Experience
Projective identification differs from simple projection in that projective identification can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, whereby a person, believing something false about another, relates to that other person in such a way that the other person alters their behavior to make the belief true. The second person is influenced by the projection and begins to behave as though he or she is in fact actually characterized by the projected thoughts or beliefs, a process that may happen outside the awareness of both parties involved.
The recipient of the projection can suffer a temporary loss of insight, a sense of experiencing strong feelings of being manipulated so as to be playing a part, no matter how difficult to recognise, in somebody else's phantasy. One therapist, for example, describes how "I felt the progressive extrusion of his internalised mother into me, not as a theoretical construct but in actual experience. The intonation of my voice altered, became higher with the distinctly Ur-mutter quality."
In everyday life, it can happen that the recipient feels almost kidnapped or coerced into carrying out the unconscious phantasy of the projector. In extreme cases, the recipient can lose any sense of self - to become inhuman, a moving bag of skin, with important symbolic messages rattling about inside - and may find themselves acting out in attempts at self-exorcism; the attempt to rid the self of projections or possession.
Read more about this topic: Projective Identification
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“Experience is not a matter of having actually swum the Hellespont, or danced with the dervishes, or slept in a doss- house. It is a matter of sensibility and intuition, of seeing and hearing the significant things, of paying attention at the right moments, of understanding and co-ordinating. Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“Knowledge is to be acquired only by a corresponding experience. How can we know what we are told merely? Each man can interpret another’s experience only by his own.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant? We should live in all the ages of the world in an hour; ay, in all the worlds of the ages. History, Poetry, Mythology!—I know of no reading of another’s experience so startling and informing as this would be.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)