An automatic, psychological process where one’s own rejected, or simply invisible, personal qualities are unconsciously ejected out of one’s self onto others. These individuals can have traits that acts as a “hook” to catch our projection but this is not always the case, sometimes it’s just prejudice. Projections are always accompanied to strong emotions. The process of projection is behind all of the –isms (racism, sexism, etc.)
Projection means the expulsion of a subjective content into an object; it is the opposite of introjection. Accordingly, it is a process of dissimilation, by which a subjective content becomes alienated from the subject and is, so to speak, embodied in the object. The subject gets rid of painful, incompatible contents by projecting them.
- Jung
In spite of being disturbing and socially dangerous, projections also have meaning; for it is apparently only through projections that we can make ourselves conscious of certain unconscious processes. Through projections there arise, first of all, those fascinations, affects, entanglements which then force us to reflect on ourselves. There is no becoming conscious without the fires of emotion and suffering. The disturbance of adaptation which is closely linked with every projection leads, if all goes well, to reflection (if it goes badly it leads to homicide and murder.) Re-flexio, however, means that the image which has been “radiated” outward onto another object is “bent back” and returns to oneself.
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People in one’s immediate neighborhood experience our projections as emotional exaggerations. Personally, I listen almost unconsciously to the tone in which analysands speak about their marital partner, their friends and enemies, and I have discovered that I simply “switch over” whenever a certain undertone of hysterical exaggeration is heard together with the rest of the patient’s statement. Then one can no longer quite believe what is being said, but instead listens to an interesting (unconscious) self-presentation of the analysand. If one succeeds in that moment in relating such an outburst to a dream motif which pictures the statements figuratively, then there is often a good chance that the other will see that all that he has described so enthusiastically or so angrily is really in himself. The withdrawal of a projection, however, is almost always a moral shock. People with weak egos are often unable to tolerate this and resist violently. Jung once compared the ego with a person who navigates his sturdy or flimsy boat on the sea of the unconscious. He hauls fish (the contents of the unconscious) into his boat, but he cannot fill the boat (i.e., integrate unconscious contents) with more fish than the size of the boat allows; if he takes in too many the boat sinks. That is why the elucidation and withdrawal of projections is a critical matter. Schizoid and hysterical personalities can usually take only a little. With primitive people who have a weak ego, it is also advisable to leave projections unexplained. It has been my experience that then the older, more historical ways of dealing with autonomous complexes work better, namely that one refers to them as “spirits” which do not belong to the individual and thus one helps the analysand to resist such a “spirit” through some ritual or magic practice. This means that one takes literally what has been preserved as a figure of speech: “The devil has gotten into him” or that being in love is a “bewitchment.” However, any decisions about these inner moral insights will be made not by the ego and not by the analyst but by the Self. So we are in fact just as the Self sees us with its inner eyes which are always open, and all our own efforts toward self-knowledge must get to this point before any inner peace is possible.
- Marie-Louise von Franz,
Dreams, “
The Hidden Source of Self”
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