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Projection Projection is a pretty common process. It means that we have a “blind-spot” to a particular part of ourselves and, because it’s there somewhere, we have to see it in other people instead. An example would be: “My boss has really got it in for me” – when really I’m unable to connect with my own desire to slap my manager smartly about the face with a wet fish! Somebody else may “project the complementary side of his experience, rather then the actual experience. For example, if he feels uncomfortable, he does not project that others feel uncomfortable but that others want to humiliate him” (Delisle,1999,89). Of course most art, most acts of imagination and creativity come from our ability to project – but to project in awareness and for the duration of the artistic “project”. In dramatherapy and art therapy projection is actually used deliberately and creatively in order to raise awareness in the client. Painting, poetry, novel-writing and novel-reading all rely on our natural ability to project. Projecting becomes a problem when we do it without this awareness. When the projection is unseeing, fixed and permanent - complementing the fixed and permanent blind-spots (or in some cases black-holes!) that leave us not fully connected with who we really are. And, therefore, also not fully connected with who we are with others with us (see Awareness & Contact). This means that, through projecting, our interaction with others is distorted. People may leave our company feeling confused and hurt – and, sadly, it’s usually those that we love the most. So, to keep it to the (lighter) everyday for a minute…… I was recently in a restaurant with a rather formidable (fictional) aunt who has asked me for some time. As I cruise the combinations on the keyboard for contactful words I feel a gabble growling about in my sleeve. It grapples and tugs from beneath my cuff to leap upon my hand - pulling me back towards these projections and the wonder (and the budded beauty) of “It language”. Potential poetry. Deliberate and concentrated projection, “various and creative speech”. (PHG,1951,321). Thick and glukey and pouring thickly from the lips of its source. So I shall loosen the net of inhibition I’ve cast over all projections and allow myself to hover above (and within) this projective playground of word gathering. My aunt tells me she has been worrying. Worrying that I’ve been feeling generally let down by her; that I’m disappointed in the little she has been giving to a family project we all agreed to work upon. (I am not.) As we talk, she describes a rut that she says she’s recently made for herself. When I ask if she feels disappointed in herself at all I hear the first flutter of a gasp – excitement at hearing her “yes”. But the fullness of its arch is soon arrested as she strides suddenly sideways to consider her possible escape routes from the rut – and the gasp reverses into a sigh. The sigh seemed to swing in time with our separation – a swing towards each other only to, just as quickly, swing away. I speculate that it also matched her separation from herself. Like the gasp, her contact with herself didn’t quite occur. It edged to the lips but she swerved it away from fully sitting inside her own socket. Maybe she avoided feeling her own touch. “It is not always easy to discriminate between what is genuinely observed and what is imagination. Error speedily dissolves when it produces a clear contradiction of some sort; projected behaviour is then recognised as crazy, hallucinatory, and you say ‘I don’t know how I ever could have thought that.’ But, for the most part, the projector can find ‘proofs’ that the imagined is the observed. Such rationalisations and justifications are always available to the one person who wishes to find them. In the subtleties and many-sided aspects of most situations the projector (up to the stage of true paranoia) can fasten onto a true detail, perhaps some genuine but insignificant grievance, and then exaggerate and embroider it fantastically. Thus he does his damage – or, in his language, is damaged.” (PHG, 213, 1951) I’m wondering now about this in relation to my aunt’s projected disappointment. I do know of her deep-seated disappointment in her not achieving the dreams she’d always had for her life. She regularly scatters comments which suggest the significance of this to her. But she hasn’t said. And she takes extreme care to place herself precisely where she perceives it to be appropriate within the rigid hierarchical structure of the society in which she lives. The unasked question screeching around in my skull was “Are you disappointed in me?” I held it at bay upon my right shoulder and now I smile that it did actually feel like silencing a screeching parrot. I could see the rest of the conversation through both pairs of eyes. I didn’t think she could tolerate my directness if I voiced this out loud. I imagined the G-force on her face as she imploded under the impact of the question. And I knew that I also wasn’t ready to hear that she was and felt my own fear of facing that I may have let her down in someway too. If I transfer the chat with my aunt to a clinical situation, then both these questions were probably too specific to be that helpful. On both occasions I named the target of her disappointment which took her immediately to too small an area of ground. If I’d asked instead “Are you disappointed?” the openness of the question would have left her with a whole landscape to explore and more space to grasp for and hold onto what was really hers. It also would have given more space between the two of us and I would have felt less intrusive. This is important. I tend to hone in on detail – and I very much enjoy finding the exact spot that feels just right. I enjoy the moment of catching onto what feels like the truth – a little like when the answer emerges smiling from the cryptic fragments of a crossword clue. I enjoy the chaos and confusion of the circling possible answers, the air of expectancy that forms the backdrop to “trying them on”, and the sweet rush of clarity when all come together in one final word or phrase that is, at last, the perfect fit. And I can find myself honing in too specifically or, at the very least, too soon. Holding back creates more leg-room. As I write I feel pulled along upon this path of projection leading to my aunt. And “in order to avoid the anxiety and embarrassment of silence” (PHG,1951,324) she talks incessantly, rarely pausing for breath. If she does pause at all it will be in the form of a sudden and rapid inhalation mid-sentence which serves to stake her claim to continuation. Not in the knowing manner of a politician; it is as if she is compelled. Like the girl in the Red Shoes to dance, my aunt is compelled to speak. And often about others. Fringing (PHG,1951) the edges of her sentences with “Don’t you think….” and “I may be wrong but it seems to me that….” and “I know you’ll agree with me Margaret when I say that…..”etc. etc. And everyone else has got it wrong - she shows contempt for the rest of the world. “People make me laugh, they go to (one of the smaller supermarkets) and then moan when they can’t get what they want!” said with a mask of derision but also with a subtle sweep of a cloak of inclusion which stuns those listening into an unspoken sense of agreement. It can be hard to remove the cloak from one’s shoulders before an involuntary assent has been successfully stolen from beneath. Again, in her reference to the empty shopping basket, I touch upon yet another example of an inhibited expression of disappointment. (See Introjection in Interruptions to Contact) One spoken with “rigid, rapid lips” (PHG,1951,326) and a rigidity in posture until the head, which waggles in short slight stabs - in perfect synchronicity with her jabs at those she speaks of. I’d say she presents the same, whatever the field – a defensive transference. And that she projects as a way of coping with the (too unmanageable) excitement of feeling the emotions she has forbidden herself in her own body. In small ways I often find myself resisting this pull to come beneath her cloak. And she appears very dependant upon my agreement. When I differ and offer an alternative view from my place in my own socket, resisting confluence, I sense the scare in her. And what happens is that she will agree then with me, so we end up confluent again. And now I’m sensing my own (blind-spot re my) contempt for her in this. (And also my enjoyment in expressing it!) As I remember times when I’ve been trapped within the cloak of her chattering clankery, I create an image of her as a doll pinned centrally in place amongst layers of stacked paper doilies, ankle to waist, that spread outwards from her centre in radii of ceaseless words; racing out in my direction but falling off the edge of the paper skirt well before they reach me, making room for the many more that are taking their place in the queue to not quite connect. So, she fills the space between her and the rest of the world. I’m possibly also here pushing myself away from the topic of projection – getting carried away with projecting creatively through my imagery, so perhaps my words have indeed been trailing off the edge of my own paper skirt……………… Hmmmm……perhaps I am more like my aunt then I’d like to think! In the early days of my training I always found it very difficult to “flip back” a projection towards the projector so that they may own it. I could spot the projection when it was given, but I had trouble handing it back in a touchable form before the projector had moved on again. I remember the first time I did it successfully – from the black-hole of ignorance, a shaft of light. In my training group I managed to identify and flip back a projection to the owner, in the moment, and found myself punching the air in a goal-scorer’s “Yes!”. (Not the sort of response I’d generally make in clinical practice!) But it was important for me to have allowed myself to move gradually across my space of not-knowing instead of disowning my slowness and wanting to leap over it into immediate competence. In the same way it’s important that I don’t deny clients their time in darkness; their transitional fumblings along walls in unlit corridors; their gropings for a doorway or a corner. I know the urge of sometimes wanting to grab their hands and lead them on to where they say they’d like to be. And I know some have expressed their wish for me to do the very same - to take them somewhere and to do so via a shortcut. Yet in my own dark corridors – as I take slow shuffles along the unlit tunnels of continuing to be open to my own projections, I can enjoy and appreciate the me that is without total illumination, and the odd flicker I sense in the shadows has become something to savour. (I’m now adding another example of projection that happened only yesterday on the way to Nottingham. If you feel squeamish reading about “women’s things” – and here I shall be specifically referring to menstruation related products – DON’T READ ANY FURTHER!) So, I leave my friend in the café while I pop next door to the chemist’s to buy some tampons. I have a favourite brand and I am looking for these along the shelves. I can’t see any on display and ask the assistant if she has any in the back. She’s gone for quite a while and I hear some sounds of confusion from the little room behind the open counter at the back of the shop. It’s a small chemist and I’m the only customer. I walk towards the rear counter and see there’s three assistants and a (locum) pharmacist – all women. The locum is searching through the computer - apologising to me for not being familiar with the stock and asking me lots of quick questions about this particular product – what colour is the packaging, what’s the exact size, what does the individual tampon look like? I happen to have one in my pocket and so take it out to show her. Pharmacist: Oh! Ha, ha, ha, ha! Oh! Yes, I see! Ha, ha, ha! She blushes and looks around at her colleagues, smiling and laughing a little too much for what I'd say the situation seemed to call for. She steps towards me in the doorway, twisting her necklace, still smiling and almost appears to be buckling a little at the knee: Pharmacist: Yes, that’s right! Don’t be self-conscious! Ha, ha, ha, ha! There’s absolutely no need to be self-conscious about it! We’re all women here, aren’t we? All girls together! Ha, ha, ha, ha! Me: I don’t feel self-conscious. Pharmacist: Ha, ha, ha! No, of course not! That’s right! No need for that! Ha, ha, ha! Well, oh dear! I’m sorry but I don’t think I have that particular type in stock. But I can order you some. Shall I order you some? Shall I do that? Me: No thankyou. I’m bleeding now. Pharmacist: Oh dear! Yes, of course you are! Ha, ha, ha! All girls together aren’t we? Well, shall I order you some anyway? You could come back another day? Would you like that? Shall I? Hmmm? Me: No thanks – I don’t live here. Pharmacist: Oh you don’t live here! Ha, ha, ha! Sorry! Okee Dokee! Nice to meet you! ha, ha, ha! It was fine. We passed a Tesco Express further into Nottingham. I hope this isn’t too graphic, but it was such a lovely example of projection that I couldn’t resist including it. References: Perls,F (1947) Ego, Hunger and Aggression. New York. The Gestalt Journal Press.
Perls, Hefferline, Goodman (1951) Gestalt therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality. London. Souvenir Press. Delisles,G (1999) Personality Disorders. Québec. CIG Press. Copyright Sarah Fallon 2002 (with extra bit added in 2006!) |
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