Projective Identification Revisited: Ogden’s Four Aspects and Klein’s Legacy of Identification

Thomas Ogden’s 1979 paper “On Projective Identification” remains one of the most sophisticated modern reworkings of Melanie Klein’s foundational ideas. By reframing projective identification as a multifaceted process—encompassing defense, communication, object-relating, and a mode of analytic work—Ogden opened a path beyond the purely intrapsychic model, into the relational and intersubjective field of psychoanalysis.

Klein had first introduced the idea of projective identification in “Notes on Some Schizoid Mechanisms” (1946) as a process by which parts of the self are projected into the object and controlled from within it. What begins as a primitive defense against annihilation anxiety later becomes the prototype for all internal object relations and identifications. Ogden’s contribution was to show how this mechanism is not only destructive but also profoundly creative—constituting a psychic bridge between self and other, analyst and analysand.

1. Projective Identification as a Defense Mechanism

For Klein, projection is rooted in the infant’s early attempts to deal with unbearable anxiety. Parts of the self—felt as dangerous, envious, or persecutory—are expelled into the object to preserve psychic cohesion. In this sense, projective identification is a primitive defense against fragmentation and psychic catastrophe.

Ogden (1979) emphasizes this defensive function as one of four interlocking aspects. It allows the subject to externalize intolerable affects, but it also distorts the object, binding it into an internal drama it did not originate. This aspect is most visible in the transference, where the patient’s unconscious pressures force the analyst into particular roles and affects that the patient cannot yet own.

“The defensive aspect of projective identification represents an attempt to divest the self of feelings too painful to bear, at the cost of losing the capacity to experience them as one’s own.”
— Ogden (1979, p. 362)

2. Projective Identification as a Mode of Communication

Ogden’s second dimension reframes projective identification not as attack but as communication.
Here he draws implicitly on Bion’s (1962) container–contained model: the patient’s projections are not simply evacuations but messages—embodied, emotional forms of communication that cannot yet be symbolized.

In this sense, the analyst’s countertransference becomes the medium of meaning. The analyst must experience, hold, and think the patient’s projection, translating it back into language and thought.

“Projective identification is not only a mode of defense but a primitive form of communication—a way of telling without words what cannot yet be thought.”
— Ogden (1979, p. 363)

This communicative dimension transforms what was once a mechanism of psychic evacuation into the very foundation of analytic dialogue.

3. Projective Identification as a Mode of Object-Relatedness

Klein’s theory of identification (1932, 1946) offers the metapsychological ground for this aspect. Identification, for her, is not simply imitation but an internalization of object relations—a way of being with the object by taking its qualities inside.
Projective identification, in turn, is the inverse: a way of being inside the object by putting parts of oneself into it.

Ogden argues that this process creates a shared psychic space in which self and object mutually transform one another. It is through such identifications that psychic growth occurs; the subject learns to differentiate self from other precisely through the experience of temporary merger and separation.

“Through projective identification, both self and object participate in a dialectic of mutual influence—the very matrix of object-relatedness.”
— Ogden (1979, p. 365)

4. Projective Identification as a Mode of Analytic Work

Ogden’s fourth aspect is perhaps his most original: projective identification as the medium of analytic process itself.
In every analysis, both patient and analyst unconsciously project and introject, co-creating a shared field of experience. The analyst’s capacity to bear, recognize, and metabolize these projective processes constitutes the core of analytic work.

This is where Klein’s concept of re-integration becomes crucial: the analyst’s task mirrors the infant’s developmental challenge—to reclaim what was projected and to tolerate the re-entry of once-hated parts.

The analytic setting thus becomes the modern equivalent of Klein’s “internal mother”—a space where destructive projections can be survived and transformed into meaning.

Klein’s Original Insight: Identification and the Creation of Inner Objects

In her early work, Klein (1932) already understood identification as the psychic mechanism by which internal objects are formed. The ego builds itself through these introjective and projective movements—taking in the good, expelling the bad, and gradually achieving a more integrated internal world.

By connecting projective identification to identification itself, Ogden shows that what appears as pathology is also the very process of psychic life. Without the capacity to project and reintroject, no inner world could be built, and no empathy or symbolization could develop.

Conclusion: From Mechanism to Field

Ogden’s reformulation of projective identification moved psychoanalysis from a one-person psychology to a two-person field. He redefined it as the living tissue of analytic work—where defense, communication, relatedness, and transformation coexist.

Klein’s early vision of the infant’s psyche—fragmented yet seeking connection—finds in Ogden’s writing its modern counterpart: the analytic dyad as a space where primitive identifications are not only enacted but also understood.
In that shared psychic field, what begins as defense becomes communication; what begins as hatred becomes thought.

References

• Bion, W. R. (1962). Learning from Experience. London: Heinemann.

• Klein, M. (1932). The Psycho-Analysis of Children. London: Hogarth Press.

• Klein, M. (1946). Notes on Some Schizoid Mechanisms. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 27, 99–110.

• Ogden, T. H. (1979). On Projective Identification. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 60, 357–373.

• Segal, H. (1973). Introduction to the Work of Melanie Klein. London: Hogarth Press.

• Rosenfeld, H. (1971). A Clinical Approach to the Psycho-Analytic Theory of the Life and Death Instincts. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 52, 169–178.