L.A. LIBERAL MEDIA AND PROJECTION; HOW APT IS THAT
"conveniently overlooking the 'film-strip' to concentrate instead on what appears 'on the screen' of the world "
THE NATURE OF EMOTIONAL-MENTAL PROJECTION
Projection has a mechanical analogy; a film projector which imposes its internal images from within itself onto an outside screen. Sigmund Freud applied such an idea of 'projection' in trying to analyse the origins of mental and/or emotional derangement. Though some of Freud's theories have become irretrievably discredited, the essence of his basic idea of projection has shown itself to be fruitful and has stood the test of time.
A strong emotional drive is the element that makes Freud's emotional-mental projection different from general and normal perceptional 'projection', whereby one perceives and understands others precisely by the aid of self-understanding.
Freud saw projection as an involuntary process motivated by emotions wherein a person imposes a subjective feeling or a thought on another person or situation. Patients were also unaware of 'projecting' or how and why they did it. The quality or feeling projected or transferred onto another, moreover, pertains instead to the psyche of the projecting one. There was always an emotional need or frustrated feelings involved in such 'emotional-mental' projection. Imposing subjective feelings or thoughts onto objective events was therefore regarded as 'unconscious projection'.
Freud was concerned mostly with those projections that proved problematical for his patients. These usually, but not always, involved antipathetic feelings and negative thoughts about others. When unconscious and distorting in nature, projection becomes the tendency irrelevantly to transfer feelings and thoughts towards one person or group to others with some similar trait or characteristic. This is seen in the irrational blanket reactions people all too often have against all members of a group when only a few are blameworthy. The persecution of immigrants, foreigners, national or religious minorities are invariably based on projections which may well be considered as mass mental derangement, even though it is not a debilitating mental disorder for the persecutors themselves.
Wrongly to put the blame for something caused by oneself on another person may be a projection, conveniently overlooking the 'film-strip' to concentrate instead on what appears 'on the screen' of the world, so to speak. The events in the drama that unfolds are looked on rather as if they were a film in whose making one has no part whatever oneself. But a film makes no sense without a watcher. There are many involved and subtle ways in which one can deceive oneself as to one's own part in events, one's own responsibility both for what actually came about and also for how this affects oneself.
Only compulsive and/or distorting projections are problematical; those which contribute to or cause psychological suffering and behavioural disturbances. These are regarded as being a form of 'defence mechanism', being at bottom a means of psychological protection of the conscious ego from unwanted and threatening feelings or thoughts. In 'projecting', the subject subconsciously transfers a felt threat from within himself to some other person, group or entity.