Projective identification and maternal impingment.

A discussion of "A Developmental View of Identification Resulting from Maternal Impingement" by Thomas H. Ogden, M.D. Dr. Ogden has tried to integrate two very different Kleinian formulations about (1) early infant development and (2) adult mental relationships (both called projective identification) with Winnicott's ideas about the ways in which any mother introduces her own version of consensual reality to her infant and influences the qualities of the infant's first, and forever basic, mental relationship (called impingement). I will use his report to demonstrate some clinical disadvantages and distortions of the psychoanalytic theory of human development which I believe are inherent in these two technical terms.