Re: Projective Identification

Tim McNamara wrote:
> Wilba wrote:
>> Tim McNamara wrote:

> This of course ties into the sub-thread with Greg about how meaning
> develops. I will now sound self-contradictory. Meaning can be and
> very often is attributional in nature, and this is probably more true
> as interactions become more abstract and at a remove from experience.
> As ideas become more overvalued, the risk of attributed meaning
> overwhelming perceived meaning becomes higher.

I guess I'm missing something, 'cos I'm not picking up a self-contradiction.
One philosophical idea that helps me make sense of the world is that the
more profoundly true a statement is, the more paradoxical it seems. So
sounding self-contradictory could be a good sign. :-)

>> ... what I'm interested in is how
>> a social psychology oriented observer could use attribution theory to
>> explain the same behaviour. I got stumped when I tried to do it
>> myself. So please ignore the content of the example as a topic of
>> debate in its own right, and give me an explanation of the behaviour
>> in terms of attribution theory (just so that I can see the link
>> between the map and the territory).
>
> Ummm, OK, I've managed to snip too much and lose track of what behavior
> or situation we are describing. You mean X being overprotective of Y
> and the observer (Z) thinking that X is projecting onto Y?

The original thing was not about Z at all (Z was essentially uninvolved and
was only mentioned to represent a point of view).

> Acknowledging that I am not a whiz with attribution theory, I think
> that we can break it down to:
>
> Y (about whom we know nothing)
>
> X makes attributions about Y and also him/herself
> *Y needs protection *X is able to protect Y *It is X's
> responsibility to protect Y

OK, this makes sense to me. On the one hand we have X dealing with his own
fears by protecting them onto Y, and on the other we have a chain of
attributions by X about Y's needs, and X's abilities and responsibilities.

So here's where I wanted to get to. The chain of attributions make sense to
me in terms of how - here is a sequence of ideas that lead logically to the
observed behaviour. But it doesn't tell me anything about why - why does X
think that Y needs protection, and why does X think it is his responsibility
to protect Y? I accept that you don't necessarily need to know why to effect
positive change for a client system, but I'm interested in the distinction
between the two points of view. Analytic thinking seems to me to be focussed
on the why of things, and I think that's its greatest weakness. I can't
remember who said it, but it makes sense to me, that Freud was a great
observer and a lousy interpreter. As soon as you begin to interpret
behaviour you must be speculating, and therefore much more likely to be
wrong.

So why is the why important to me? If X overprotects Y in isolation there
may not be any cause for concern, but if there is a consistent pattern of X
overprotecting multiple others, and that pattern troubles X or the others,
then the chain of attribution doesn't give me much to go on in trying to
help X. I 'm not saying you have to have reasons for X's behaviour to help
him, but at least I'm curious about it. The enticing thing about ideas like
projection is that you can sit back, stroke your beard, and go "Ah, yes..."
with a nice smug feeling that you have it all worked out. :-)

> Z makes attributions about X
> *X has unacceptable parts of him/herself *X projects those
> unacceptable parts onto Y *X then acts as if Y and the projections
> are identical

Absolutely. But for the purpose of the discussion I'd prefer to leave this
aspect out for the sake of simplicity and clarity.

> The difference- I think- between attribution and projection is that
> attribution doesn't require that some unacceptable part of one's psyche
> is attributed to (projected onto) someone or something else.

Sure, I understand that. The thing I'm teasing out is that if observation of
X's behaviour reveals a disfunctional pattern, ideas like projection can
make some sense of that (not necessarily true or accurate, but something to
go on), whereas I'm not sure how attribution theory can take us beyond a
more detailed description of the behaviour, towards what's happening for X
that makes this pattern manifest for him.



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