Using Projections to Gain Self-Knowledge

A pro­jec­tion hap­pens any­time some­one uncon­scious­ly places their own beliefs, desires, con­clu­sions or expe­ri­ences onto anoth­er per­son or group of peo­ple. In its pos­i­tive form, it may help us empathize with oth­ers, as we use our expe­ri­ence to imag­ine their real­i­ties. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, pro­jec­tion has a dark­er side and becomes less pos­i­tive when it serves as a defense mech­a­nism against some threat or anx­i­ety we don’t like to acknowl­edge. For instance, I am uncon­scious­ly upset but don’t like to admit to inner tur­bu­lence and so project the expe­ri­ence onto oth­ers by claim­ing it’s they who are upset. Or, per­haps, your phys­i­cal man­ner­isms some­how remind me of my father so I imag­ine that you, too, will be crit­i­cal of me — with­out think­ing about that at all — so I rebel against you before we’ve even been introduced! 

Most­ly, we are uncom­fort­able iden­ti­fy­ing and exam­in­ing our pro­jec­tions, yet they can rep­re­sent a trove of infor­ma­tion about our­selves. Exam­in­ing them — play­ing with them and learn­ing from them — is a way to enhance our inner free­dom and tran­scend the lim­its they place on our think­ing process­es and under­stand­ing of the real world.

Here is a four-box tool I use some­times with clients:

Box A rep­re­sents some­thing I assume about myself — a label of some kind, one that I believe to a greater or less­er degree, one that is like­ly prob­lem­at­ic; for exam­ple, that I’m “a bull in a chi­na shop” or “like to plan every­thing” or “run from con­flict” — or oth­er con­clu­sion accord­ing to the infor­mal scor­ing sys­tem we all use to eval­u­ate our own and oth­ers’ behav­ior as leaders.

Box B rep­re­sents the sys­tem or cul­ture that I believe I oper­ate with­in; for exam­ple, that peo­ple are “over­whelmed” in my work­place or that the sys­tem is “intractable” or “top lead­er­ship does­n’t take respon­si­bil­i­ty.” Box A and Box B both rep­re­sent our per­cep­tu­al con­clu­sions, mean­ing pat­terns of belief that may not be entire­ly sup­port­ed by evidence.

While it is some­times dif­fi­cult to draw out of our­selves respons­es for Box A and B, it often comes down to lis­ten­ing close­ly to the way we talk infor­mal­ly about our­selves and our envi­ron­ment to best friends or part­ners — or the stranger who hap­pens to engage us in con­ver­sa­tion at an air­port lounge — in oth­er words, when we are let­ting down our hair.

Box­es C and D, which we’ll get to in a moment, rep­re­sent the explo­ration and response to pro­jec­tion, but before going there, if you’ve got an A and B in mind, you might notice there’s a sym­bi­ot­ic rela­tion­ship between the two. The envi­ron­ment (sys­tem, cul­ture) called out in Box B is often relat­ed to what we believe caus­es us to be the way we’ve described our­selves in Box A.

In this exam­ple, there is a sym­bi­ot­ic rela­tion­ship between see­ing one­self as a care­tak­er and see­ing the envi­ron­ment as “frag­ile and tense,” which there­fore requires care­tak­ing. In effect, my traits are jus­ti­fied by my envi­ron­ment, although I may also see them as sim­ply part of who I am. This appar­ent rela­tion­ship (and ratio­nal­iza­tion) is use­ful in hold­ing onto my sta­tus quo by giv­ing my traits a spe­cial adap­tive val­ue. It may also, how­ev­er, reduce my sense of choice about doing things dif­fer­ent­ly. Pro­jec­tion is defense but it often pro­vokes a sense of help­less­ness or entrap­ment in circumstance.

Box C begins to break down that ratio­nal­iza­tion by con­duct­ing what teacher, Byron Katie, calls a “turn­around” as part of The Work of per­son­al growth and free­dom. The idea is to exper­i­ment with dif­fer­ent ver­sions of a con­clu­sion we’ve drawn to see what we might have per­son­al­ly dis­owned — in this way unearthing an uncon­scious pro­jec­tion. In the exam­ple above the turn­around focus­es on retract­ing the idea that it’s just the envi­ron­ment that is tense and frag­ile, but maybe it’s me (or also me) that’s tense and frag­ile. Med­i­tat­ing on the turn­around can loosen the nar­row, habit­u­al, ener­gy-lim­it­ing and fixed real­i­ty of our assump­tions about what’s “out there.” Instead it focus­es us on what’s “in here” but maybe hard to acknowl­edge. The per­son in this instance may not like con­sid­er­ing her­self frag­ile in any way, yet when she med­i­tates on the turn­around, she can see it does hold an uncom­fort­able truth for her. Explor­ing that truth she is able to reassess the sit­u­a­tion and see what is beyond the pro­jec­tion that pro­tects her from her fears. That’s Box D, the actu­al chal­lenge that is being avoid­ed through the projection.

Here’s anoth­er example:

In this case, the self-belief that “I’m a per­fec­tion­ist” is relat­ed to a con­clu­sion about the sys­tem that “Any lit­tle mis­take will get me thrown out.” In oth­er words, I need to be a per­fec­tion­ist in order to sur­vive here. The turn­around — mov­ing from Box B to Box C — returns the pro­jec­tion to its own­er via the real­iza­tion that the risk is not com­ing from oth­ers, but from one­self. Both of these exam­ples orig­i­nat­ed in real world exam­ples. In this instance the per­son already had a track record of blow­ing out of jobs when they seemed to become too risky and the chance for mis­takes so high that he no longer felt he had a real chance to progress in her career. When he pulled back the pro­jec­tion he became calmer, stopped jack­ing up his fears for the pur­pose of self-moti­va­tion through neg­a­tive self-talk, and began attend­ing to some­thing clos­er to real­i­ty: an envi­ron­ment where work could be improved and mis­takes were not auto­mat­i­cal­ly fatal. Per­fec­tion­ism, it turned out, was a defense against the actu­al dis­com­fort of messy projects and rela­tion­ships that required a high­er lev­el of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and true self-sup­port.

These exam­ples are high­ly sit­u­a­tion­al and have many oth­er facets so please don’t see them as uni­ver­sal or defin­i­tive. In fact, I think you may have to be quite close to the sit­u­a­tion and cir­cum­stances to even fig­ure out what ele­ments and cir­cum­stances are impor­tant to con­sid­er before defin­i­tive­ly fill­ing in the box­es. Get­ting there might require dia­logue and drilling down into per­son­al per­cep­tions and con­clu­sions that have been tak­en for grant­ed for a long time. Nev­er­the­less, at its best the dia­gram is a tool that can help us raise our heads above the water in which we are swimming.

The goal is aware­ness, an aware­ness that brings free­dom, new open­ness, curios­i­ty, real­is­tic goals and care for self and oth­ers, with all of that based on what’s real rather than self-deception.