Psychological projection

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Projection is a psychological phenomenon where feelings directed towards the self are displaced towards other people.

Psychoanalysts regard projection as a

blame shifting and can manifest as shame dumping.[3] Projection has been described as an early phase of introjection.[4]

Historical precursors

A prominent precursor in the formulation of the projection principle was Giambattista Vico.[5][6] In 1841, Ludwig Feuerbach was the first enlightenment thinker to employ this concept as the basis for a systematic critique of religion.[7][8][9]

The

Babylonian Talmud (500 AD) notes the human tendency toward projection and warns against it: "Do not taunt your neighbour with the blemish you yourself have."[10] In the New Testament, Jesus warned against projection: "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."[11]

Psychoanalytic developments

Projection (German: Projektion) was conceptualised by Sigmund Freud in his letters to Wilhelm Fliess,[12] and further refined by Karl Abraham and Anna Freud. Freud considered that, in projection, thoughts, motivations, desires, and feelings that cannot be accepted as one's own are dealt with by being placed in the outside world and attributed to someone else.[13] What the ego refuses to accept is split off and placed in another.[14]

Freud would later come to believe that projection did not take place arbitrarily, but rather seized on and

impulse or desire projected outside,[16] so that the self maintains a connection with what is projected, in contrast to the total repudiation of projection proper.)[17]

idealisation of the object.[18] Equally, it may be one's conscience that is projected, in an attempt to escape its control: a more benign version of this allows one to come to terms with outside authority.[19]

Theoretical examples

Projection tends to come to the fore in normal people at times of personal or political crisis[20] and is commonly found in narcissistic personality disorder, borderline personality disorder or paranoid personalities.[21]

Marie-Louise Von Franz extended her view of projection, stating that "wherever known reality stops, where we touch the unknown, there we project an archetypal image".[23]

Psychological projection is one of the

repressed aggression.[24]

Practical examples

Counter-projection

Jung wrote, "All projections provoke counter-projection when the object is unconscious of the quality projected upon it by the subject."[30] Thus, what is unconscious in the recipient will be projected back onto the projector, precipitating a form of mutual acting out.[31]

In a rather different usage, Harry Stack Sullivan saw counter-projection in the therapeutic context as a way of warding off the compulsive re-enactment of a psychological trauma, by emphasizing the difference between the current situation and the projected obsession with the perceived perpetrator of the original trauma.[32]

Clinical approaches

Drawing on Gordon Allport's idea of the expression of self onto activities and objects, projective techniques have been devised to aid personality assessment, including the Rorschach ink-blots and the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT).[33]

Projection may help a fragile

ego reduce anxiety, but at the cost of a certain dissociation, as in dissociative identity disorder.[34] In extreme cases, an individual's personality may end up becoming critically depleted.[35] In such cases, therapy may be required which would include the slow rebuilding of the personality through the "taking back" of such projections.[36]

The method of managed projection is a projective technique. The basic principle of this method is that a subject is presented with their own verbal portrait named by the name of another person, as well as with a portrait of their fictional opposition (V. V. Stolin, 1981).

The technique is suitable for application in psychological counseling and might provide valuable information about the form and nature of their self-esteem Bodalev, A (2000). "General psychodiagnostics".

Criticism

Some studies were critical of Freud's theory. Research on

repressor's efforts to suppress thoughts of their undesirable traits make those trait categories highly accessible—so that they are then used all the more often when forming impressions of others. The projection is then only a byproduct of the real defensive mechanism.[39]

See also

References

  1. ^
    ISBN 978-1462543694
    . In both projection and introjection, there is a permeated psychological boundary between the self and the world. [...] Projection is the process whereby what is inside is misunderstood as coming from outside. In its benign and mature forms, it is the basis for empathy.
  2. ^ Sigmund Freud, Case Histories II (PFL 9) p. 132
  3. ^ Hotchkiss, Sandy; foreword by Masterson, James F. Why Is It Always About You?: The Seven Deadly Sins of Narcissism (Free Press, 2003)
  4. S2CID 19730486
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  5. ISBN 0521470498. Archived
    from the original on 2020-11-02. Retrieved 2020-09-25.
  6. ISBN 978-0802081414
    .
  7. ISBN 978-0521586306
    .
  8. ISBN 978-0521169233
    .
  9. ^ Nelson, John K. (1990). "A Field Statement on the Anthropology of Religion". Ejournalofpoliticalscience. Archived from the original on 2017-02-14. Retrieved 2014-01-20.
  10. ^ Babylonian Talmud. pp. Baba Metsiya 59b, Kiddushin 70a. And he who [continually] declares [others] unfit is [himself] unfit and never speaks in praise [of people]. And Samuel said: All who defame others, with their own blemish they stigmatize [these others].
  11. ^ Matthew 7:3–5
  12. ^ Jean-Michel Quinodoz, Reading Freud (London 2005) p. 24
  13. ^ Case Studies II p. 210.
  14. ^ Otto Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis (London 1946) p. 146.
  15. ^ Sigmund Freud, On Psychopathology (PFL 10) pp. 200–01.
  16. ^ Patrick Casement, Further Learning from the Patient (1997) p. 177.
  17. ^ Otto F. Kernberg, Borderline Conditions and Pathological Narcissism (London 1990) p. 56.
  18. ^ Hanna Segal, Klein (1979) p. 118.
  19. ^ R. Wollheim, On the Emotions (1999) pp. 217–18.
  20. ^ Erik Erikson, Childhood and Society (1973) p. 241.
  21. ^ Glen O. Gabbard, Long-Term Psychodynamic Psychotherapy (Washington, DC 2017) p. 35.
  22. ^ a b c Carl G. Jung ed., Man and his Symbols (London 1978) pp. 181–82.
  23. ISBN 978-0-415-12117-0. Archived
    from the original on 2022-04-07. Retrieved 2020-11-19.
  24. PMID 11609522
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  25. ^ The Pursuit of Health, June Bingham & Norman Tamarkin, M.D., Walker Press.
  26. ^ Sigmund Freud, On Psychopathology (Middlesex 1987) p. 198.
  27. ^ Paul Gilbert, Overcoming Depression (1999) pp. 185–86.
  28. ^ Patrick Casement, Further Learning from the Patient (1990) p. 142.
  29. ^ Patrick Casement, Further Learning from the Patient (1990) p. 122.
  30. ^ General Aspects of Dream Psychology, CW 8, par. 519.
  31. ^ Ann Casement, Carl Gustav Jung (2001) p. 87.
  32. ^ F. S. Anderson ed., Bodies in Treatment (2007) p. 160.
  33. ISBN 0-19-866124-X
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  34. ^ "Trauma and Projection". Archived from the original on 2012-05-10. Retrieved 2008-08-16.(subscription required)
  35. ^ R. Appignanesi ed., Introducing Melanie Klein (Cambridge 2006) pp. 115, 126.
  36. ^ Mario Jacoby, The Analytic Encounter (1984) pp. 10, 108.
  37. S2CID 10229838
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  38. ^
    doi:10.1111/1467-6494.00043
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  39. PMID 9150580
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