Projection and Introjection

We can approach this issue from another angle: the faults that we have enable us to see more clearly the same faults in other people, whilst faults that we lack are more difficult for us to detect in other people.

Introjection is the complementary process. We emulate the virtues (and vices) in the people that we admire. We incorporate into ourself the attitudes of people that are significant to us. Introjection is the main stratagem that enables a child to absorb the moral, amoral, or immoral standards of its parents. Our own idealised image of ourself can also act as a source for introjection when we are pursuing personal growth: we can use such an image as an object from which we can introject virtues that we need to develop.

As an analogy, consider suggestion. I presume that people are more familiar with the idea of suggestion than with the ideas of projection and introjection. When pursuing personal growth, suggestion is often used consciously and positively in the form of inspirational assertions or affirmations. An example of an affirmation would be the regular repetition to oneself of a statement like “I am getting more self-reliant every day”.

Projection and introjection operate in a similar manner to suggestion. The difference is that projection and introjection are powered by subconscious motives, thereby producing compelling and permanent results, whereas suggestion is often consciously directed against subconscious motivation and so produces only erratic and transient results. The kind of subconscious motivation that suggestion is usually directed against would be feelings and beliefs about personal inadequacies, weaknesses or failures. Overall, subconscious motivation is often more powerful than conscious motivation, especially in regard to long-term influences – this feature of the subconscious mind is perhaps the most important obstacle to conscious personal growth.

What is it that accounts for the wide-spread use of projection and introjection? Well, we need to consider the subconscious reasons that drive a person to engage in relationships. My view is that the person requires others in order to experience the desires and emotions that satisfy or disappoint him or her. Since the person has little awareness of himself /herself, he or she needs other people to act as a “mirror” in which he or she can “see” or feel themself play various roles in their dramas of life. And the mirror is nothing more than projection and introjection – by using these, the person can be both player and audience. In these stratagems, the social person focuses more on projection, and the person who prefers to be an individual tends to focus more on introjection.

For example, suppose that a person has a lot of resentment in him. Resentment is a negative emotion and so the person usually denies that he feels it. In order to learn how resentment affects himself, he indirectly learns by observing the ways that it affects other people. He sees resentment in other people and thus learns how it limits them. Once he begins to raise the level of his self-awareness enough to detect his own resentments, then he can realise how resentment is limiting him in similar ways.

I consider that projection and introjection are the fundamental basis of all relationships. To explain this idea, we need to look at the basis on which relationships begin, are maintained, and then finally end. If I like someone and wish to get to know him or her, that is because I feel either that we have similar values in common or that our values are complementary. Some of these values will be subconscious ones, especially if we cannot fully describe what attracts us to each other. If later on, when our circumstances change in some ways, and we feel that we no longer have many values binding us together, then we will begin to drift apart. Hence values, whether shared or complementary, and whether conscious or subconscious ones, are the basis of friendships and partnerships. Returning to my ideas on projection and introjection, I can now state what their principal function is:
Projection and introjection are the means of handling values.

Transference

The issue of transference [¹] occurs repeatedly during psychological therapy. The conventional usage of the term “transference” is the description of the client’s interaction with the therapist in the counselling relationship. Quite often, the client will transfer to the therapist intense feelings of affection, even love. Sexual thoughts and feelings will usually be in evidence at these times. Since these feelings and thoughts are positive, we can call this positive transference. Sometimes the transference will turn negative and the therapist is then regarded with hostility, even hatred, by the client.

The therapy relationship reveals the client’s feelings and attitudes that he or she had towards the parents when he or she was a child. So transference starts to function in the therapy situation when the client begins transferring some of his attitudes and beliefs about his parents to the therapist. The client begins transferring some of his attitudes and beliefs about his father to the male therapist. If the therapist is a woman, then the client transfers some of his attitudes and beliefs about his mother to the female therapist.

Suppose that the therapist is a woman, and you are the client. She will appear to you in varying guises: as an authority figure, as a motherly figure, as a caring figure, as a friendly/unfriendly figure, etc. As you relate to the therapist, you will be relating to one of these images of her in your mind. So an important aspect of therapy is for you to question how you are relating to the therapist. For example, if you at one moment see her as an authority figure and you feel unsettled with her, then this may indicate that you had problems with the authority that your parents showed towards you when you were a child. In other words, the feeling of unease that you have towards her may simply be a reflection of some unease that you had, when you were a child, with your mother and significant female adults.

The importance of understanding the transference situation is that it does not need to be a therapy one; it can be any situation where the person is dependent on other people and is receiving help from them. So transference can apply to a patient’s feelings towards nurses and doctors as well. It will also apply sometimes to our close relationships – when we are in an emotionally-intense mood, we often relate to our sexual partner in ways similar to the ways we related to our parents.

Transference can be split up into two broad factors, one focusing on sexuality and the other focusing on authority. Each parent is a source of both factors. I give two definitions.

Sexual transference is the pattern of the parent’s sexual attitudes that the child admires or hates in other people.
Authority transference is the child’s admiration or hatred in other people of the pattern of authority and morality that is exerted by the parent.

When the client analyses his relationship to an older male therapist, he is thereby also analysing his relationship to his father, in terms of male sexuality and authority. If the therapist is an older woman, then the client analyses his relationship to his mother, in terms of female sexuality and female authority.

Consider the factor of male authority. The father is an authority figure to the child. When the child grows up into an adult, some of his relationships to older men and to authority figures will mirror his relationship to his father. When this happens, the adult is now projecting some of his attitudes and beliefs regarding his father on to these older men. In other words, he is relating to them as though they are father figures to him. This means, for example, that if as a child we were hostile towards our father, then once we become an adult we are likely to have hostile feelings towards any men in positions of authority over us.

Overall, transference refers to our beliefs and values towards other people, derived from our childhood experiences. We can have both good and bad beliefs and values, and so transference has both good and bad effects.

The model I use to explain how transference functions is that a child uses introjection to absorb the beliefs and values of the parents, and then when he is an adult he projects onto suitable adults the same beliefs and values.

Happiness and Power

On considering the state of civilisation, whether Western or Eastern, it is easy to accept that transference produced by the family does not allow for the full expression of human needs. Childhood is often an unhappy time. Usually love is missing or is in short supply, and the child is exposed to the temper tantrums of the parents.Transference has two components, those of sexuality and authority. How do they function? Primarily, the sexual factor focuses on the search for social happiness, and the authority factor is aimed at the acquisition of social power. Secondarily, both sexuality and authority often tango together. Sexuality is used as a basis of social power, and much social power is concerned with the control of sexuality. The reason for this intertwining is that the desires for power and happiness link together in the unconscious mind, as I show later.

In my view, the linking together of power and the pursuit of happiness, thereby creating the perennial preoccupations of mankind, originates from the family and its problems.

However, there is another factor to be considered, that of egotism. Transference is derived from jealousy and so is a social product, focusing on social happiness and social power. In contrast, egotism means individuality. Egotism is derived from narcissism and centres on the search for individual happiness and the power to be an individual, independent of society. Transference is the binary attitude to egotism.

Jealousy and narcissism are compound emotions, each consisting of two simpler emotions. Jealousy is the combination of self-pity and love, whilst narcissism is the combination of vanity and love. The two simpler emotions which make up a compound emotion are never experienced at the same time, but only one at a time. Whichever simple emotion is emphasised, I call it a mode of the compound emotion. For example, narcissism is experienced either as narcissism (in vanity mode) or as narcissism (in love mode).[²]

Transference is the result of anxiety acting on jealousy (in love mode).
Egotism is the result of anxiety acting on narcissism (in love mode).

I look at happiness and power from the perspective of form and content. Transference and egotism are the repertoire, or content, of happiness and power. What is their form, or what is the structure within which they function? Their form is the psychological mechanism of projection and introjection.

Projection and introjection are the means of handling values. Transference creates social values and egotism creates values of individuality. Social values are the values we adhere to within our social networks; values of individuality are the values we espouse that are independent of social influences.

Confusion

Projection and introjection are unconscious mechanisms. However, introjection can also be accomplished subconsciously: we can be directly influenced by other people, especially in crowded spaces. In this situation, introjection is accomplished subconsciously through the aura. The physical body is surrounded by an aura, which is a psychic form of energy (this aura can only be seen by clairvoyant vision or by using psychedelic drugs). When two or more people are close enough together so that their auras touch and blend (a distance of about five to six feet or less), emotions can freely pass from one person to the other (this phenomenon in the therapy situation is called the counter-transference).

Introjection can easily produce confusion. Consider a situation where introjection occurs at a subconscious level. Normally we introject from a person whose image subconsciously reminds us of a parent or other significant figure. The image generates a relevant or familiar emotional response in us. Now consider a situation when two people, person-A and person-B, are close together and person-A is introjecting from a suitable image. Person-A is experiencing an emotional flow requisite to that image. However, he is also experiencing though his aura the emotional flow in person-B close to him. Therefore emotions from person-A are mixed with the emotional flow of person-B, thereby confusing person-A by his “unusual” response to his introjections. The person is experiencing two different emotional flows to the same image. This is perhaps the basis of the fear of crowds in a confined space. In the past, whenever I travelled on the London tube trains in the rush hour I nearly always experienced intense anxiety, even panic attacks as my aura became hemmed in. I was all right if I could stand by a window and look out into space. Even on crowded buses I used to pick up depression from any depressed person sitting near me.

Transference and egotism are states of psychological immaturity; so are the mechanisms of projection and introjection. The immaturity denotes that the person has no awareness of using subconscious material in his relationships. The material is subconscious because it is repressed. Although a person uses repression he is not aware of what he has repressed, beyond the feeling that it is unpleasant. Everything that is unpleasant is lumped together in the subconscious mind.

Projection and introjection are unconscious mechanisms and much of their content is subconscious. Looking at it in an abstract way, projection and introjection are the means of using undifferentiated and unwanted emotions and attitudes and desires in one’s life. This is why introspection is so difficult: the undifferentiated emotions and attitudes and desires have to be nailed down as responses to particular situations before they can be identified. In picturesque language, the subconscious mind is a melting pot of emotions and attitudes and desires; these have to be separated into distinct responses before they can be identified. This identification is the purpose of awareness training.

Vanity and Anxiety

The ground of the mechanism of projection and introjection is either vanity or anxiety. Anxiety is a compound emotion and consists of two simpler emotions, those of vanity and fear. When the person is in a social situation that he or she is uncomfortable with then anxiety arises. This anxiety is the ground of the social use of projection and introjection. However, for the individual centred within his egotism and undisturbed by any social situation, the ground of projection and introjection is vanity alone.

Projection implies excess vanity, whereas introjection denotes an insufficiency of it. From the time that the ego is formed in childhood to eventual death of the body the average person oscillates between transference and egotism – projection and introjection are regularly active. Through all his life the emotional ground of the person is usually either vanity or anxiety. If he manages to stop the use of projection and introjection, he can attain to a state of detachment or even equanimity. Therefore, to stop projection and introjection, the person has to neutralise vanity and anxiety. Usually this can only be done during a period of meditation, by the practise of mindfulness.

What is projected and introjected in any particular situation depends upon the person’s current need. If the person is feeling bad in some way, then he will project this badness onto suitable candidates. For example, a person who is conservative by nature may subconsciously prefer to project his current negativity onto a person who looks like a liberal; a liberal may project his negativity onto someone who looks working-class, etc. Projection and introjection handle values. Usually these values fall into pre-set or stereotyped patterns. Hence a person is more comfortable with using stereotypes of other people than in genuinely relating to others as they really are.

During the period of my self-analysis I had an imperative need to buttress my sense of individuality since I was always focusing on my various weaknesses and limitations. This need carried through into daily life, into all my relationships. I phrased my difficulty in the following abstract way. My state of anxiety usually becomes intense in the presence of people. I prefer my own company. Social contact reduces my being (this is the fear factor within anxiety). My ability to handle projection and introjection determines my ontological status (my status of being). The more that I project, the lower is my sense of being, and the more socially dependent am I. I am only comfortable when any particular relationship does not induce excessive anxiety in me.
I generalised my difficulty:
Social relations stabilise at the level in which anxiety can be handled.

Some Rules

One day I put together some rules of dynamic psychology. These link together and apply to situations in which a person feels strong emotions.

1. Emotions
These are the driving force, but the channels that they flow in depend upon subconscious motivation – this is motivation that influences us but which we have no awareness of.

2. Subconscious motivation
This produces the pattern of anxiety. This pattern is generated by whichever aspect of a relationship is currently causing problems to the person. The pattern produces stereotyped responses to the regular occurrences of the same situation.

3. Anxiety
The pattern of anxiety determines the pattern of projection and introjection.

4. Projection and introjection
The pattern of these two determines the emotions that are experienced.

So far these rules form a circular process. Now I bring in free will. Free will means how we decide consciously to respond to subconscious motivation.

The intensity of anxiety can also depend upon the intensity of karmic experiences (these are important experiences that happened in former incarnations on Earth) and what the person has learned from them. This means that the intensity of anxiety usually relates to the degree of sensitivity and level of personal development of the person. By personal development I mean the kind of character and principles of the person: the principles can be ethical or religious or New Age. I do not mean professional accomplishments.

Greater personal development generates greater ability to accept personal responsibility for one’s life. As one ceases to blame other people for one’s problems so one cannot discharge the anxiety – one has to bear it alone. Blaming others is always guaranteed to reduce one’s current anxiety level.

Rules (1) to (4) are circular in their operation. I have found that a favourite occupation of the subconscious mind is to go round in circles or loops.
I give an example in the next two articles.

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Ian Heath
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.	Handling Values The first two sections are a review of some material in my other books. A major issue within psychology is learning how our relationships really work. Ordinarily we like to think that we understand how we are relating to other people. Our relationships seem to be quite straightforward. However, a long psychological analysis of ourself reveals that we often do not see people as they are but as we would like them to be. When we have a distorted perception of people, then usually we are using the psychological stratagems of projection and introjection. These stratagems are widely used ways of relating to people. They function at an unconscious level of mind, though they use psychological material from the subconscious mind. Projection means that often we imagine that our own virtues and vices and attitudes are embodied in other people. We see in other people what is in ourself. Our best friends tend to be people who we imagine have the same virtues and attitudes as we do. The stratagem of projection is particularly noticeable with regard to our vices. We try to escape from our faults by denying them; we see them only as aspects of other people – we believe that it is almost always other people that are the source of conflict in our life.
Sub - Headings
Transference
Happiness and Power
Confusion
Vanity and Anxiety
Some Rules
References