Psychological Projection - Historical Uses

Historical Uses

Peter Gay describes projection as "the operation of expelling feelings or wishes the individual finds wholly unacceptable—too shameful, too obscene, too dangerous—by attributing them to another."

The philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach based his theory of religion in large part upon the idea of projection, i.e., the idea that an anthropomorphic deity is the outward projection of man's anxieties and desires.

The "Shadow"—a term used in Jungian psychology to describe one kind of psychological projection—refers to the projected material from the individual's personal unconscious. Jungians consider that 'Political agitation in all countries is full of such projections, just as much as the backyard gossip of little groups and individuals'. Marie-Louise Von Franz extended the view of projection to cover phenomena in Patterns of Creativity Mirrored in Creation Myths, stating that: "... wherever known reality stops, where we touch the unknown, there we project an archetypal image".

Psychological projection is one of the medical explanations of bewitchment that attempts to diagnose the behavior of the afflicted children at Salem in 1692. The historian John Demos asserts that the symptoms of bewitchment experienced by the afflicted girls in Salem during the witchcraft crisis were because the girls were undergoing psychological projection. Demos argues the girls had convulsive fits caused by repressed aggression and were able to project this aggression without blame because of the speculation of witchcraft and bewitchment.