Psychoanalysis and Projective Methods in Personality Assessment E-Book

• Herausgeber: Hogrefe Publishing
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 479

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

This unique book synthesizes the work of leading thinkers of the French School of psychoanalytical projective methods in personality assessment. The French School is a direct successor to Rorschach's and Murray's original approaches using the Rorschach Test and the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT). Underlying this method is the idea of the coexistence of conscious and unconscious processes, of opposite instinctual pairs, and of agents that are ruled by conflicts (Freud). Transitional activity is seen as part of an intermediate space, a mediator space, and bearer of messages between the subject and the clinician (Winnicott). This book brings to life the important contributions of the French School, firstly exploring its theories and methods and then its clinical applications. Detailed case studies from different stages of life examine the psychopathology of everyday life with its severe and disabling states of suffering. Contemporary advances in research and clinical work are presented, and the groundbreaking early work of Nina Rausch de Traubenberg, Vica Shentoub, and Rosine Debray are also critically reread and discussed. Clinical tools adapted for clinicians and researchers in the appendices include a useful schema to facilitate the interpretation of the Rorschach and TAT together, a list of latent solicitations for the TAT, and the current version of the TAT Scoring Grid. This book is essential reading for clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, psychotherapists, researchers, and students interested in applying psychoanalytical theory to projective methods.

Leseprobe

Psychoanalysis and Projective Methods in Personality Assessment

The French School

Benoît Verdon & Catherine Azoulay (Eds.)

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publicationinformation for the print version of this book is available via the Library of Congress Marc Database under the LC Control Number [2019945788]

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Psychoanalysis and projective methods in personality assessment : the French school / Benoît

Verdon & Catherine Azoulay (eds.).

Names: Verdon, Benoît, editor. | Azoulay, Catherine, editor.

Description: Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190156023 | Canadiana (ebook) 20190156031 | ISBN 9780889375574

(softcover) | ISBN 9781616765576 (PDF) | ISBN 9781613345573 (EPUB)

Subjects: LCSH: Projective techniques. | LCSH: Rorschach Test. | LCSH: Thematic Apperception Test.

Classification: LCC BF698.7 .P79 2019 | DDC 155.2/84—dc23

©2020byHogrefe Publishing

www.hogrefe.com

The authors and publisher have made every effort to ensure that the information contained in this text is in accord with the current state of scientific knowledge, recommendations, and practice at the time of publication. In spite of this diligence, errors cannot be completely excluded. Also, due to changing regulations and continuing research, information may become outdated at any point. The authors and publisher disclaim any responsibility for any consequences which may follow from the use of information presented in this book.

Registered trademarks are not noted specifically as such in this publication. The use of descriptive names, registered names, and trademarks does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.

PUBLISHING OFFICES

USA:

Hogrefe Publishing Corporation, 7 Bulfinch Place, Suite 202, Boston, MA 02114

Phone [phone], Fax [phone]; E-mail [email protected]

EUROPE:

Hogrefe Publishing GmbH, Merkelstr. 3, 37085 Göttingen, Germany

Phone [phone], Fax [phone]; E-mail [email protected]

SALES & DISTRIBUTION

USA:

Hogrefe Publishing, Customer Services Department,

30 Amberwood Parkway, Ashland, OH 44805

Phone [phone], Fax [phone]; E-mail [email protected]

UK:

Hogrefe Publishing, c/o Marston Book Services Ltd., 160 Eastern Ave., Milton Park, Abingdon, OX14 4SB, UK

Phone [phone], Fax [phone]; E-mail direct.orders​@marston.co.uk

EUROPE:

Hogrefe Publishing, Merkelstr. 3, 37085 Göttingen, Germany

Phone [phone], Fax [phone]; E-mail [email protected]

OTHER OFFICES

CANADA:

Hogrefe Publishing, 660 Eglinton Ave. East, Suite 119-514, Toronto, Ontario, M4G 2K2

SWITZERLAND:

Hogrefe Publishing, Länggass-Strasse 76, 3012 Bern

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

Printed and bound in the Czech Republic

ISBN978-0-88937-557-4(print) • ISBN978-0-61676-557-6(PDF) • ISBN978-0-61334-557-3(EPUB)

http://doi.org/10.1027/00557-000

Citability: This EPUB includes page numbering between two vertical lines (Example: |1|) that corresponds to the page numbering of the print and PDF ebook versions of the title.

About the Editors

Benoît Verdon, PhD, is a clinical psychologist, psychoanalyst, professor of clinical psychology and psychopathology at the Université de Paris, assistant director of the research laboratory Psychologie Clinique, Psychopathologie, Psychanalyse (PCPP; Clinical Psychology, Psychopathology, and Psychoanalysis), and past president of the French Language Society of the Rorschach and Projective Methods. Verdon is also a past publication director of the journal Psychologie clinique et projective. He is also leader of the young adult and adult program of the university diploma in projective psychology (DUPP) and member-at-large of the Board of the International Society of the Rorschach and Projective Methods. E-mail: [email protected]

Catherine Azoulay, PhD, is a clinical psychologist, psychoanalyst, professor of clinical psychology and psychopathology at the Université de Paris, and a member of the PCPP. She is also a past editor-in-chief of the journal Psychologie clinique et projective and past copresident of the International Network of Research: Projective Methods and Psychoanalysis. Further, she is director of the university diploma program in projective psychology and director of the Projective Psychology Seminar in Paris. E-mail: [email protected]

About the Authors

Marie-Frédérique Bacqué, PhD, is a professor of clinical psychopathology at the University of Strasbourg, France, and head of the research unit Subjectivity, Social Ties, and Modernity (SuLiSoM). She is the editor-in-chief of Psycho-Oncologie and Études sur la Mort as well as author or editor of thirteen books, some of which were translated into German, Greek, and Japanese. She is a trained psychoanalyst and member of the Fédération Européenne de Psychanalyse (FEDEPSY). E-mail: [email protected]

Monika Boekholt, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and was a professor of clinical psychology and psychopathology at University Paris 13. She was editor-in-chief of the first four issues of the journal Psychologie et projective, published in 1995 and 1996.

Catherine Chabert, PhD, is professor emeritus at the Université de Paris and a member of the research laboratory PCPP. She is also a trainer–analyst (APF, French Psychoanalytic Association, International Psychoanalytical Association) and series editor of the works Psychoanalysis and Psychopathology and Psychopathology and Projective Methods (published by Dunod Editions). She also supervises book series (with Jacques André) in the Petite Bibliothèque de Psychanalyse (Small Library of Psychoanalysis), published by Presses Universitaires de France. She has been vice-president of the French Language Society of the Rorschach and Projective Methods and is now honorary president. E-mail: [email protected]

Jean-Yves Chagnon, PhD, is a professor of clinical psychology and psychopathology at University Paris 13 and editor-in-chief of the journal Psychologie clinique et projective. He used to be copresident of the International Network of Research: Projective Methods and Psychoanalysis. E-mail: [email protected]

Michèle Emmanuelli, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst at the Société Psychanalytique de Paris (IPA) and is professor emeritus of clinical psychology and psychopathology at the Université de Paris and a member of the research laboratory PCPP. She is a former president of the French Language Society of the Rorschach and Projective Methods. E-mail: [email protected]

Estelle Louët, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst in the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Pitié-Salpétrière Hospital in Paris (APHP). She is also an associate professor of clinical psychology and psychopathology in the research laboratory PCPP of the Université de Paris. E-mail: [email protected]

Françoise Neau, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, and a professor of clinical psychology and psychopathology at the research laboratory PCPP of the Université de Paris. E-mail: [email protected]

Marie-Christine Pheulpin, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst. She is an assistant professor at University Paris 13 and qualified to supervise research in clinical psychology and psychopathology. E-mail: [email protected]

Pascal Roman, PhD, is a psychologist and psychotherapist with an analytical orientation, and a full professor of clinical psychology, psychopathology, and psychoanalysis at Lausanne University in Switzerland. He used to be general secretary of the International Society of the Rorschach and Projective Methods (ISR); he is now a member-at-large of the ISR Board as well as president of the French Language Society of the Rorschach and Projective Methods. He is also publication director of the journal Psychologie clinique et projective. E-mail: [email protected]

Claude de Tychey, PhD, is professor emeritus of clinical psychology and was director of the GR3P (Clinical and Projective Psychopathological Research Group, Prevention Research Axis) at the Interpsy Laboratory of the University of Lorraine, France. He used to be vice-president of the French Language Society of the Rorschach and Projective Methods and member-at-large of the Board of the International Society of the Rorschach and Projective Methods. E-mail: [email protected]

Sarah Vibert, PhD, is a clinical psychologist, an assistant professor of clinical psychology and psychopathology at the Université de Paris, and a member of the research laboratory PCPP. E-mail: [email protected]

Catherine Weismann-Arcache, PhD, is a clinical psychologist, assistant professor, and thesis director of clinical psychology and psychopathology at the University of Rouen, France. E-mail: [email protected]

Contents

Preface

Part 1  Theory & Methods

1 Projective Methods in Clinical Psychopathology: Developments, Confirmations, and Contradictions – A Tribute to Nina Rausch de Traubenberg and Rosine Debray

Differential Diagnosis: Psychopathology and Projective Methods

Differential Diagnosis, Complexity or Heterogeneity of Mental Functioning

The Rorschach: From Self-Representation to Narcissism

The TAT: From Representations of Relationships to Mental Conflict

A Clinical Example: Obsessional Neurosis and Narcissistic Functioning

Metapsychology and Projective Clinical Practice

The Rorschach, the Body, and Dreams

The Rorschach and TAT: Representations of Relationships and Object Loss

Acknowledgments

References

Additional Suggested Reading

2 Dynamics of the TAT Process: Psychoanalytical and Psychopathological Perspectives

Theoretical and Clinical Foundations

The Psychic Apparatus

Dialectics of Inside/Outside: Perception/Projection, External Reality/Internal Reality

Analysis and Interpretation Methods

The TAT Analysis Method According to Shentoub

Analyzing Discourse Procedures

Manifest Content and Latent Manifestations of the TAT Material

Data Synthesis

Clinical Illustrations

Neurosis

Borderline Functioning

Psychosis

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

References

3 From Self-Representation to Narcissism … and Back Again?

“Self-Representation” According to Nina Rausch de Traubenberg: Its Theoretical Sources and Its Expression in the Rorschach

The Concept of “Self-Representation” in the Rorschach

Additional Sources for the Concept of Self-Representation in the Rorschach

Self-Representation in the Rorschach

Self-Representation Today

Self-Representation in the Rorschach

The Self-Representation Concept Today

The Self According to Pontalis (via Winnicott)

Acknowledgments

References

4 The Utility of the Self-Representation Grid in Differential Diagnosis

Indicators of a Neurotic Structural Organization

Indicators of a Narcissistic or Borderline Structural Organization

Indicators of Psychotic Structural Organizations

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

References

5 Nina Rausch de Traubenberg: In a Line of Transmission … The Question of Norms in the Rorschach Test

Introduction: Commitment to a Research Project

General Status of Norms in Projective Psychology

Norms and Normativity in the Rorschach and the TAT

An Ambitious Study

Extension

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

References

Part 2 Clinical Applications & Case Studies

6 How to Deal With Excessive Reality? Regarding Bodily Sources of Subjectification

Issues: Excess and/or Deficiency of What?

What Can Mental Activity Do When Dealing With the Reality of the Body?

The Reality of the Body: A Springboard for Mental Activity

Plea for Bodily Mediations of Subjectification

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

References

7 From Clinical Work on Learning, to Learning Clinical Work With Rosine Debray

From Past to Present: Temporal Trajectories

My 1990s With Rosine Debray

At the School of Psychoanalysis

From Schoolchild to Child

From the Child to Their Parents

Contemporary Organizers in Development Processes, Thinking, and Parenting

High Intellectual Potential: An Illustration of the Development Heterogeneity

From Intelligence to Thought Processes

Greenhouse Effect in Infantile Clinical Practice: Narcissistic Issues of Parenthood

In Conclusion: Greenhouse Effect in Infantile Clinical Practice

Acknowledgments

References

8 Prepsychoses in the Work of Nina Rausch de Traubenberg: Contributions and Developments in Projective Psychology

Texts and Their Methodological, Clinical, and Theoretical Contributions

Prepsychoses in Child Psychiatric Clinical Practice

Prepsychosis According to Rausch de Traubenberg

Further Developments

Conclusions

Acknowledgments

References

9 Thought Processes in Adolescence: A Projective Perspective

Projective Approach to Adolescence

Approach to Thinking

Thought Processes in Adolescence: From the Projective Tests Perspective

On the Methodological Level

Methodology With Regard to Thought and Sublimation

Results

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

References

10 Traumatic Traces and Projective Figures of Catastrophes of Symbolization

Toward a Definition of Catastrophes of Symbolization

Psychodynamics of Sexual Violence in Adolescence and the Projective Scene

Projective Clinical Approach to the Catastrophes of Symbolization

Area of Sensory Investment in the Projective Material

Area of the Representative Process Continuum in the Elaboration of the Discourse

Area of Transference Engagement

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

References

11 From Bipolar Disorder to Melancholia and Mania: The Contribution of Projective Tests in the Study of Manic Depressive Disorder in a 16-Year-Old Girl

The Rorschach Test

Overall Clinical Impressions

Thought Processes

Conflict Management

Conclusion of the Rorschach

The Interpretation of the TAT Protocol

The Problematic

Marielle, Rorschach

Marielle, TAT

Acknowledgments

References

Additional Suggested Reading

12 Psychosomatic Economy: A Notion Cherished by Rosine Debray

Somatic Expression and Projective Methodology: An Original Approach

The Projective Situation and Economic Perspective

The Quality of Mental Functioning and Its Prognosis

Acknowledgments

References

13 Mentalization and Projective Methods: Training and Research in Psychoanalysis-Oriented Clinical Psychology, Using the TAT Scoring Grid Developed by Rosine Debray

From Psychodiagnosis to Clinical Research

Psychoanalytic Interpretation of Projective Methods: A Link Between Psychology and Psychoanalysis

Passion for the Projective Methods Shared By Vica Shentoub and Rosine Debray

Personality of Rosine Debray

Dynamics of Mental Organization

From First Clinical Impressions to the Study of Mentalization: A Real-Life Training for Clinical Psychologists

Regulation of Mental Functioning

“Explosive Conjunctions”

Protective Phantasmic Richness

Is Mentalization But a Thought?

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

References

14 Changing While Remaining the Same: Self-Representation Confronted With Aging

Aging: A Challenge to Narcissism

The Rorschach Test and Self-Representation: Method

Result

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

References

Appendices

Appendix 1: Evaluation of Psychic Functioning Using a Schema of Interpretation of Projective Data

The Rorschach Test

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

Appendix 2: Latent Solicitations of TAT Picture Cards

Appendix 3: TAT Scoring Grid

Peer Commentaries

|IX|Preface

Benoît Verdon & Catherine Azoulay

We have designed this book with the idea of providing our colleagues around the world with access to the work of the projective clinicians and researchers of the French School (also called the Paris School), which until now has been published almost exclusively in French. Although several articles have been published in various English-language journals, such as Rorschachiana, this is the first time that a book of this scale has been fully published in English.

The rapid expansion of the French School is closely linked to the creation of the Groupement Français du Rorschach (French Group of Rorschach; https://www.societerorschach.org/historique/) in March 1950, under the patronage of a number of distinguished personalities from the worlds of psychology, medicine, and philosophy, such as Profs. Henri Baruk, Jean Dechaume, Jean Delay, Paul Fraisse, Georges Heuyer, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Henri Piéron, and Henri Wallon. This first society was chaired by Daniel Lagache (1903–1972), a highly regarded French psychoanalyst, who particularly stressed the fact that the psychoanalytic interpretation of the Rorschach and projective methods cannot be reduced to a symbolic interpretation of the unconscious through the contents of the responses, and that formal aspects of tests must also be qualitatively analyzed. Since then, the French School has been consistent in this methodological interpretation of the Rorschach that values a system of coding, comparing the collected data with general population norms, and developing clinical hypotheses that are put into practice through a rigorously codified qualitative analysis, articulated together with the analysis of the protocol text. Vica Shentoub and Rosine Debray, clinical psychologists and lecturers in psychology at the Université René Descartes in Paris (now the Université de Paris), applied this approach to the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) by developing the TAT scoring grid, the first version of which dates from 1958. This present work provides insight into the French School analysis approach and for greater clarity, a method for interpreting the Rorschach and the TAT (Appendix 1), as well as the latent solicitations of the TAT Picture Cards (Appendix 2) and the current TAT Scoring Grid (Appendix 3).

In keeping with the views of Daniel Lagache, Didier Anzieu (1923–1999) was interested in regression and projection in projective tests, as well as convergences and divergences between psychoanalytical practice and projective testing, which he called the projective situation. Moreover, he initiated the Projective Techniques |X|in Education program at French universities. In 1964, he worked with Nina Rausch de Traubenberg (1920–2013), giving her the mission to create the Certificate of Projective Techniques (today: diploma in projective psychology, DUPP) at the Sorbonne, which was a great success, with 800 students enrolling each year in the 1970s and 1980s.

With her rich experience of international exchanges, Rausch de Traubenberg, a clinical psychologist at the Hôpital de la Salpêtrière in Paris, then a professor of psychology at the René Descartes University, gave real momentum to research on projective methods and published widely. For over 30 years, supported by a team of psychologists and researchers who were as passionate as she was, Rausch de Traubenberg was a leading figure in projective psychology in France. Among her innumerable works, her book La Pratique du Rorschach (The Practice of the Rorschach Test) is now in its ninth edition with Presses Universitaires de France, and her elaborations on the Rorschach Test, between perception and fantasy and the grids of self-representation and affective dynamics, are still in publication.

Nina Rausch de Traubenberg was always careful to pay tribute to Roy Schafer and his work, most of which was compiled in his book Psychoanalytic Interpretation in Rorschach Testing, published in 1954 in New York by Grune and Stratton. She considered him to be her greatest inspiration, although she regularly made reference to other American psychologists, such as David Rapaport, Bruno Klopfer, Ernest Schachtel, and David Shapiro, whom she considered to be the other important pioneers in the field. Rausch de Traubenberg was president of the International Society of the Rorschach and Projective Methods (ISR) from 1987 to 1990 and executive editor of the Bulletin du Rorschach et des Méthodes Projectives for many years (which became the journal Psychologie Clinique et Projective in 1995). She also organized, with great success, the ISR congress in Paris in July 1990.

Concurrently with Rausch de Traubenberg for the Rorschach, Vica Shentoub and Rosine Debray developed a theory of the TAT process as well as a methodology for its interpretation. Practitioners had progressively abandoned this personality test, which was developed by Henry A. Murray in the US in 1935, because the direct interpretation of the contents of the discourse had not proven to be convincing. Building on various American authors such as Leopold Bellak, Roy Schafer, and Robert Holt, Vica Shentoub and Rosine Debray differentiated and identified manifest contents and latent solicitations in 18 cards (out of the 31 cards initially proposed by Murray) and revealed the primacy of the analysis of the form of discourse, from which they developed a grid for the analysis of discourse processes: how they spoke about themselves relativizes what was said.

The scoring grid for the processes of elaboration of discourse was thus designed to note the mental mechanisms that are close to defense mechanisms and that are expressed through the discourse within the TAT narratives. By showing the clinical relevance, this methodological tool rapidly became the equivalent of the Rorschach psychogram: the quantitative dimension of the collection of processes on the scoring grid involving a qualitative interpretation according to the defensive weight of the mechanisms that are mobilized. With the theoretical and clinical |XI|developments over the last 50 years, many modifications have been made to the TAT scoring grid. It is now in its eighth version (presented in Appendix 3).

In the 1980s and 1990s, another generation of psychologists of the French School worked toward testing the projective methods in the context of narcissistic and borderline mental functioning. On the other side of the Atlantic, the works of Otto Kernberg and Heinz Kohut, and – related to the Rorschach – those of S. Fischer and S. E. Cleveland, and Paul and Howard Lerner have joined those of French authors such as André Green, Jean Bergeret, and Didier Anzieu to generate a wave of fruitful advances that have mainly been conducted by Catherine Chabert, Françoise Brelet-Foulard, Monika Boekholt, and Marianne Baudin in Paris, and by Claude de Tychey in Nancy.

In line with the work of Profs. Rausch de Traubenberg and Anzieu, Catherine Chabert has firmly supported the continuation and improvement of the projective methodology based on the psychoanalytic theory. By emphasizing that projective methods per se are atheoretical and that the theory which the psychologist decides to use provides depth to their interpretation, she has accurately demonstrated how projective psychology can be put to the service of psychoanalysis and vice versa. Chabert has made it possible for the combined interpretation of the Rorschach and TAT to take on its full meaning in light of their complementarity, to the point where we cannot now consider studying mental functioning without using both tools together.

The following is a reminder of the foundational principles of the analysis and interpretation of projective methods according to the psychoanalytic viewpoint of the French School:

The Rorschach Test, because of its nonfigurative nature, which is structured around an axis, gives indications of the participants’ body image and the quality of their identity and narcissistic construction. The TAT, with figurative cards which depict human scenes (animal scenes in the Children’s Apperception Test; CAT-A), tests the representations of relationships as well as the various conflicts that are related to interiorized objects.

According to the perception–reality/projection–fantasy dialectics, the TAT cards contain manifest contents and latent solicitations, the latter calling the subject to his/her own mental scene, thereby mobilizing psychic problematics.

The mental scene comprises agencies (id–ego–superego) and systems (unconscious–preconscious–conscious) that allow the person to express their conflicts, anxieties, and defenses. Projective tests represent a projection surface and a container for the mental movements that are projected.

Mental conflict is inherent in the mental life of humans. It shapes all mental activities from birth to death, and it may be destructuring. Projective tests reveal those internal conflicts and the level of their structuration, but they also reveal the forces that are present to cope with them.

Interpretation is founded on the psychoanalytic theoretical corpus and psychopathology, based on the Freudian conception of the continuity between normal and pathological.

|XII|Finally, it should be noted that the French School extends well beyond the Parisian universities (i.e., the universities Paris 13, Paris Nanterre, and Université de Paris [for example Paris Descartes and Paris Diderot]), since it covers numerous teams of teachers, researchers, and practitioners, including, not to mention many others, Claude de Tychey, Joëlle Lighezzolo-Alnot, and Nadine Demogeot in Nancy; Magali Ravit, Anne Brun, and François-David Camps in Lyon; Catherine Weismann-Arcache and Teresa Rebelo in Rouen; Marie-Frédérique Bacqué, Mélanie Jacquot, and Céline Racin in Strasbourg; Geneviève Bréchon and Olivier Rouvre in Tours; Dimitra Laimou in Amiens; Delphine Bonnichon in Angers; and Almudena Sanahuja and Rose-Angélique Belot in Besançon. Indeed, it should also be noted that the French School also extends well beyond the French universities, since it covers numerous teams of teachers and researchers, including, to mention only a few, Alex Lefebvre and Simon Flemal in Belgium; Pascal Roman, Olivier Revaz, Vincent Quartier, and Christine Frederick-Libon in Switzerland; Tevfika Ikiz, Irem Erdem Atak, Bengi Düsgör, Neslihan Zabçi, and Elîf Yavuz Sever in Turkey; Maria Abigail de Souza, Deise de Amparo, Alvaro José Lélé, Valeria Barberi, Latife Yazigi, Anna Elisa Villemor-Amaral, Sonia Regina Pasian, Leila Tardivo, and Erika Okino in Brazil; Makhmoud Benkhelifa, Sadjia Makhlouf-Bentounes, Nadia Cheradi, Nacir Benhalla, Fatima Zohra Boualagua, Fatiha Ayad, and Zahra Djadouni in Algeria; Tiziana Sola, Salvatore Settineri, Carmela Mento, and Luca Bruno in Italy; Silvia Fregonese, Hilda Alonso, and Helena Ana Lunazzi in Argentina; and many others in Portugal, Greece, Lebanon, Canada, Togo, Cameroon, Japan, etc.

The publication of this book in English also provides an opportunity to valorize and support the numerous works of teachers and researchers of the French School, while also paying tribute to our American and French masters, as well as to those who have sometimes traveled long distances to train or update their knowledge at our universities.

The book is organized in two main sections: Section 1 focuses on theory and methods, with two contributions outlining the theoretical concerns that govern the clinical use of projective tools, and three other chapters that reflect on the dynamism of the methods from the perspective of continuity between past and present. Section 2 explores clinical applications and case studies from all stages of life, from early childhood, childhood, adolescence, to adulthood and aging, as well as at times of psychopathology or somatic decompensation.

All of the authors in this book are involved in the teaching and transmission of the projective methodology from a psychoanalytic perspective, and actively participate or have participated in scientific progress and in the production of knowledge in this field. Each in their own manner, whether young or old, has maintained the dynamism of the French School and ensured its continuity.

Ten out of the 14 contributions to the book are from the journal Psychologie clinique et projective, Issue 20 in 2014, which focused on the theme Aux fondements psychanalytiques des méthodes projectives (psychoanalytic foundations of projective methods), paying tribute to Nina Rausch de Traubenberg and Rosine |XIII|Debray who both died in 2013. They are reproduced with the kind permission of Erès Editions. The chapter “Dynamics of the TAT Process: Psychoanalytical and Psychopathological Perspectives” is an article that was collectively written by the team of the University Paris Descartes (today: Université de Paris) and published in Volume 35 (2014) of Rorschachiana. It is reproduced with the kind permission of Hogrefe Publishing, as is the article “Changing While Remaining the Same: Self-Representation Confronted With Aging,” which was published in Volume 33 of Rorschachiana in 2011. The chapter by Estelle Louët, “From Bipolar Disorder to Melancholia and Mania: The Contribution of Projective Tests in the Study of Manic Depressive Disorder in a 16-Year-Old Girl,” was initially published in a book edited by Catherine Chabert and Catherine Azoulay titled 12 Études en Clinique Projective: Approche Psychanalytique (Twelve Case Studies in Projective Psychology: A Psychoanalytical Approach) published by Dunod in 2011, and reprinted here with the kind permission of Dunod Editions. The chapter “Traumatic Traces and Projective Figures of Catastrophes of Symbolization” by Pascal Roman is published with the kind permission of the journal Bulletin de psychologie.

We hope this book will touch English readers from all backgrounds and initiate new and fruitful exchanges.

|1|Part 1Theory & Methods

|3|1Projective Methods in Clinical Psychopathology

Developments, Confirmations, and Contradictions – A Tribute to Nina Rausch de Traubenberg and Rosine Debray

Catherine Chabert

The community of clinical psychologists – and not just that of clinicians who use projective techniques – recognizes the fundamental contributions of the work of Nina Rausch de Traubenberg. When I say “work,” not only do I evoke her research works and publications, but I also refer to her clinical activities within a renowned child psychiatry department at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris and to her essential role in initial and continuing university education for students at the Institut de Psychologie of the University Paris 5 (now the Université de Paris). Her reputation, which extends well beyond the borders of the Francophone parts of Europe, is also based on her work with the same zeal, courage, and dedication, within the Société du Rorschach et des Méthodes Projectives de Langue Française and the International Society of the Rorschach and Projective Methods. Her Rorschach-focused work helped firmly establish psychoanalytic references in projective methodology, at an early stage. Yet, less known, perhaps, is the essential role she played in taking thematic projective tests into account, and in thematic projective test training.

Furthermore, it is to Nina Rausch de Traubenberg that we owe the openness of projective clinical practice to thematic tests, particularly to the TAT. Her acute clinical skills and her qualities as a researcher quickly led her to solicit the assistance of Vica Shentoub in the development of the Certificate of Projective Techniques, almost from its inception. Her well-known stature and generosity were needed to anticipate the challenges to, and lay the foundations of, clinical practice |4|and projective psychopathology from dynamic perspectives, in every sense of the word: meaning dynamic, because she was moving forward; dynamic because she supported movement, change, and mobility; dynamic because she promoted the psychoanalytic interpretation of projective methods in France; and finally, dynamic because from very early on, Rausch de Traubenberg understood the extent to which the Rorschach Test, far from being challenged in its validity and relevance by other projective methods, could rather be enhanced, enriched, and refined by a co-mingling.

Although initially, due to the characteristics of clinical practice at the time, Rorschach and TAT protocols were seldom proposed to the same individuals – because of the almost exclusive use of TAT in research – Rausch de Traubenberg supported and encouraged my proposals to combine both tests, not only in the training of clinicians, but also in clinical practice itself. Her intelligence and sensitivity thus allowed her to support new studies focusing on both tests, even though – and this was admirable – she herself always considered the enhancement of the Rorschach to be her personal research priority and, with her exemplary modesty, she often stated that she “did not really understand TAT”!

Much greater and even more remarkable was her merit in giving exceptional freedom to her younger colleagues. Without this openness and enthusiasm, the French School would never have become what it is. It is with pride and gratitude that I follow in her footsteps. As luck would have it, in the same year, Rausch de Traubenberg introduced me to Rorschach and Rosine Debray to TAT! I therefore went from the one to the other in my training in projective methodology, and this experience has remained very vivid in my mind.

Rosine Debray was already an experienced psychoanalyst when she joined Vica Shentoub for further research into the TAT. From this fruitful collaboration, a meticulous analysis of the TAT material was developed in terms of manifest and latent content; and it was Dr. Debray who rigorously and convincingly developed the structural reference of the TAT cards to the Oedipus complex. With the same enthusiasm, she supported the initial modifications of the TAT protocol scoring grid developed by Vica Shentoub, by involving all projective psychology teachers at the Institut de Psychologie. We were fortunate to be invited so early, so quickly to engage in clinical research with such an innovative and entrepreneurial spirit; especially since, in these working meetings, both clinical practice experience and knowledge of theory were needed to make progress.

In an attempt to show the impact of this double legacy, I have chosen to focus on some contributions of projective methods to the establishment of diagnoses, in the dynamic sense of the term. Those contributions are essential in terms of the psychiatric approach, and I am purposely mentioning them first, because I have not forgotten that Prof. Rausch de Traubenberg and Prof. Debray, each working in her own field, fought for and defended the major role of clinical and projective psychology in establishing diagnoses and thus in the therapeutic project. They both showed how the tools of clinical psychologists were essential, not only because of the depth and richness of their contributions to clinical |5|practice and psychopathology, but also because they promoted the independence of psychologists and their uniqueness in the field of psychiatry.

Differential Diagnosis: Psychopathology and Projective Methods

Differential Diagnosis, Complexity or Heterogeneity of Mental Functioning

The apparently classical notion of differential diagnosis is now a subject of original work in clinical psychopathology, because psychiatric classifications deviate from the study of personality organization by focusing mainly on symptomatic behavior, which is a categorization that remains random or even secondary. Paradoxically, it is clinical psychopathology that plays an essential role in this respect, and over time, it is indicative of possibilities that are increasingly subtle and relevant, thanks to the refinement of the investigation methods. Among these methods, projective tests are undoubtedly at the forefront. This is an important observation: Projective methodology is becoming increasingly effective in the fields of clinical practice and psychopathology research, sometimes opening new perspectives through the detection of mental components or configurations that are not always grasped in the initial interviews.

Therefore, there is a consensus today that those current clinical developments, whether in psychiatry, psychopathology, or psychoanalysis, inevitably confront the issue of diagnosis in the broadest sense of the term: This is actually about understanding the functioning modalities available to a person and the range of mental behaviors that enable them to live, to consider with them – if necessary because of their suffering – therapeutic remedies that may develop their potential for change. Diversification of therapeutic methods and the refinement of care techniques have become necessary precisely as a result of an increasingly subtle differentiation of the psychopathological models. Treatments are now individualized and singled out according to the diversity and originality of a specific mental functioning.

The psychoanalytic interpretation of projective tests, essentially the Rorschach and TAT, has helped to significantly promote their use, both as investigation and assessment tools in a diagnostic approach, and as a metapsychological tool for research in clinical psychology and psychopathology. Today, I even support the view that projective methods also serve psychoanalysis! In a projective testing situation, the patient must associate and speak about material that is certainly ambiguous, but in which the perceptive and latent characteristics of the patient’s responses involve a reactivation of a field of sensorial and representational experiences that are reflected in the formulation of those responses. The discourse of the patient is part of a system that mobilizes the emergence of unconscious representations in the associative expression that is made possible by a reduced vigilance and by the test that calls upon fantasy; yet, at the same |6|time, a material reality, the closest to perception, must be taken into account, the impressions and modifications of which should be fundamentally respected by the patient.

Therefore, we are dealing here with a dual issue that is essential to the fate of every human being – that is, on one hand, the recognition of the internal world as a part of the continuous sense of existence or the permanence of identity, and on the other hand, the awareness of the external world as a part of the investment in the relational field, which enhances the potential for change that is mobilized by different choices of objects, that are made by the patient.

Yet, any attempt to define, with an extreme condensation, the issues that are inherent in the very processes of life, is immediately confronted by the need for reorganization that is imposed first by childhood development, then by the changes that are determined by adolescence and early adulthood, by maturity and then by aging. The passage of time entails the mobilization of mechanisms that are responsible, at the same time, for both change and continuity in the modalities of self-representation and in representations that underlie the relationship with others. Without systematically reiterating all aspects involved in these processes of change, we can point to two key lines: One outlines the regular reactivation of separation issues, putting to the test the capacity both to elaborate loss and to maintain a stable subjective identity, and the other is part of the instinctual dialectic and its impact in the formation of sexual identifications and object choices, and thereby part of their integration into conflictuality systems of which the vitality ensures mental elaboration through the labor of thought.

The Rorschach and TAT provide quite interesting and relevant interpretations of these issues: Rausch de Traubenberg developed her work on self-representation based on the Rorschach about which she stressed from the outset that it considerably calls upon the projection of body images, notably in the identification of an initial topography as the basis of the spatial organization. From the perspectives identified by Shentoub and Debray, we consider that the TAT material triggers the creation of narratives about conflicting systems that are dramatized through the characters featured, and it puts to the test the quality of temporality. Yet, the sense of identity and alterity is part of the link between space and time, a link that is necessary between an inside and outside, a before and after.

Such identity and relational questioning could begin in the study of the mental functioning and its avatars or its psychopathological vagaries. The principle of continuity between normal and pathological that is in a way the organizing principle in psychoanalytic theory (through the effect of clinical experience) has been widely validated both by the psychoanalytic method and psychopathology: All projective studies on persons with good mental health and ailing patients lead to considerably nuanced qualifications of the conventional classifications, whether psychological (choice of the “normal”) or psychiatric (focus on morbidity).

Projective clinical practice is now engaged in a dialectic approach that leaves room for original articulations and spares the unpredictable part in research on mental functioning. A thorough work thus aims to specify – in the most suitable |7|or subtle manner – the unique quality of the different mental components in a person. The identification of certain signs does not, ipso facto, imply the existence of a range that is necessarily related to it. Rupture and discontinuity and at times the heterogeneous association of various signs must be understood in their heterogeneity even if they prove discordant. However, coherence and convention in seeking a common theory led to a dynamic contribution of various projective tests: Indeed, far too often, apart from cases where psychological tests prove to be congruent, inconsistent data are dismissed without any real elaborative reflection.

Diagnostic assessment is more relevant when based on multiple clinical data, by developing a reorganization of the information that was obtained through different psychological investigation procedures: anamnestic data matching, interviews, cognitive tests, projective tests and so on, but also by interprojective matching, notably by using the Rorschach with a thematic test such as the TAT.

The inconsistencies that are sometimes exposed through the matching of protocols from both tests stimulate necessary questions and indicate in fact different facets, different aspects of mental functioning, unveiling what has hitherto remained hidden or obscured by either test. The gap between the Rorschach and TAT reflects the need for a mental dialectic that further distances us from rigid and somewhat simplistic patterns of formal and categorical nosography, revealing the movements of the human psyche through the expression of its internal dynamics. One might even consider that the gap between the two tests particularly raises awareness of the discontinuity of mental functioning and of its possible heterogeneities, which emerge after the Rorschach or TAT protocol. This observation illustrates one of the major convictions of Freud that was particularly addressed in 1930, in his book Civilization and Its Discontents, about the “variegation” of the human mental functioning that must be recognized, accepted, and defended by all means: This is a keystone as it enables the admission of the coexistence of conscious and unconscious processes, the coexistence of opposite instinctual pairs, and the coexistence of agencies that are ruled by the conflicts (Freud, 1930/2001). It then comes as no surprise that within specific psychopathological configurations, we may discover seemingly contradictory and unrelated conducts that reveal a class of functioning that is sometimes surprisingly diverse. The modulations that are provided by the Rorschach or the TAT cards are valuable in this respect, as they may electively mobilize various modalities of conflict management.

The Rorschach: From Self-Representation to Narcissism

The Rorschach can be considered as an identity test, a test of limits allowing the assessment of the solidity of individuation processes and of the constitution of sufficient boundaries between inside and outside. It is in this context that we use it in the first place: The Rorschach is particularly sensitive to the disintegration of self-representation, but at the same time, this sensitivity is also found when it |8|comes to look for signs of construction, the quest for structuring references, holding contour lines of anaclisis, as significant elements of a struggle that is undertaken by the person to conquer or recover both precarious and lost individuality and identity. The Rorschach thus requires a narcissistic focus that, in a way, is called for by the characteristics of the material, as the symmetry that is organized around the vertical axis draws the projection of body representations. However, this narcissistic constraint is regularly put to the test by the change of stimulus: Bilateral configurations are all formal supports that enable the figuration of relational representations; the impact of the chromatic cards may lead to an emotional or instinctual reactivation, the relational dimension of which is flagrant.

Within psychoanalytic psychopathology, borderline functioning constitutes a vast field that brings together quite heterogeneous mental modalities; also for projective clinical practice, it has unfolded in such a thorough and subtle manner that it enables us to distinguish two major configurations that are contrasting and complementary at the same time: narcissistic functioning and borderline functioning that we call depressive. One of the differentiating elements is precisely the question of boundaries, not only between inside and outside and between internal and external reality, but also between ego and object, which provide a particularly relevant diagnostic insight. When the boundaries are firmly protected by narcissistic personalities, they prove to be porous, evanescent, and unstable in the borderline functioning. Echoing these characteristics, the modalities of object relations match to some extent the modalities of self-representation: distance, autarky, refusal of passivity and dependence (apparently), massive enhancement of ego-cathexis in narcissistic personalities, closeness that touches upon mixing lack of autonomy, anaclitic dependence, excessive passivity, and massive enhancement of object cathexis (apparently).

As regards the narcissistic factors in the Rorschach that are specific to self-representation and the boundaries between inside and outside, a noteworthy difference supports this distinction: When narcissistic defenses are significantly invested (perhaps overinvested), their most remarkable features first appear in the relentless protection of their boundaries (high F% and F+%, “skin” responses, etc.) while in borderline functioning, envelopes are porous, such as the “strainer” moi-peau (ego-skin) that was described by Didier Anzieu (1985). While in narcissistic personalities, the inside–outside distinction is outrageously overemphasized it withers and becomes blurred in borderline functioning.

Clinical correspondences are likely to appear in the vagaries of narcissistic protections – for instance, through the major investment of “skins” that clothing reflects, or even in the particularly smooth nature of a discourse that remains at the periphery and that is used as a protective shield to avoid at most any exchange between inside and outside.

Another narcissistic feature appears at the Rorschach in representations of relationships: overinvestment of symmetry, refusal of instinctual interaction in favor of mirroring, and reflections that maintain mirror images and fight against all signs of difference. Clinically, mirror-like positions appear massively in the |9|dynamics of transference: The asymmetry inherent in the therapeutic situation is circumvented by way of idealization, especially in the early stages of treatment. Elsewhere, the escalation of the qualification that is necessary for being recognized and the overinvestment in being watched that are noticeable in the Rorschach appear very clearly in the characteristics of the discourse during sessions, which is molded by positive or negative judgments that are marked with overvalorization or contempt, or even by the visual control that is held by the patient during face-to-face treatment.

The TAT: From Representations of Relationships to Mental Conflict

The TAT seems to provide more relational solicitations through the very nature of the proposed images. Despite its evident ambiguity, the material is perceptively built. The response required by the instructions should mobilize an effort to think to build a narrative around an imaginary scenario: It is therefore a matter of resorting to a binding activity, especially in the arrangement of instinctual conflicts. Shentoub and Debray have clearly shown the iterative reference of the TAT to the oedipal conflict, which, from the outset, puts identificatory processes to the test. Forsaken for a while, the Oedipus complex is yet again being put to the test by psychoanalysts. However, it is precisely the plurality of oedipal forms that has long been apparent in the TAT: In this respect, it might even be considered that the projective method anticipates or announces certain movements in analytical thinking! Since the work of Shentoub and Debray, we have been trained to look for the nuclear complex valence that is either structuring or not, on one hand, and on the other hand, we seek to analyze its role and function in each person.

Furthermore, we also know the effects of this material in the reactivation of depressive and narcissistic issues: The works of Françoise Brelet-Foulard, in particular, have initiated a subtle analysis of these functionings, and the French School has developed these research directions considerably over the last 20 years. The TAT material solicits the production of discourses that are very close to those that are defined in clinical interviews or in mental treatments. The careful discourse analysis that has been developed for the TAT provides a remarkable listening opportunity during a session. Although psychoanalysts do not engage in the detailed and comprehensive analysis that is recommended for the TAT protocols, the projective experience certainly provides an extremely formative function for associative activities. Consequently, the clinician will appreciate the major defensive armatures as well as the very subtle or even volatile signs that could even be missed by the attentive and competent listener. Of course, I am particularly thinking of the nonconflicting dimension of narratives but, beyond that, of all of the processes that are mobilized by the fight against instinctual emergence.

We can therefore apply the two major sets of questions that are raised by the Rorschach and the TAT, to clinical interviews; this is a key question at the outset of preliminary interviews, but it is also regularly raised over the course of the |10|treatment, and it arises more specifically in the dynamics of transference: Within the dynamics of psychic functioning, does the narcissistic centeredness leave room for instinctual investment in objects? Does the relational mobilization help maintain sufficient narcissistic cathexes to ensure the boundaries and the limits with others?

Consequently, each projective protocol, but also each subjective discourse, helps identify not one but several issues, thus pointing to the coexistence of different levels of conflicts and to their more or less successful articulation. It is then a matter of assessing to what extent this coexistence, and mainly this integration, is made possible by the flexibility, the openness, and the plurality of mental conducts (and thus of defense mechanisms), since the effectiveness of the binding processes allows for the management of a conflictuality that is expressed in terms of representations and affects that can be conveyed, unless faced with excessive heterogeneity as a result of the prevalence of unbinding processes that threaten the continuity of narcissistic and object cathexes, or faced with a rigid, monolithic, and closed mode of functioning with limited potential for change.

What actually seems important to grasp is reflected in the analysis of the dialectic of the instinctual expression and, particularly of its conflictuality through narcissistic and object confrontations. Studying the connections between conflicting drives and the narcissistic mechanisms of regulation is indeed a pivotal point in the interpretation of the projective protocols, but also, even of mental functioning, as it appears in “direct” clinical practice.

A Clinical Example: Obsessional Neurosis and Narcissistic Functioning

To illustrate the point that studying the connections between conflicting drives and the narcissistic mechanisms of regulation is indeed a pivotal point in the interpretation of the projective protocols, I would like now to present a specific situation that may raise the issue of differential diagnosis between narcissistic personality and obsessional neurosis. In this situation, it seems necessary to identify the elements that may appear to be contradictions or confirmations, first between clinical observations and projective data, and then, possibly, between the Rorschach and the TAT.

Despite official statements made by psychoanalysts, symptoms certainly affect our diagnostic positions to a greater or lesser extent. Although we regularly assert that the same symptoms are associated with different psychopathological personality organizations, it is clear that we can quickly draw similarities between certain morbid behaviors and specific types of diagnosis. Studies in clinical psychopathology are used as a support when we consider, for instance, that compulsive and addictive conducts are often based on borderline or narcissistic behaviors, and that drifts in the modalities of the relation to reality or massive identity impairments are generally present in psychotic functioning. We then have to take the contradictory position – that is, not only in the projective |11|productions – to look for elements that reinforce a given clinical intuition or conviction, but also, beyond that, to look for contradictory, paradoxical, odd, or strange elements that do not occur as expected.

Narcissistic and obsessional behaviors share the same strong investment in limits, which in the Rorschach translates into an increase in formal determinants. In some patients, the overinvestment in contours and boundaries gives evidence of the defense of boundaries between inside and outside, to avoid any risk of confusion. The fact that such reliance on forms is very often effective (high F+%) should not come as a surprise. Indeed, in these patients, the distinction between the ego and the object must be maintained at all costs, as it notably allows the refusal of dependence, the fear of mingling, and especially the negation of the internal sources of instinctual movements. The F, and the objectivation that it attempts to preserve, is a key factor, and as far as it is associated with specific contents such as the skin responses that I mentioned previously (see the section The Rorschach: From Self-Representation to Narcissism, above), it protects the person from being affected by the excitement that would come from the outside – from the object and from others! To some extent, it is a double defense against instinctual movements: not only the refusal of the source of internal drives, but also the equally unbending refusal of objects that might solicit it.

In severe obsessional neuroses, we may find a similar mode of defense in the attachment to the “objective” external reality, the same fear of invasion by drives, and it is known that, in such situations, the fear of being caught up in the excitement is massive. The idea of engaging it in small amounts is unbearable, and it rapidly gives way to anxiety over an overwhelming surge. The increase in F% is therefore just as recognizable, and it takes on the meaning of a fight against the instinctual emergence, with a significant mobilization of isolation. Therefore, it is sometimes difficult to differentiate between the isolation that serves a neurotic compromise and the isolation that is closer to splitting the ego, of course, but which is also clearly linked with isolation.

It is well-known that the distinctive characteristic of neurosis is revealed in the expression of internal conflicts between agencies inside the mental scenery. In contrast, borderline functioning is less able to create such scenery, and these patients primarily manage conflicts externally, through interpersonal realities or even through the body and behavior. Narcissistic functioning, however, can reveal some forms of internal cathexis that can merge with the prevalence of the ego libido, and their high intellectual competencies are capable of symbolizing performances, to the extent that the differential diagnosis is not always that simple, especially with the Rorschach. Add to this the existence of ritual behaviors, a certain meticulosity, and a strong sense of superiority, and the differentiation is even more difficult.

It is then that the TAT – through the relational deployment that it calls for – may be of assistance in a complicated assessment. Indeed, the processes of elaboration of the narcissistic type of discourse, as constructed and elaborated based on the seminal work of Brelet-Foulard (Brelet, 1986), are highly reliable |12|indicators for identifying narcissistic functioning, and not merely the narcissistic traits that are more or less substantially present in all psychopathological personality organizations (with the exception of schizophrenia). With the use of the TAT scoring grid (see Appendix 3), we can quite clearly understand the level of investment, the mobilization, and the efficiency of the obsessional mechanisms within a neurotic personality organization, through toing and froing, oscillations between desire and defense, through the part that is left to the object cathexis and through sexuality in its potential for binding the aggressive instinctual movements.

It is particularly interesting to consider this dimension when analyzing protocols, as the brutal instinctual emergence with a destructive connotation may appear both in obsessional neuroses and in narcissistic functioning: sometimes as an untangled aggressiveness that is carried by death drives and subject to destructive forces. Sometimes, highly solicited by the Rorschach and generating an unexpected emergence of primary processes, death drives are also reflected in the TAT context where sadomasochistic eroticization, pleasure in object relationships, and emergence of fantasy scenarios are all arguments that point to the even temporary binding capacities that are likely to be revealed with careful listening and reading.

Metapsychology and Projective Clinical Practice

Carrying on with these correlations this time on the metapsychology side, we find ourselves mainly addressing the narcissistic defenses that are part of the analytical concept of skin-ego, the fecundity of which has proved exceptional. The skin-ego, as Didier Anzieu (1985) developed it, provides, yet again, surprisingly relevant illustrations.

The Rorschach, the Body, and Dreams

It seems necessary to briefly mention two dynamic references involved in the Rorschach in particular, but also in psychoanalysis and treatment: dreams and the body. The imaging reverie as defined by Daniel Lagache (1957) requires the observance of a double constraint: the substantial or evanescent solicitation of representations and affects, the call for the dreamer in their original subjectivity – narcissistic constraint if any – and, at the same time, the required respect for the perceptive “realities,” objects that are caught in the paradox of excitation and its limitations. If indeed the projective situation must allow for respect of the two principles of the course of thought, it is then involved in a double consideration: considering the person themselves, as a projective being, a dream producer that is here mobilized in their ability to say what they think, imagine, feel, experience, and desire, as well as considering an object, unknown at first, then to be recognized in the singularity of its being.

The Rorschach – as Nina Rausch de Traubenberg clearly demonstrated by particularly stressing perceptive and projective interferences, mainly in self-|13|representation (Rausch de Traubenberg & Boizou, 1978) – can provide valuable support for the comprehension of associativity and of the implication of the body and images in the production of the discourse.

The Rorschach inkblot – black, gray, or colored – appears in contrast with a white base, outlining the contours and limits of the image, between inside and outside. It has been strongly argued that the Rorschach involves the body, this being particularly justified by the effect of how the inkblots are designed symmetrically around a vertical axis like the human body, thus providing – and this is an observation – a privileged spot to project its representations. The prospects that are opened by the skin-ego widen the scope of this argument to consider the impact of the contours of the inkblot – through the opposition between the figure and the background and the inside and the outside – that is thus used as a spatial medium for originally corporeal images – a Freudian mirror of the ego: “The ego is first and foremost a body-ego; it is ultimately derived from body sensations, chiefly from those springing from the surface of the body” (Freud, 1923/2001, p. 26). Thus the Rorschach proves to be an identity test, an assessment of limits through the suggestion of a more or less represented container–bag, through the stress on the barriers of contact, the recognition of which is particular in each case and accounts for the quality of the capacities of containing and exchanging in a person: firm contours, clearly outlined or unstable, simmering, discontinuous, interpenetrations between the figure and the background; clear, precise or the entanglement of more or less comprehensible forms.… In short, this material requires a labor of figuration in the psychoanalytic sense of the word, insofar as the person tested is confronted with the same requirement for symbolization as the dreamer: Thoughts and feelings that are awakened by the Rorschach cards must be selected and transformed in order to enable them to be represented by visual images. This work is possible if the skin-ego is established: As with dreams, the person must have a filtering, screening system and protective shield, ensuring an effective differentiation between the inside and the outside. Furthermore, the impressionability of the projective layer must be sufficient in order to conserve the traces of the object and to be organized as stable images.

In some situations that rather involve the clinical observation of limits in the broad sense of the term, beyond the visual, there is a polysensoriality of images, the shock of which is poorly understood: Carried by the words that preserve the enigma, they are no longer about vision, but rather about awakening unprecedented sensations, the opacity of which is indefinable. In such particular situations, the visual and representational communication appears as broken: Words aim at concealing what cannot be depicted, to stand in the way of the listener, because they can no longer see. The fading and the disappearance of containers – when there is no recognition of delimited and identifiable entities, when the body of the thought itself is fading – makes associative activities and the creation of images almost impossible.

In the Rorschach there are inevitable correspondences between the dynamics of reverie and the ability to depict representations of the body: Could the basis |14|for the association or the construction of images in the Rorschach be precisely the possible investment in a space, as a locus of projection of the body surface, that is the surface of contact between the inside and the outside, between the subject and the object? The (perceptive) identification of the body and its metaphorical derivatives would be the original approach that may give sense to this highly enigmatic material. The encounter between the real and the imaginary (Rausch de Traubenberg, 1994; Rausch de Traubenberg & Boizou, 1978) is possible and necessary if the use of the transitional area can be updated at the very moment of the testing (Chabert, 1997