336 C O L L E C T E D PAPERS O F DONALD M E L T Z E R

expect it necessarily to correspond. It is Just my way of under-

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN standing psychoanalytic history. It Is a very peculiar science
that we have. I do not begin yet to understan d how it works or
develops, a n d why sometimes it does not develop a n d some-
times it seems to shoot ahead. You c a n see i n Freud's way of
working that while he thought himself a n inductive scientist,
A d h e s i v e identification he certainly did not work purely Inductively at all—he worked
deductively at times. T h e process of h i s development is inter-
estingly documented. We have in the marvellous a n d somewhat
(1974) horrific "Project for a Scientific Psychology" (Freud. 1950a
[1887-1902]), a document that states with s u c h clarity a m a s s
of preconceptions that he h a d to gradually whittle away a n d get
rid of i n order to change from a neurophyslologlst to the great
phenomenologlcal psychologist that he eventually became. I
suppose all of u s have to do that. We have from our education
and development a massive preconception of models and
theories a n d ideas that we gradually have to get rid of i n order
to free ourselves to receive new Impressions a n d to think new
thoughts an d entertain new models. It seems to me a n extra-
ordinarily difficult process; it tends inevitably to grind to a halt.
How is it that we get kicked forward? It seems to start mainly i n
In this lecture, the author traces Esther Bick's investigations our consulting-rooms; when we are in trouble and nothing good
and his own clinical findings with autistic patients, to describe seems to be happening, we begin to think again, a n d what I a m
a type of narcissistic identification that is different from going to present here is a n outgrowth of being in trouble, a n d
projective identification and about which he had written at trying to find new ways of thinking.
length in Explorations in Autism (1975), which appeared soon
afterwards. (See particularly chapter 9—on Dimensionality—of T h i s process of "adhesive Identification" that I a m going to
that book.) describe is something E s t h e r Blck a n d I began working on i n
our own separate ways and talking about together bac k In the
early 1960s after Melanie Klein's death. We were both terribly
lonely, since the person who h a d been carrying the load wa s

P
sychoanalysis is such an essentially historical subject now gone. Somebody, everybody, had to pick up the bit of It
and method that It really does not make sense to talk that he could carry. D u r i n g that time E s t h e r Blc k was working
about It In any way but historically, and. of course, we In various ways. First of all she Introduced infant observation
have to start with Freud. However, history is like the law: the into the c u r r i c u l u m of the Tavistock Clinic training for child
law is what the courts do, and history is what historians say; psychotherapists , a n d i n the Institute of Psycho-Analysis. S h e
and my history is different from your history and you must not was also treating some psychotic patients, children, a n d super-
vising the treatment of a large number of children. I remember
there came a period when she kept saying to me, " O h , I don't
know how to talk about it, they are Just like that" (sticking her
T h i s Is t h e t r a n s c r i p t o f a n i n f o r m a l t a l k to t h e W i l l i a m A l a n s o n h a n d s together). "It is something different." I did not know what
W h i t e Psychoanalytic Society o n 2 5 October 1 9 7 4 .

335
 ADHESIVE IDENTIFICATION 337 338 C O L L E C T E D PAPERS O F DONALD M E L T Z E R

she was talking about for a long time. I myself at that time was within the ego by whic h a portion of it is separated off a s the
doing my ordinary practice, which Is a mixture of neurotic superego, a n d this he calls a n identification. T h a t is very puzz-
patients, training cases, one or two schizophrenic patients, a ling, becaus e what it seems to set up is a n internal voice, a n
few children, and supervising a lot of work with children. I observing function, a part of the ego that now observes the ego,
began to find things with autistic children that is also like criticizes it. He seems quickly to forget the other ego ideal
something stuck together. Gradually we came to something function—that is, of encouraging and supporting the ego i n
that we think is new and interesting, b u t i n order to under­ favour of the harsher , more restrictive a n d punitive aspects of
stand it, one has to go back i n history, and that is what I want it. Somehow this conceptual use of the term "identification" for
to do now. the process by w h i c h the superego is established does not seem
Identification processes seem to me to have a very funny to fit with the phenomenological u s e of the term "identification"
place i n Freud's writings. As phenomena, he seems to have as it is used in the case histories i n particular, whereas I think
been very brilliant i n observing identification processes; even it h a s something to do with imitations a n d being like somebody
starting from the Studies in Hysteria (1895d) they are men­ else: the superego does not seem to be. a s F r e u d sees it, part of
tioned. "Elizabeth" was identified with her mother and her the ego or to induce character manifestations. If you Judge from
father. "Dora" was identified. The "Rat Man" was identified, and the little paper on the anal character (1908b) or the one on
you hear this over and over again and mentioned as having "Some Characte r Types Met with i n Psycho-Analytic Work"
something to do with imitation, something vaguely to do with (1916d). Freud's idea of character still seems to be boun d to the
character. Then he came to the Leonardo (1910c) paper. libido theory and the way i n whic h libido is diverted. Inhibited,
Although i n many ways i t is not a nice paper at all from the sublimated, reacted against, and so on. His idea was that
point of view of art history, it does seem to me to be an characte r is built up through the management of the vicissi-
important paper from the point of view of psychoanalytic his­ tudes of instinct. T h i s problem h a s puzzled me greatly, a n d
tory, because i t is really the first time that Freud tries to take a having taught it for man y years, I have always tried to under-
life as a whole thing and to try to understand it—a great move stan d it. It seems to me that if you compare Freud's paper on
forward for him—to separate the pathology from a matrix of Mourning and Melancholia (1917e (19151) with Abraham' s pa-
health and life processes. Health did not seem to interest h i m per on melancholia a n d manic-depressive states, you c a n see
very much. He seems i n his early writings to be more purely a that there is a very Important difference i n the k i n d of model
psychopathologist and not to be interested in people, you might they h a d i n their minds. Freu d in Mourning and Melancholia
say. The Leonardo paper starts something different; there he gets into a terrific muddle about who is abusin g whom. Is the
speaks of identification processes i n a meaningful way that is ego ideal abusin g the ego? Is the ego abusin g this object that
connected w i t h the beginnings of a concept of narcissism, and h a s been taken inside? O n the other hand , A b r a h a m is quite
he states that there is something that he would like to call clear about it a n d speak s about it in very concrete terms. He
narcissistic identifications. In his paper on the "Wolf Man" s a y s that a n object h a s been attacked internally a n d turned
(1918b (1914]). also, Freud seems to recognize narcissistic into faeces: it h a s then been defecated out and then compul-
identifications and to realize that they have something to do sively reintrojected by a process that h a s the meaning of eating
with identity, something to do with distortions of identity. the faeces, a n d that this faecal object is then established inter-
nally. F r e u d could never have talked in this way, a n d for a very
Then, suddenly. Freud begins to take an interest i n the
important reason. He could not get rid of the preconceptions of
ideal ego and the ego ideal, and then finally the superego i n the
the neurophysiological sort on the one h a n d a n d the so-called
1920s. The concept of identification comes to be used suddenly
hydrostatic model of instinct on the other in order to conceptu-
i n a very different way. Using Ferenczi's term, he speaks of
alize the mind a s a place, a s a space. Nowhere in his writings is
introjection into the ego and the establishment of a gradient
 ADHESIVE IDENTIFICATION 339 340 C O L L E C T E D PAPERS O F DONALD M E L T Z E R

there a conceptualization of spaces. He comes a little closer to i t and it wa s very closely connected with h i s fear of loaded wag-
In the Schreber case (Freud. 1911c [1910]). where he talks ons falling over, an d the relationship of the horse to the wagon,
about the world destruction fantasy. He talks a little b i t there an d so on. F r e u d saw all that quite clearly, but he did not take
about what world was destroyed—inner or outer—but then he any interest tn it He did not take any interest at all In Little
hedges i t i n a very peculiar way and says that i t was a world Hans* proliferation of fantasy about the time before H a n n a w a s
that had been built up through the precipitate of identifica­ born a n d the time before he was born, when he a n d H a n n a
tions. He uses the words "identifications" and "sublimations". I were together in the stork box, a n d the things they did, a n d the
have never understood what he meant by that. He also hedges things they ate, a n d the places they went, a n d so on. F r e u d
the problem, because you may remember that he speaks of this sweeps al l of that aside and attributes it to hi s pulling h i s
world as having fallen to pieces by the withdrawal of libido, as if father's leg an d having revenge on h i m because of the stork
a k i n d of magnet could draw the mortar out from between the story, as m u c h as to say—I think, F r e u d says—something like,
bricks and the thing would Just fall to pieces. But then, as a "if you expect me to believe the stork story, you've got to believe
footnote, i n which he quotes Heine's poem, he makes i t quite this rubbish" . So he J u s t sweeps it aside. T h a t was the evidence
clear that i t has been smashed to pieces. It has not j u s t crum­ that Melanie Klein did not sweep aside, an d whic h put her on to
bled from neglect or withdrawal of interest. It has been this whole question of spaces—spaces Inside the self, spaces
smashed to pieces. inside objects, a n d a place where concrete things happened
I think one can see evidence that Freud had some sort of that h a d relentless an d evident consequences an d could be
difficulty about allowing himself to shift to a model i n which studied a s part of the transference process. To me this is really
there was a conception of something very concrete—the inside a major move, a n d it was from the study of processes of
of the mind as a place where things could really happen and phantas y related to these spaces that our concepts of the pre-
not j u s t be imagined. This term "imagined" is j u s t not good genital Oedipus complex a n d the concreteness of internal
enough to describe the events of the mind. It fudges the issue objects—the prelude to the genital Oedipus complex, part-
and does not account for the relentlessness and inevitability object relationships, a n d so on—originate. All of the work s h e
with which events follow one another, and particularly the produced i n the 1930s stemmed from this a n d w a s very
inevitability with which attacks upon objects i n this inner controversial at that time. It took her until 1946 to make a n y
space, which damage these objects, produce psychopathologi­ headway at all with the problem of identification. It was in 1946
cal changes that really have to be painfully repaired and that s h e presented a paper called "Notes on Some Schizoid
restored i n order for the process of recovery to take place. Mechanisms" , in w h i c h she described splitting processes a n d
This is where Freud was and where he remained until the projective identification. Under the term "projective identifica-
end of his life. In the 1920s, when Melanie Klein, who was tion" s h e described a n omnipotent phantas y whereby, i n
studying with Abraham at the time, began to work with chil­ combination with splitting processes, a part of the self c a n be
dren, he almost immediately began to hear things from these split off a n d projected inside a n object a n d by that mean s take
children about spaces, and particularly about a very special possessio n of its body a n d Its mentality a n d its identity. S h e
space experienced i n a very concrete way that was inside them­ described some of the consequences that arise from this con-
selves, in their bodies, and in particular inside their mothers* fusion of identity, i n particular claustrophobic anxieties a n d
bodies. This evidence had not really been unavailable to Freud, some of the severe persecutory anxieties related to claustro-
because if you read Utile Hans (Freud. 1909b), you see that he phobia.
talked about the same things. He talked about the time when T h e history of the so-called Kleinlan group from 1946 on
little sister Hanna was inside the stork box. the stork box was is by a n d large the history of the Investigation of projective
inside the carriage, and the carriage was obviously his mother. identification a n d splitting processes. T h e basic work done by
 ADHESIVE IDENTIFICATION 341 342 COLLECTED PAPERS OF DONALD MELTZER

Melanie Klein on the pre-genital Oedipus complex and the ulgate i n the ego—or really i n the self, as she would speak of
technical development In child analysis are her original con­ it—a thrust for development along certain lines, an aspiration
tributions. From 1946 on the people who worked with her to become like the object, worthy of it, all of which was part of
really got their teeth into this, because it threw up a terrific what she described as the depressive position. At that time, we
snowstorm of phenomena and technical problems. It greatly rather thought that the problem of narcissistic Identifications
widened the range of patients who could be approached was in a sense solved, conceptually speaking: that they were
through the psychoanalytic method. It encouraged people to produced by projective Identifications, and that was that. There
apply the psychoanalytic method to more psychotic patients was j u s t the matter of exploring what began to look like an
and schizophrenics without modifying the method. It gave them almost limitless field of phenomenology related to projective
conceptual tools with which they could work, to explore phe­ identification and its consequences. We got quite used to the
nomenology that they not only could not work with b u t could term—it is not a very nice term, i n the sense that i t is not
not even notice previously. at all poetic—but i t came easily off the tongue, and we found
The point about projective identification is that i t is the ourselves saying, •'projective identification", "projective identifi­
description of a process by which a narcissistic identification cation", and we got quite blase about It and I think quite
comes about—that is. a process of the omnipotent phantasy of careless about i t i n a way. Of course we also began to notice
splitting off and projecting a part of the self into an external or that the Interpretation along the lines of projective identifica­
internal object. This process results in phenomena of identi­ tion did not seem to carry any weight in certain situations. We
fication w i t h the object of an immediate and somewhat were i n trouble with certain kinds of patients and saw that
delusional sort, which is the identification aspect of projective something else was going on that certainly was connected with
identification. Then it throws up a spectrum of phenomena Identification processes; it certainly was connected with narcis­
related to the projection itself, which is related to the emotional sism, but i t seemed to have quite a different phenomenology
and phantasy experiences of the part of the self that is inside, from what we had gathered together under the rubric of projec­
leading into claustrophobic anxieties and related things like tive identification.
hypochondria, depersonalization states, confusion about time The first paper about it was finally produced by Esther Bick
and space, and so on. called the "The Function of the Skin i n Early Object Relations"
When I came on the scene in London in 1954, projective in 1968. There she described something connected with very
identification was used by the people in our group as synony­ early infantile development that she became aware of i n her
mous with narcissistic identifications. We were comparing it work with mothers and infants—something that had to do with
with the processes of introjective identifications which Freud states of catastrophic anxiety in certain infants whose mothers
had described i n relation to the genital Oedipus conflict and the seemed somehow unable to contain them. When these infants
establishment of the superego, and which Melanie Klein had became anxious, their mothers became anxious too, and then
moved to an earlier period in development by describing the the Infant became more anxious, and a spiral of anxiety tended
introjectlon of the breast, both the good and bad breast, as to develop, which ended with the infant going into a state of
part-objects. These Internalized part-objects, preludes to the some sort of quivering and a k i n d of disintegrated, disorganized
superego, she called superego, or precursors of the superego. state that was not screaming, nor a tantrum, j u s t something
This process of Introjective identification was being understood that one would have to describe as disorganized. Esther Bick
as something very different from a narcissistic identification in began to observe this phenomenon also in certain patients,
that it was not something that happened in a moment—an generally patients who, on the whole, did not seem terribly i l l . i n
object was set up internally through introjection, and this candidates, i n people who came because of problems like poor
object, primarily through its ego-ideal functions, would prom­ work accomplishment, unsatisfactory social lives, vague patho­
 ADHESIVE IDENTIFICATION 343 344 C O L L E C T E D PAPERS O F DONALD M E L T Z E R

logical complaints; i n people who were somehow on the periph­ encouraged them to be rather aggressive little boxers and to
ery of the analytic community and wanted to have an analysis attack the mother with their fists, laughing i n an excited way. It
and could not quite say why. She began to observe that these was a way of overcoming these states of anxiety or disintegra­
patients i n their dream life and i n their waking life were subject tion, and she began to call these "secondary skin formations",
to states of temporary disintegration very much like the infants. or "substitute skin formations".
Suddenly they j u s t would not be able to do anything. They All the time she was describing this to me back i n the
would have to sit down, and they would shake. It was not that 1960s, she was also going like this (hands together), and she
they were anxious i n the ordinaiy sense of an anxiety attack— said, "they are sticky, they stick". You feel i n the analysis that
they Just felt muddled, paralysed, and confused and could not this is a patient who does not intend ever to finish the analysis,
do anything. They j u s t had to sit down or lie down until i t went that they are on to something good and they expect to be w i t h
away. The material of the analysis at these times began to throw you for the duration, plus six months. She also thought that
up images like a sack of potatoes that got wet and all the these patients had some sort of difficulty about introjection
potatoes spilled out, or where the patient suddenly wet herself, and that they could not use projective identification very much,
or i n which a patient's teeth fell out, or his arms fell off, or that their conception of their relationships was a very external
things like that, quite painlessly—which described disintegra­ one, that their values were very external and not generated
tion processes of some sort, of something not held together, not by internal relationships, not based on internal principles, not
contained. Bick began to notice that these people all had distur­ based on observation of themselves, their own reactions, but,
bances related to the skin or their experience of the skin—not so as i t were, looking i n the mirror of other people's eyes all the
much dermatologic disorders as how they felt about the skin, time, copying other people, imitating, fashion-conscious, pre­
that it was too thin, that i t bruised easily, that i t was easily occupied with manners and social forms and social status and
lacerated, that it did not feel as if it had any strength to it. and things of that sort, not necessarily in an offensive way or even
so on. She discovered that this was a very pervasive k i n d of in a way that one would have noticed. In fact, many of them
experience for these people: they were not properly held to­ were "well-adjusted"—a hateful expression. They were well­
gether by a good skin, b u t they had other ways of holding adjusted people and people who would not ordinarily have
themselves together. In her paper on the skin, she describes come to analysis, had they not in most instances lived on the
some of these: Some of them held themselves together intellec­ fringes of the analytic community where going into analysis
tually with their intelligent thinking and talking, with the "gift of was the thing to do. They most often came to analysis because
the gab". They could hold themselves together with explana­ some friend of theirs was i n analysis.
tions, and they had explanations for everything. Bick felt she Esther Bick had a vague feeling that there was something
could observe situations i n the infants who were disorganized wrong with their identification processes: they somehow did
showing that early verbalization had been encouraged, and they not use introjection very well; they did not learn in a very
became children who were not prone to activity but to talking all experiential way from really having experiences b u t merely by
the time: they turned into terrific chatterboxes. She observed i n imitating other people. Of course, our educational system is
some adult patients that they seemed to hold themselves to­ right up their alley, you might say, so that they were often
gether muscularly: they did callisthenics, weight-lifting, and educationally very successful—rote learners, imitators, u n i m ­
athletics, and their attitude towards life was a muscular one— aginative.
that you did not think about a problem, you did i t first and saw At this time, I was working with a group of child psycho­
it happen, and if it did not work out you did it another way, b u t therapists who were treating autistic children. I had worked
you moved your muscles. Esther Bick discovered that she could with autistic children in the States, and I began supervising
also trace processes in these infants where their mothers colleagues through the late 1950s and the 1960s: some eight or
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ten cases of autism that were being treated by psychoanalytic ingful experience that gradually began to agglutinate, to All up
methods drifted into supervision with me. We finally set up a the Wednesdays, fill up the middle of the week or the middle of
little group and began to study and review the material. We the term. T h e s e children turned out to have incredible Intoler-
began to discover things about autistic children that began to ance to separation. We did not at first think of these two
ring a bell: i n some way, these discoveries were connected also categories In terms of dimensionality of life-space; we thought
with phenomena that Esther Bick was observing. Without going of them i n terms of "mental" a n d "non-mental", a s if i n the
into the whole business of autistic children, I would like to autistic phenomena we were seeing something equivalent to
emphasize a few of the major things that we discovered and what you might see in a petit mal seizure or in the automatis m
that impressed us very much. of the comatose patient.
First of all, what impressed us about these children was It w a s only after we studied in retrospect children who h a d
that when we looked back after several years of psychoanalytic been I n treatment for three, four, five years that we began to
treatment of a child, we felt we could divide the phenomenology think i n terms of dimensionality an d in terms of space, a n d of
that was manifest i n the consul ting-room into two categories. s p a c e s a n d spatial relations, a n d with it. of course, the effect
First, there was the category of purely autistic phenomena, upo n time relationships. What gradually emerged for u s a s we
which remained the same and never changed, consisting of an thought a n d talked about it was that outside the are a of their
assortment of rather disparate items of behaviour with differ­ a u t i s m , i n what we came to think of as their post-autism, their
ent objects i n the room and involving i n a simple way particular post-autistic psychosis, these children functioned a s if there
senses and very simple activities (a child might always, when really were no spaces, there were only surfaces, two dimen-
he came into a room, go and suck the latch on the window, sions. Thing s were not solid, only surfaces that they might
or go to smell the Plasticine, or go and lick the glass of the lean up against or that they might feel, smell, touch, or get
window: actions like that—very simple, very sensual). At first, a sensatio n from. T h e r e were surfaces, a n d they leaned up
of course, we had to assume that every item was meaningful against them; they leaned up against the analyst, they leaned
and i t must be related to every other item of behaviour; that all up against the chest of drawers. They could not seem to crawl
behaviour was strung together by a thread of meaning, and so into places, like most children do. You would think they never
on. These items did not change. They only shrank, as it were, h a d pockets—nothing ever went into their pockets. They did
from occupying nine-tenths of the session to begin with, to not seem to hold things well. Items Just seemed to fall through
eventually occupying one-tenth of the session. They might even them. T h e y also gave the impression that they did not listen
clear on Wednesday and only be present on Friday or Monday, very well. Y o u felt very strongly that your words went right
before or after the weekend. Those seem to be the autistic through them. Thei r responses often seemed so delayed that
items. you felt that all that h a d been left behind of what you h a d s a i d
Then there was a second category of items that were more was a k i n d of m u s i c a l disturbance that they eventually reacted
complicated; they were not repetitive. When you culled them to or reacted against. Their relationships to inside a n d outside
out from the autistic matrix, you could string them together, the playroom were very characteristic in that they seemed not
and described to someone, they would sound like the ordinary really to distinguish between being inside a n d being outside.
play of a neurotic or psychotic child i n the playroom that could With one little boy it wa s quite typical that when he came into
be examined psychoanalytically and sometimes even under­ the playroom, he would r u s h to the window to see if there were
stood a bit. So we felt we were seeing i n this matrix of autistic any birds in the garden, an d at first, if he saw any birds, he
phenomena something very simple, very meaningless, very would be terrifically triumphant. We a s s u m e d this meant that
sensual, very repetitive, and in a sense a flight from mental life. he w a s inside a n d they were outside. B u t then in a moment it
In this sea of meaninglessness there were little items of mean­ changed, a n d he felt very persecuted an d began s h a k i n g his fist
 ADHESIVE IDENTIFICATION 347 348 C O L L E C T E D PAPERS O F DONALD MELTZER

at them, and then he would r u n over to the analyst and look of mindlessnes s i n w h i c h there was only a sort of tropism
into his mouth or look into his ears, and it seemed fairly clear relationship, with direction. For instance, a child would come
that a reversal had taken place. From being inside and the in a n d r u n right up to the window a n d s u c k on the latch or r u n
birds outside, i t had suddenly reversed, and he was outside between two doors, one door which he smelled a n d the other
and they were inside—inside the analyst, inside the building, door w h i c h he licked. T h e n there was the two-dimensional
undistinguished by h i m . Another child, for instance, tended to surface relationship to objects in which there were no spaces
draw pictures of houses, one on each side of the paper, and a n d i n w h i c h therefore identification processes could not take
when you held it up to the light, you saw that the doors were place a n d development did not seem to occur because they
superimposed—a kind of house where you open the front door could neither u s e projective identification, whic h required a
and step out of the back door at the same time. space to get into, nor introjective identification, which required
We came to understand that these children were having a space that you could take something into. We did notice that
difficulty i n conceptualizing or experiencing a space that could these children h a d another kind of identification, something
be closed. I n a space that cannot be closed, there is Just no that we felt we could really call imitation. One could see it i n
space at a l l . Then we had the exciting experience of seeing their posture sometimes, one could hear It in their tone of
some of them begin to close these orifices. One boy, for i n ­ voice. Suddenly out of a little mite of a boy a deep voice would
stance, went through a period i n which he papered the walls of come out, saying "bad boy". One could notice it in relation to
the playroom and papered the walls of his room at home, and their clothing: they would insist on items that were the same
then he began to draw pictures of maps, and these maps colour a s the analyst h a d worn the day before. One could notice
consisted mainly of the route between his home and the con­ it i n that it w a s difficult for them to take a n interest in anything
sulting-room. At first these pictures seemed to be of terrible new: it wa s always the thing that h a d interested a n d attracted
things happening—absolute chaos, disorder, police cars that the attention of the analyst that would be repeated over a n d
seemed to turn into criminals one minute, soldiers that turned over again.
into madmen the next, and so on. Gradually, over a period of We began to see a link in what we were noticing with the
months, stop-lights and little Royal Canadian mounted police­ autistic children a n d what E s t h e r Bick was observing with her
men began to appear i n these drawings, and slowly order patients a n d with the Infants. We began to think that we were
seemed to settle. Then he began to draw pictures of the inside now observing a new type of narcissistic identification, and that
of the clinic where he was being seen, i n which there began we could no longer think of projective identification as being
to be rooms. There began to be doors, rooms began to have synonymous with narcissistic identification but h a d to think
separate functions, and these pictures were very exciting, be­ of identification as a broader term in the sense that defence
cause they all looked like the insides of bodies. They did not became a broader term and repression became subsume d
look like the insides of buildings at all. So something could unde r it. We h a d to think of narcissistic identification as the
happen with these children that enabled them to take an object broader term, with projective Identification s u b s u m e d under it,
that was so open that getting inside i t was impossible because a n d we decided to call this new form of narcissisti c identifica-
you fell out and the inside was like a house without a roof, i t tion adhesive identification. Some sort of Identification process
rained inside as well as out. so you might as well stay out. They took place, which we thought was very closely connected with
gradually began to close the orifices of their objects to make a mimicry a n d very closely connected with the kind of shallow-
space, and development—particularly language development­ nes s a n d externalization of values that E s t h e r Bick was observ-
began to take place i n them as it had not occurred before. ing in the patients that I have described to you. Time seemed
It was at that time that we began to think about not Implied, as in four-dimensionality. In fact, a proper relation
dimensionality and of the autistic phenomena proper as a kind to time is a very sophisticated achievement. We began to ob-
 ADHESIVE IDENTIFICATION 349 350 C O L L E C T E D PAPERS O F DONALD M E L T Z E R

serve that the two-dimensional patients had a very oscillating discovered patches of shallowness present In everybody,
relationship to time, that i t went i n one direction and then It patches I n w h i c h emotionality was vei y attenuated—not In a
went back and then it went i n another direction and went back, sens e of flatness, but a s a kind of thinness, a kin d of
and i t did not really move. When they came out of this and squeaklnes s of emotional response.
became more three-dimensional, concerned with spaces, they We think that I n our own way of working we are beginning to
had a much more circular relationship with time, i n which it open up a new are a of phenomenology, we have a new concep-
went around and i t really was cyclical. Day and night were tual tool with which we c a n pry things open a n d begin to see
different, b u t i t always came back to the same spot. It did not phenomen a that we h a d not noticed before. Where it will lead
get anywhere, and you did not really grow older; something and how it will enrich our work Is a bit too soon to tell.
grew bigger, something shrivelled up and died, b u t you really
did not get older i n any inevitable way. Ageing was a k i n d of
accident due to poor planning, or negligence, or the aggression
of other people. The progression to four-dimensionality, to an
appreciation of time as a linear process and to a lifetime as
a thing with a definable beginning and end came much later.
Little Hans thought that he had always been i n the stork box
before he came out. That was a fairly sophisticated idea and
had something to do with the achievement of what Melanie
Klein had described as the depressive position—that is, a shift
from egocentricity and preoccupation with one's own self,
safety, and comfort to a primary concern with the welfare of
one's objects. These processes connected with confusion about
time, and attitudes towards time could now be noticed more i n
the phenomenology of the consulting-room and brought into
the interpretive work. So we coined the term "adhesive identifi­
cation", and the more we thought about it, the more we began
to notice that it played a part in much of our patients' lives
and i n our own lives. This was particularly true in relation to
values—the difficulty in establishing internal values, that is, an
internal source of values. For instance, one noticed i n people
who were artistic and seemed to have good taste in art and to
be very knowledgeable, that they often reported that they knew
very well that there was something wrong because when they
went to a gallery they always looked at the title and who painted
it before they looked at the picture, because they wanted to
know its value before they actually looked at it. This was, i n a
sense, a sort of prototype of their altitude towards the world.
They really wanted to know the price of things, because they
had no basis internally for establishing their own personal
evaluation of it in terms of its meaningfulness to them. We