When theory meets practice: the value and limitations of the concept of projective identification.

Before the corporate entity of A T & T was broken up so that hungry predators could sweep up the fragments and take over the telecommunications industry, it was affectionately known as “Ma Bell.” I recall as a youngster hearing its radio advertisement that told us, over and over, “we’re all connected.” And indeed we are all connected. No one exists in isolation. We start out in life developing inside another person, to whom we are connected by an umbilical cord as our lifeline. And that is only the beginning. When we emerge into the world, in a physically helpless but mentally active, secondarily altricial state, we continue to be connected to a mothering caregiver who among other things is indeed our Ma Bell. We are in continual and, in a sense, continuous communication with her as we use our mindbrain—the felicitous term employed by Damasio (2010) and Panksepp (2012)—to learn how to affectively regulate ourselves and