Projective Identification as a Primary and Ongoing Language of Unconscious Somato-Psychism: From Primary Transmission to Form, Symbolization, and Thought in the Narcissistic Spectrum of Positions

The present article proposes that projective identification constitutes the primary and ongoing language of unconscious somato-psychism: a mode of communication that precedes thought and symbolization and remains active throughout life. Rather than being limited to a defensive function or to psychopathological phenomena, it is understood as a universal mechanism through which somato-psychic states are transmitted, regulated, and transformed within relationship. Experience is initially conveyed as immediate state and subsequently organized into forms—dreams, symptoms, fantasies—which function as pre-symbolic “hieroglyphs” of psychic life. Through further processing, these forms are transformed into concepts and thought. This process unfolds within the Narcissistic Spectrum of Positions, a dynamic field in which psychic organization is not static but emerges through continuous fluctuation and regulation. Health is defined as the capacity to symbolize and transform experience, while pathology is understood as rigidity, repetition without transformation, and the displacement of experience into the body. The proposal enters into dialogue with Kleinian and Bionian thought, as well as with contemporary relational and neuropsychoanalytic approaches, advancing a unified perspective in which projective identification is conceptualized as the foundational language of somato-psychic relatedness.