Trace-Objects: Discovering Negative Identification in the Schizoid Transference

This article describes parallel disclosure, a form of clinical self-disclosure that addresses the schizoid patient's use of negation to omnipotently deny the impact of other. Negation is described as obstructing projective identification and disabling object use, creating a blank space where the negated object exists in the psyche and in the schizoid transference. The author refers to this blank space as the undifferentiated trace of a traumatizing historical object (a trace-object), and reasons that the trace-object—though amorphous and depersonified—can be conceptualized as a human object. Perceiving negative space as if it were an object in its own right is referred to as negative identification. The parallel disclosures illustrated in this article involve the author's personalized version of the patient's trace-object, offering it as a parallel to the patient's trace-object for the patient to use.