An examination of projective identification and its clinical uses from a Kleinian perspective. The author puts forward the hypothesis that identification is the patient's way of mastering significant trauma.

Ogden constructs an anatomy and physiology of the psychic apparatus based on the interplay of the depressive, the paranoid-schizoid and the autistic - contiguous positions. The last position is his unique creation and refer to a primitive mode of experiencing that involves the moulding and shaping of boundaries.

In Reclaiming Unlived Life, influential psychoanalyst Thomas Ogden uses rich clinical examples to illustrate how different types of thinking may promote or impede analytic work. With a unique style of "creative reading," the book builds upon the work of Winnicott and Bion, discussing the universality of unlived life and the ways unlived life may be reclaimed in the analytic experience. The book examines the role of intuition in analytic practice and the process of developing an analytic style that is uniquely one's own.

Ogden deals with many forms of interplay of truth and...