Revisiting projection ..extending it from personal to organizational

“Beware of the projections*,” were the words used by a man about to terminate his life to his secretary on the day of the tragic event. Those words have haunted me for now some thirty years. Not only are most of us living in a cocoon, with respect to our own projections; we are just as much in the dark about the projections of others onto us. And the confluence of incoming and outgoing projections is a mine field seemingly without adequate radar, reconnaissance and disciplined interpretation for all of us. For this piece, the concept of projection will be extended from the personal to the organizational, from the personal to the political.

The opportunities for “projection” are ubiquitous especially in organizations and families. And the scurrilous feature of their being so prevalent and so significant in setting the stage for so many dialogues, that their identification and neutralizing often go wanting. Little children, when called out on a recent mis-demeanour, will invariably find a scape-goat for their behaviour. Ironically, and not surprisingly, however, adults also use this escape method, whether consciously or unconsciously, and those innocents and ignorant ones who trust, and who are not either looking for or expecting ‘projections’ can fall prey to a literal interpretation of the other’s projection and take it as a direct attack.

Fear of inadequacy, or the potential of being considered and judged as inadequate, while not necessarily as dark as self-loathing, is a condition that clings to many people, regardless of their/our status, success, relationship reservoir, or even our theology. And the church’s foundational cornerstone, the inescapeable and universal ‘sin’ of all humans, is one of the most radioactive memes and indoctrinations for millions. From some perspectives, including this one, founding an institution on this psychological, moral, ethical and theological premise, and then wrapping it with the halo of God’s truth, and the projection of ‘hell for those who remain in a state of sin (purgatory for those with lesser evil), is another social, cultural, historic and universal projection from which many parts of the world will take centuries to recover from.

Paradoxically, too, such a premise embedded in the ecclesial ‘cake’ permits the institution to escape all exhortations to examine itself critically. Finding, and punishing human sins, as agents of God, seems like an enterprise whose future sees no end, and from whose pursuit, the flow of revenues from the repentant offer considerable financial security and political stature for centuries.

Having spent a considerable time in organizations deemed to be service-sector enterprises, including education, hospitals, social service agencies and the church, where human dialogue and relationships prevail, including many open and secret decisions about the nature of individuals are taken and then administered, it seems that the ‘perceptions’ (which have to include the projections, fears, diagnoses, interpretations, and ambitions) of each person are so sanitized and squeezed into reductions that belie their depth and their importance. And one of the blatant results of this ephemeral and ethereal dynamic is that those in power seek out and support others whose ‘values’ and ‘perceptions’ and ‘projections’ are as closely congruent with theirs as possible. And they may well be doing this blindly, or unconsciously, generating their own divide, and leaving a detritus of rejected persons in the ‘ditch’ of their perceived reality.

Organizations, themselves, take on a kind of resistance to inferiority, a denial of their failures and weaknesses, that demands an excuse, a scape-goat for their failures that too often results in what a Russian professor once called the “Russian method of solving problems: eliminate them.” This is not a debate or discussion about whether corporations are defined as individual persons, as they are in U.S. law. This is a discussion of the whirlwind of projections in which we all function, from which many of us suffer without fully knowing or recognizing their source and their relative importance. Fathers who consider themselves less than they ‘should or could’ be will often transfer that sense of inadequacy onto their sons; mothers, too, can and will project their own sense of inadequacy, low self-esteem, onto their children, both sons and daughters. And the vibrations of such projections, obviously unrecognized for what they are by the child, carry psychic wounds that can and may take decades to heal.

North American culture has taken significant steps to identify physical and sexual abuse and although it is more difficult to discern emotional abuse, without any of the physical identifying evidence. Projections are an abuse of power that can pass without detection and remediation.

Why is this concept of projection relevant at this time? Or is it?

Let’s quickly examine the political rhetoric landscape, in which ‘blaming the opponent’ is being taken to its most sclerotic and defamatory low. Even a newly elected Congressman from New York who deliberately lied and misrepresented his career on his resume, claimed that the New York Times denigrated a menial job in their reporting and his response was to inflate his resume as a counter. It is not surprising that it was the New York Times that uncovered his chicanery and his political future might be foreclosed. While not necessarily every statement from the former now defiled president is a projection, his dependence on their faux-protection by scape-goating others, including those of his own party, has become a staple of American political rhetoric. What has not accompanied his epic projections, however, is the projections from the media, and the obsequious sycophants who beamed his projections into the ether minute by minute, giving them a kind of intensity that belies their validity.

Putin’s ‘blaming the west’ for his Ukrainian invasion including the constant barrage of drone attacks, is one of the more monumental ‘projections’ in history, for which the world eagerly awaits his prosecution. Calling these projections “lies” however, leaves the public somewhat protected from the universal insidiousness of the unconscious. And projections are often unconscious, and many dramas unravel based on a projection being turned into a ‘fact’ or a ‘belief’ or a ‘scathing judgement’ when, if the full truth of the situation were unwrapped, both the ‘projector’ and the ‘projectee’ would have a very different resolution to the judgement.

It seems somewhat pedantic to wonder why our culture sustains a resistance to owning our individual and organizational projections. However, one possible explanation is that our public discourse is frozen at a level that befits an elementary school student’s vocabulary and learning level. One of the oldest clichés in journalism is that it must be written in language that a twelve-year-old can comprehend. And that was before the general level of literacy was much higher. Who knows what today’s cliché guideline for aspiring journalists might be? Eight?

Another cultural phenomenon that wards against the uncovering of the full import of our projections is the clear declaration of the death of shame and responsibility. The time of death, while likely a sliding scale, is nevertheless almost complete. (Canadians continue our ingrained habit to apologize for the most minute impolite mis-step, while being bombarded with megaphones to cease and desist with the apologies!)

It is somewhat glib perhaps to imagine the kind of ‘projection’ that might encircle a religious community where many are striving to demonstrate their ingestion and digestion and projection of the faith doctrine and commandments. And the collision and confusion that explodes when a literal interpretation of scripture collides with an unconscious personal projection either to explain away or to judge someone, while escaping and evading all personal acknowledgement of similar behaviour is often quite dramatic.

The prayer seeking forgiveness that uses words like sins of commission and of omission, leaves out the notion of projection. It is not something left undone, or something done; rather it is something unconsciously done and unnoticed and undeclared. And when the notion of ‘who has no sin cast the first stone’ into the expected behaviour of the parishioner’s lexicon of ‘rules’ to follow, the likelihood of the self-awareness and then disclosure of a personal projection slides into oblivion at least on the conscious level of the verbal exchange of the influences that are shaping the situation. Personal projection, encased in highly critical judgements of others, can be and often is psychically and even professionally lethal. And if the organization is engaged in projections, without either knowing or acknowledging those impulses, the blind innocence and potential arrogance that accompanies it continues. And the real risk is that foundational to the religious enterprise is that the world is at fault while the institution remains guiltless and innocent and at least metaphorically if not also literally, unconscious.

The very notion of bringing the unconscious to light, as a formidable process in human maturation, also potentially one of the primary purposes and goals of an ecclesial institution worthy of the name, can be aborted if the organization denies or negates the very real potential of projection of vulnerability onto their adherents without acknowledging vulnerability itself. And not merely in a private penitential, but in a public declaration. If the process is healing and restorative for the individual, why would it not be for the institution?

Feelings and attitudes, however, hang on exchanges between individuals; they carry with them residual feelings, perceptions, attitudes and even convictions of the ‘value and worth’ of the individual. And if and when such feelings, attitudes, perceptions and convictions are based on what are essentially unconscious projections, much untoward havoc can and will ensue.

Not only does the language of business and the professions reside in and depend upon the empirical and literal language and observations of the seen, the heard, the smelt and the bodily injury; the language of practical sense, (to borrow from Frye) is devoid of even the acknowledgement of our unconscious projections. And, while our universities generally defer from any formal academic pursuit of studies of Jung and Hillman, there is little likelihood that public consciousness is about to open its eyes, ears, hearts and minds to the reverberations and implications of unconscious projections.

 

What kind of collaborative and concerted actions are likely to confront our shared threats, if we are lost in a fog of our own reciprocal, unconscious projections?

 

*Projection is the process of displacing one’s feelings onto a different person, animal or object. The term is most commonly used to describe defensive projection—attributing one’s own unacceptable urges to another. For example, if someone continually bullies and ridicules a peer about his insecurities, the bully might be projecting his own struggle with self-esteem onto the other person…Projection allows the difficult trait to be addressed without the individual fully recognizing it in themselves. (psychologytoday.com)

Projection is the process of misinterpreting what is ‘inside’ as coming from ‘outside’. It forms the basis of empathy by the projection of personal experiences to understand someone else’s subjective world. (Wikipedia.com)

A common example (of projection) is a cheating spouse who suspects their partner is being unfaithful. Instead of acknowledging their own infidelity, they transfer, or project, this behaviour onto their partner….People who ‘feel inferior and have low self-esteem” can also fall into the habit of projecting their own feelings of not being good enough onto others, adds psychologist Michael Brustein, PsyD. He points to racism and homophobia as examples of this type of projection on a broader scale. On the other hand, people who can accept their failures and weaknesses—and who are comfortable reflecting on the good, bad and ugly within, tend not to project. ‘They have no need, as they can tolerate recognizing or experiencing the negatives about themselves,’ (Karen R. Keonig, M.Ed. LCSW) says. (healthline.com)