78. "Projection and projective identification are defenses that can be used by anyone, depressed or not."

"Projection and projective identification are defenses that can be used by anyone, depressed or not. And they are especially likely to be evoked in close relationships, because intimacy, though good for us, is scary—we fear being engulfed, dominated, controlled. People with depression are likely to take their own bad feelings about themselves and project the feelings onto the people who care about them. The depressed husband who has lost his job doesn’t believe his wife really means her words of comfort and reassurance; he doubts his own worth but defends against this doubt by attributing it to her. After enough rejection, she stops trying to make him feel better, and he is reinforced in his belief that she doesn’t care about him."

From "Undoing Depression" by Richard O'Connor, Ph.D., Berkley Books, New York