Misogyny, Projective Identification, and Mentalization Psychoanalytic, Social, and Institutional Manifestations

Misogyny, Projective Identification, and Mentalization looks at how the psychoanalytic concepts of projective identification and mentalization may explain the construction of society and how they have enabled misogyny to be expressed in social, political, and institutional settings. Karyne E. Messina explores how misogyny has affected the perception and treatment of women through analysis of a range of examples of individual women and groups. The first part explores projective identification as a mechanism for the suppression of women, looking at the origins of the concept in psychoanalysis and its expansion. The author examines the story of Clara Thompson as an example, arguing that her virtual disappearance from the history of psychiatry and psychoanalysis itself is a telling example of this process at work. The second part of the book uses four examples of individuals, including the recent election loss by Hillary Clinton in 2016, to show that projective identification can (particularly in political and cultural settings) overtake and motivate groups as well as individuals, and lead to violence, atrocity, humiliation, and dismissal of and against women. Part three then features case studies of four groups of women from the 20th century, including victims of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, showing how projective identification against groups has occurred. With specific referenceto the erasure of women’s contributions in society, both individually and collectively, and the trauma that arises from the many effects of regarding women as a group as "less" or "other", this is a book which sets a new agenda for understanding how misogyny is expressed socially. Misogyny, Projective Identification, and Mentalization will be of interest to psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists as well as scholars of politics, gender, and cultural studies.

Prologue; Preface; Introduction: BeginningsPART I: ONE MECHANISM THAT EXPLAINS OUR VIOLENT WORLD 1: A Mechanism That Harms: Projective Identification as a Force that Destroys 2: Clara Thompson’s Disappearance: How Projective Identification Contributed to the Near-Extinction of a Star PART II: THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN DAMAGED: PROJECTIVE IDENTIFICATION AS A MAJOR CAUSE OF THE ERASURE 3: Eleanor Marx: A Little-Known Activist 4: A 21st Century Woman: Anne Case 5: Hillary Clinton: The 2016 Presidential Election 6: The Dial Painter and Her Fate: Illness and Death for Many PART III: GROUPS OF WOMEN WHO HAVE BEEN DAMAGED: THE EFFECTS OF PROJECTIVE IDENTIFICATION IN GROUPS 7: The WASP of World War II: Does the Stigma Linger? 8: The Challenge: Healing Groups and Cultures 9: The Atrocity of Physical Abuse: Genocide and Rape in Rwanda and Sex-Trafficked Girls PART IV: MECHANISMS THAT REVERSE THE DAMAGE: MENTALIZATION AND REPARATIVE LEADERSHIP AS ANTIDOTES TO PROJECTIVE IDENTIFICATION 10: Attachment and Mentalization: Key Components that Affect the Development of the Self and the Formation of Group Identify 11: Reparative Leadership as a Way to Help Groups: Reconciliation in Rwanda as an Example of Hope PART V: ATTEMPTING TO TURN THINGS AROUND: FROM PROJECTIVE IDENTIFICATION (A ONE-MIND THEORY) TO MENTALIZATION (A TWO-MIND THEORY) 12: Treatment Out of the Analytic Box: Attachment, Mentalization and a Response to Trauma 13: The Lady—As My Observing Ego—And I: Observing Mentalization After Forming Attachment Relationships; Conclusion

Karyne E. Messina, Ed.D., FABP, is a psychologist and supervising analyst at the Washington Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis and is on the medical staff of Johns Hopkins Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland, USA. She maintains a full-time private practice in Chevy Chase, Maryland. She was previously the Director of the Meyer Treatment Center at the Washington School of Psychiatry and the Director of Continuing Education for Women at George Washington University.