Projective Identification ( part one) : a poem about friendship between an artist and a doctor

I met my best friend at our mutual friend Dean’s party at the Havana Cafe, (later the Green Ant Cafe), in Cairns. In those youthful years when we were beginning to learn how to hold paradox, and our spirits, together.

She really is a psychiatrist these days, and I am an artist, so the psychoanalytic title seemed an apt way to explore the dance between friends who both swim in symbolic waters.  Artist. Psychiatrist. Poet. Charged archetypes that carry, embody and amplify complex personal and collective projections.

They say projection is where we displace and project unintegrated aspects of ourselves onto another, seeing that which we cannot (bear to) see in ourselves.  Projective identification goes further…we start to identify with and enact, the projections that others place upon us. 

While projections need not be negative, they do suggest a form of psychic splitting which may hint at deeper processes, so it’s interesting to ponder what may be swirling about these often bi-directional processes. To strive to be conscious of what’s going on. 

For a woman who walks with creativity and chaos, external containment can be a very enchanting temptation to project upon another. 

But so is the wild, unbounded artist. 

This poem is, of course, a creative projection of my own. 
Perhaps I might write another from her perspective. 
I wouldn’t hold either of them to be entirely true. 
But, you know, there’s glimpses of truth in everything, I suppose.

Friendship, especially one spanning decades, becomes a shared mythopoetic field. The symbols that bounce about are both real and refracted. In that sense, the poem is not just about us. It’s about the archetypal dance between containment and wildness, between interpretation and creation, recreation…and beyond.

I’ll write Part Two soon :UPDATE its here

Tanja

[crossposted at my Substack Sanguino Ergo Sum
https://tanjastark.substack.com/p/projective-identification ]

Projective Identification (part one) 

I met you 
in the bathroom
of the party, retching
when they asked 
is there a doctor 
in the house.

duly summoned 
you arrived
my proxy in place 
of common sense
you took my pulse 
and held space 
and my flaming hair
out of water.

you were not a shrink 
back then and I
was not quite crazy.
perhaps going mad
would save my life
and getting mad
save yours
decades later
you still hold space
and keep my head
from drowning.

I never knew 
you were smashed 
at that party too

tanja stark


*Cross-published on my Substack Sanguino Ergo Sum here