Projection, Identification, Projective
Identification. Edited by J. Sandler (1988)
As much as psychoanalysis is concerned with
the interaction between the outer world and its relationship with an inner
world (how we take in and make sense of external events and how we put our
inner thoughts and understandings back out into the outer world), I am
intrigued how this parallels photographic self-portraiture along with its
assessment as a form of internal self-expression. This project and the
production of self-portraits and their assessment offers an opportunity to
build aspects of the self and observe how they relate to external objects from
a more objective viewpoint.
Is this work simply a form of self-imposed fragmentation
followed by reparation, or through the temporary loss of inner self, diffusion
and re-identity? Do I display my images, because of my incapacity to
differentiate subject (the photograph) and object (me), from reality (the
print) and phantasy of the image, (what it is about?). Through what process do
I, as the artist, discard unwanted parts of myself, in the form of photographs,
and value taking in, in the form of language, interpretations. Also, what of
the interpreter in this mêlée? In losing my state of independence, through dependence
on the analysts’ responding to my work, how do I, in phantasy, transmit my
thoughts into their minds; do they contain those thoughts and return them to
me? As I ponder these reflections of theirs’ and I offer more images that in
turn, have potential of more discoveries and awareness to my inner world, does
an alternative picture emerge, a narrative of sorts, in me and also perhaps, a
narrative of them?
The Guild becomes the container and the
frame, where the image is scrutinised by the examiners. In an attempt to
understand the complexities of the interactions between these internalisations
and externalisations and the subsequent modification of the sequence of images
produced, will the documentation and the final exhibition show by means of visual
representation and use of text, a more accurate image of internal
representation?
Projection and Introjection are seen as
representing opposite sides of the same coin, an unconscious form of communication
and the basis of art appreciation and interpretation. In this context I will suggest that Projection and Introjection,
used in this mature way, is more than simply an opportunity to appreciate and gain
another level of understanding, between the artist and the photograph, the
photograph and the assessor, an opportunity to understand something of the
viewer.
Projection and Introjection is the process
by which we can describe interactions between the inner (including
intra-relativeness) and outer worlds of artist and viewer, a place where they
merge and interrelate. This communication of aspects of self is ‘a rapid
oscillation of projection and introjections’, says Money-Kyrle (1988), ‘unconsciously
acquiring affective experience’. This process has its roots in early
infant/mother relations, the infant cannot say how he feels, he simply makes
his mother experience the same feeling. This communication is seen as them connecting
in a deep and unconscious way, the mother will react that will facilitate the
infant's psychic growth; the same happens in the therapeutic setting between
analyst and analysand. This project seeks to engage with the viewer in a
similar way, to engage on this unconscious level through Projection and
Introjection.
Projection takes aspects of one's internal
world and puts them onto external subjects; an unconscious process of excretion
and expulsion. In this project, we include the reverse enactment; where the
internal world of the viewer is incorporated into the image being viewed, it is
projected also. It is this 'output' from the viewers’ internal world into the report,
the viewers’ own projections, which can be seen as 'input' into the final assessment.
Projection and Introjection is an intercommunicative process of shared
understanding, it is a creative interplay of shared experience.
The process as it occurs in child
development can be dissected into three phases (Ogden, 1982):
1) The projector rids himself of unwanted
bits;
2) Deposits them into (not just onto) the
receiver;
3) Recovers a modified version of his
projected bits.
Without this third phase, the process is
not therapeutic or helpful to the projector.
The above therapeutic process parallels that
which is undertaken by this project:
1) Where the photographer disposes into an
image un-resolved, un-differentiated parts of his pre-verbal past;
2) These messages are placed via a print ‘into’
The Guild;
3) The artist recovers a modified version in
the form of language.
From this third phase the photographer
seeks more awareness from subsequent portraits.
So projection and introjection are a
related process, the communication of relationships between internal objects
and with that of the outside world and vice versa. It regulates the individual’s
interaction with the outside world and the observations of which in the
therapeutic situation, will build a picture of that internal space. In both analysis
and in the viewers’ interpretation of my work, this is done by the process of formulating
internal boundaries, it involves creating an image of self, of that self’s
relationships and the interaction between the two. When confronted by this
image, the viewer often is in an initial state of confusion; an unconscious personal
representation is called for. A boundary is set; ‘this is I’ and ‘that is he’.
This is a disidentification process, where the ego says, ‘I distinguish between
self and object, I will create a boundary’. (Sandler, J. 1988) pxx. By instigating
the notion of play alongside often intense concentration, the viewers’ boundaries
become merged and temporally suspended with the image. Here the viewer brings
life experience to the engagement, there is a sense of the artist analysing the
viewer. This process is what Sandler calls ‘sorting out’, where ‘aspects of the
object–representation are incorporated into the self-representation and vice-versa.’
(1988) p26. This process is the basis for empathy in the consulting room.
To look at Projection in its broadest terms
we see it, along with Introjection, as an organizing structure, in constant
interplay across shared boundaries. A bringing together of un-differentiated
differences, it is the way the artist sees the world and that of how the viewer
perceives the same world, that together they have the capacity to bring them together
and ask questions. Through this process we describe the world in subjective
terms, by testing, inherently organising an continually unconsciously
reflecting on the individuals internal world. Projection without Introjection would
be a pointless affair, no comparison, no feedback, even in phantasy. Creativity
is inhabitating these cross borders, it is the art of playing in a combined
experience, The creative development comes from the constant interplay of Projective
and Introjective structures in this shared environment.
But in context of the analysts’ interpretation
of these photographic images, it is the reaching beneath the surface into what
is the subterranean world of the artist in combination with the viewer, that is
this unconscious process. The ‘sorting out’ from which we want to gain
knowledge of the internal space, this is the shared world of artist and viewer,
it is this externalisation of the work and expectations of a response that
could be described as creative interaction. As viewers, don’t we go to art
galleries to give and to receive? The viewers experiences coupled with the
ideas of the artist (often misunderstood, confused expressions) are locked in
an unconscious conversation, in phantasy, enabling union and a level of
understanding, this is a re-enactment of a pre-verbal, or early infant experience.
The artwork also acts as a temporary
container, where this lack of initial understanding is held, my need to return
to the artwork for further understanding, or to relate to it as being part of a
sequence and through the reverie of the engagement with the assessments, gain
access to a direct descendant of inner worlds, a pre-verbal state that I am
attempting to disentangle. One role of the analyst is to simply hold on to the therapeutic
content while the patient process it, a temporary container, enabling the
client to maintain an ability to think.
The viewing of the work is a difficult
process for the analysts’, it involves them getting caught up in the affectual
nature of object relations. Many of the images will not ‘pierce’, to use
Barthes term, they will dissolve, counter, overlap and often create ambivalence
of the viewers’ experience of communication. Though this play and interaction, I
am asking them to see something; a representation of my internal world and in it,
how theirs intertwines with it.
The viewer therefore creates and crosses
these boundaries set up by the artist and through internalisation and
externalisation responds to the work. Projection and Introjection must be seen as
a developmental and in a differentiating perspective on image engagement; it is
this concept that is behind creative engagement.
‘The interplay of introjective and
projective mechanisms weaves a pattern of relatedness’s to the world of objects
and provides the fabric out of which the individual fashions his own self
image’ … ‘Out of this interplay also develops his capacity to relate to and
identify with the objects in his environment.’’ (Sandler, J. 1988) p35
Through interpretation, and over time
however, as in therapy, from a combined narrative, awareness emerges. It is
essential to acknowledge the importance of the observers’ projections in the
formulation of conclusions for this project as it being of a shared experience.
Art appreciation requires projection.
Spencer Rowell 2012
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