Stalin could be said to have been the victim of projective identification, seeking another authority figure to replace his abusive father he chose Lenin. This is what happened with the Nazis and Hitler. Just who did Hitler choose to fill his father's shoes? Some unknown in a bar intoxicated and bellowing derrogatory remarks about the Jews ? Even Freud fell victim to the same problem when his father, after being accosted by some anti-semitic and knocking his hat to the ground, refused to defend himself in front of Sigmund, retrieving his hat from the street and walking away with his son in tow. Why I think some of Jung's ideas are really Freud's.
This same mechanism can be seen in cases of domestic abuse as portrayed in the film Shattered Dreams, with Michael Nouri and Lindsay Wagner and in an even more dramatic portrayal in Burning Bed with Farah Fawcett as an abused housewife who's only way out, in a moment of insanity, was to set her husband on fire while he was asleep.
Projective identification can also be observed in Crimes of Obedience, by Kelman and Hamilton, as induction on the part of the authority figure and projective identification on the part of the subordinate, pg. 78, The Structure of Authority, although projective identification is more often an unconscious process and is also portrayed in An Officer and A Gentleman and in a reversal of roles in What About Bob, with Bill Murray and Richard Dreyfuss.
Silent Fall dramatizes projective identification in the case of an autistic child who is suspected of murdering his parents, who's ego defenses are all but non-existent.
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