revenge or crime or heinous act of terror against another is committed, either by one individual against another or by one group against another group, projection of some form of aggression that cannot be tolerated rears its ugly head.

To further elaborate on the aggression and aggressive tendencies inherent in all of us, it is worth considering certain aspects of Newton’s Laws of Thermodynamics and Einstein’s later interpretation of them. Extrapolating from and incorporating the essence of the idea that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but only modified (Newton’s First Law of Thermodynamics), one might reasonably postulate that the same theory applies to aggression. Whether we are born with it, as many theorists believe, or whether it emerges as part of normal development as we encounter inevitable frustrations and disappointments in life, aggression is part of the human condition. It is within each of us as long as we are alive and does not simply disappear; for like energy or, perhaps more aptly stated, as a form of energy, it cannot be destroyed, but only modulated or modified in some way. Assuming that raw aggression does exist within all of us, then it must be converted to a more palatable form to be experienced, contained, understood within, and then used productively. If this transformation does not happen, violence against the self or others can occur in a myriad of ways, including the infliction of pain and terror upon people since, as is the case with energy, aggression does not simply disappear.

Since Klein’s time, further development of this psychoanalytic phenomenon has emerged, and it is through the lens of these advancements that I analyze what happened to the women, and groups of women, whose stories I tell. Violence was done to their emotions, their character, and their very psyches. Historically, this has been at the hands of men and groups of men, because men have been in positions of power for the most part. Why, in addition to the cultural prejudices I suggest, have men treated women with such aggression? What was it about their own experiences that has permitted men to act in the ways they have, and why have women accepted their behavior? And what hope exists for remedying the damage that has been done? I provide explanations of the processes involved in projective identification as well as illustrations, usually from my private practice, of these concepts as they emerge in everyday life. I also discuss how projections can be taken back and the benefits that can ensue from this action.

Expansion of the concept; others add to the definition

From another, similar perspective, Otto Kernberg contrasted projection with projective identification: “Projective identification is seen as an early or primitive defense operation, [while] projection [is] later or more advanced and derivative in nature.” Nevertheless, “the operation of [projective identification has] … cognitive preconditions” (1987, p. 795). In projective identification, the projector believes that the object or recipient is transformed, or at least altered by—“identified” with—the negative fantasy he or she has projected. He then behaves toward the recipient as if his projected, despised self has been internalized by its object and is “true” (Kernberg, 1987).

In this classical view, the object (or victim) of projection is not considered separately; in practice, moreover, the object is almost always the analyst. Early writers sometimes used the term “introjection” to characterize the effect on the object. Others noted the connection of projective identification to psychoanalytic “splitting” (Grotstein, 1981).

A more recent distinction deserves mention, since it is based on an ambiguity within the original theory of projective identification: Does the object of the projection “receive” it or even know about it (a “two-body” situation), or can she or he be unaware of the unconscious fantasy (a “one-body” situation), as Klein (1946) believed? This issue is well delineated by John Zinner (2001), who turns to Kernberg (1987) to define the “two-body” process: The patient projects the intolerable onto an object and maintains a connection to what has been projected, thereafter “attempting to control the object as a continuation of the defensive efforts against the intolerable intrapsychic experience, and … unconsciously inducing in the object what is projected in the actual interactions with the object” (Zinner, 2001, pp. 7–8). “Projective identification does not exist where there is no interaction between projector and recipient” (Ogden, 1982, p. 14). The distinction may turn on the question of who is “identifying” with the ugly fantasy-person: the projector (one-body) or the recipient (two-body), subject or object.

Zinner (2001), as a practicing psychiatrist, argues for the one-body view in which the patient both projects his hostile fantasy and identifies with it as part of his image of the recipient. The latter does not perceive some mysterious Doppelgänger within herself, but recognizes the situation only by the behavior of the projector. Following Kernberg’s (1987) proposal, Zinner (2001) suggests a set of developmental stages in the functioning of projective identification, no longer limited to the hallucinations and delusions of psychotic or borderline personalities, or even to the analytic situation. “It seems to me common sense that projective identification must be a ubiquitous phenomenon which is not limited to the psychoses and severe character disorders” (p. 15), but is utilized as a defense in neurosis, in transference, and in normal emotional conflicts. Some of this latter activity, Zinner concedes, could be called simple “projection.” The projector with these less-severe problems can usually be helped to clarify the self-other boundary, to acknowledge and reinternalize the projection, and to modify the distortion and regain a realistic image of the recipient. My own practice encourages me to concur.

But Zinner (2001) wishes to extend the definition of projective identification still further, into a conscious mental activity in which defensive needs to externalize no longer significantly influence the construction of the object image. The subject is, in a probing fashion, temporarily loosening the self-object boundary in an effort to find a resonance in his own experience with what his senses are telling him about the external object.

When following Zinner’s (2001) thinking as stated above, the projector is merely trying to understand another person, to “approximate the actuality of the other” (p. 18). Thus, according to Zinner, one form of projective identification is empathy—the capacity to put oneself in another’s shoes. It describes a process of the conscious mind. From this perspective we create our own versions of people based on who we are, who they are, and what we make of who they are at any given moment in time, a useful concept and one that differs from the defensive use of projective identification.

It is clear that various definitions of this concept can help us better understand the ways in which people interact, keep others at an arm’s length, unconsciously damage the other, or simply communicate.

Working with a powerful unconscious force: illustrations of despair and the emergence of hope

In my work I primarily use the concept of projective identification as a way of understanding and explaining how the suffering patient experiences these “transfers of feelings” from others as they receive powerful and unwanted states of mind defensively inflicted upon them by another. The possibility of the projected-upon person identifying with the projection is one outcome that can emerge from the process, making this a two-body phenomenon. In my view, based on clinical experience, the projector is likely to retain some of the expelled fantasy in his or her own sense of self, but not to genuinely identify with it until he or she has worked through conflicts that emerge in relation to psychic pain.

Although Klein (1946) eventually wove her theory into her understanding of adult patients, her ideas were originally conceptualized as a way to describe how children develop intrapsychically. From this perspective, all babies are born in the paranoid-schizoid position. Although they can begin to move toward the depressive position when they realize they are separate beings, there is always a movement back to the original position at times of vulnerability.

Think, for example, of a two-year-old child I once saw with her family and who was bitten by a younger sibling in my office during their session. A natural response for the bitten child, who did not understand that sometimes babies bite to ease the pain of teething, was to get angry. Perhaps the toddler was already holding unbearable feelings of jealousy and rage after the birth of her sibling. Lacking an explanation for his aggressive action, her only recourse seemed to be to damage the baby, kicking, screaming at, or hitting the new arrival who had injured her. Meanwhile, the teething baby initially did not know he was hurting his sibling, and now was hurt himself and did not seem to understand why.

Until the mother consoled and explained, the two-year-old was filled with anger that couldn’t be understood or tolerated. She would run and sit on her mother’s lap, proclaiming, “The baby bit me, but I didn’t do anything.” At this point in her young life, she thought the new baby was bad and should be punished. But mother, who was most often focusing on what was going on in the room, would say, “Annie, you are the big sister; go help your brother, he’s just a baby.” The young child could not process what I imagined she felt: unconscious fear of abandonment and loss of love from her mother. She appeared to be emotionally devastated.

If this scene were repeated many times without a caregiver speaking with either child, tension would likely escalate, with both children building up resentment and anger. If these fee...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Prologue: the dig
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: beginnings
• PART I: One mechanism that explains our violent world
• PART II: Those who have been damaged: projective identification as a major cause of the erasure
• PART III: Groups of women who have been damaged: the effects of projective identification in groups
• PART IV: Mechanisms that reverse the damage: mentalization and reparative leadership as antidotes to projective identification
• PART V: Attempting to turn things around: from projective identification (a one-mind process) to mentalization (a two-minds process)
• Epilogue: a new collaboration
• Index