Feelings on the Move · 3 of 5

Projective identification

Making someone else feel your feeling

Meet the person

Melanie Klein

1882–1960

Born in Vienna. As a young mum she was treated by Ferenczi in Budapest, and he encouraged her to work with children. She moved to London in 1926 and did something new: she watched how children played with toys to understand their minds. In 1946 she named projective identification.

The idea

This is projection, turbo-charged. You don’t just imagine your feeling in someone else — you push it into them, and they really start feeling it. Like a hot potato: you can’t hold it, so you throw it, and now they’re the one getting burned.

Projective identification: my feeling ends up in you, for real.

Has this ever happened to you?

Caught someone’s bad mood within 10 minutes, though nothing happened to you?Felt useless around someone who, it turned out, felt useless themselves?Ended up shouting when the other person seemed to want a fight?Felt nervous for a friend who was acting totally calm?

Catch it: ask “Was I feeling this before they arrived?” If not, it may be theirs. Therapists use this trick every day to understand their patients.

Spot it

Leo is scared about his exam but acts totally cool. By evening his mum is the one panicking about it. What happened?

▸ For grown-ups: sources

[Ref: Klein M. (1946) Notes on some schizoid mechanisms. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 27:99–110]

[Ref: Ogden T.H. (1979) On projective identification. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 60:357–373]

Written by Dr Saal Seneviratne, Consultant Psychiatrist at The Burlington Clinic, London · Last reviewed 21 October 2026 · About these pages