Psychological projection

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In psychology, psychological projection (or projection bias) is a defense mechanism where a person's personal attributes, unacceptable or unwanted thoughts, and/or emotions are ascribed onto another person or people. According to Wade, Tavris (2000) projection occurs when a person's own unacceptable or threatening feelings are repressed and then attributed to someone else.[1]

An example of such simple behavior would be: blame for failure, making an excuse for your own faults by projecting the cause of said failure onto someone else, hence blaming them and not accepting the reality of the failure. One would argue that you are projecting the threatening feelings.

Projection reduces anxiety by allowing the expression of the unwanted subconscious impulses or desires without letting the conscious mind recognize them.

The theory was developed by Sigmund Freud and further refined by his daughter Anna Freud; for this reason, it is sometimes referred to as "Freudian Projection"[2] [3]

Contents

[edit] Overview

According to Sigmund Freud, projection is a psychological defense mechanism whereby one "projects" one's own undesirable thoughts, motivations, desires, and feelings onto someone else. It is a common process that every person uses to some degree.[4]

To understand the process, consider a person in a couple who has thoughts of infidelity. Instead of dealing with these undesirable thoughts consciously, he or she subconsciously projects these feelings onto the other person, and begins to think that the other has thoughts of infidelity and may be having an affair. In this sense, projection is related to denial, arguably the only defense mechanism that is more primitive than projection. Projection, like all defense mechanisms, provides a function whereby a person can protect their conscious mind from a feeling that would otherwise be repulsive.

Compartmentalization, splitting and projection are ways that the ego continues to pretend that it is completely in control at all times, when in reality human experience is one of shifting beingness, instinctual or territorial reactiveness and emotional motives, for which the "I" is not always complicit. Further, common in deep trauma, individuals will be unable to access truthful memories, intentions and experiences, even about their own nature, wherein projection is just one tool [5].

[edit] Historical uses

Peter Gay describes it as "the operation of expelling feelings or wishes the individual finds wholly unacceptable—too shameful, too obscene, too dangerous—by attributing them to another."[6]

The philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach based his theory of religion in large part upon the idea of projection, i.e., the idea that an anthropomorphic deity is the outward projection of man's anxieties and desires[7].

Psychological projection is the subject of Robert Bly's book A Little Book on the Human Shadow. The "Shadow"—a term used in Jungian psychology to describe a variety of psychological projection—refers to the projected material [8]. Marie-Louise Von Franz extended the view of projection to cover phenomena in Patterns of Creativity Mirrored in Creation Myths: "... wherever known reality stops, where we touch the unknown, there we project an archetypal image". [9].

Psychological projection is one of the medical explanations of bewitchment that attempts to diagnose the behavior of the afflicted children at Salem in 1692. The historian John Demos asserts that the symptoms of bewitchment experienced by the afflicted girls in Salem during the witchcraft crisis were because the girls were undergoing psychological projection. [10] Demos argues the girls had convulsive fits caused by repressed aggression and were able to project this aggression without blame because of the speculation of witchcraft and bewitchment.

[edit] Counter-projection

When addressing psychological trauma the defense mechanism is sometimes counter-projection, including an obsession to continue and remain in a recurring trauma-causing situation and the compulsive obsession with the perceived perpetrator of the trauma or its projection.

Jung writes that "All projections provoke counter-projection when the object is unconscious of the quality projected upon it by the subject."

The concept was anticipated by Friedrich Nietzsche:

"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you." [11]

[edit] Common definitions

  • "Projection is the opposite defense mechanism to identification. We project our own unpleasant feelings onto someone else and blame them for having thoughts that we really have."
  • "A defense mechanism in which the individual attributes to other people impulses and traits that he himself has but cannot accept. It is especially likely to occur when the person lacks insight into his own impulses and traits."
  • "Attributing one's own undesirable traits to other people or agencies."
  • "The individual perceives in others the motive he denies having himself. Thus the cheat is sure that everyone else is dishonest."
  • "People attribute their own undesirable traits onto others."
  • "An individual who possesses malicious characteristics, but who is unwilling to perceive himself as an antagonist, convinces himself that his opponent feels and would act the same way."

[edit] Psychopathology

In psychopathology, projection is an especially commonly used defense mechanism in people with certain personality disorders:[citation needed]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Wade, Tavris “Psychology” Sixth Edition Prentice Hall 2000 ISBN 0-321-04931-4
  2. ^ Shepard Simon. "Basic Psychological Mechanisms: Neurosis and Projection". The Heretical Press . Retrieved on March 07, 2008.
  3. ^ Neuwirth, Rachel. "A Case of Freudian Projection". American Thinker , December 30, 2006. Retrieved on March 07, 2008.
  4. ^ "Defenses". www.psychpage.com. http://www.psychpage.com/learning/library/counseling/defenses.html. Retrieved on 2008-03-11. 
  5. ^ Trauma and Projection
  6. ^ Freud: A Life for Our Time, page 281
  7. ^ Encyclopedia Britannica
  8. ^ Jungian Projection
  9. ^ Karl Wolfe Psychological Projection
  10. ^ John Demos, "Underlying Themes in the Witchcraft of Seventeenth-Century New England," American Historical Review 75, no. 5 (June, 1970):1322.
  11. ^ Beyond Good and Evil, trans. R. J. Hollindale (London: Penguin, 1973), p. 102.

[edit] See also

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection"
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