A Brief Overview of Projection and Its Types

Note: I am not a professional, and this article does not draw on authoritative textbooks or major works. Many passages have no formal sources. These are simply notes I have compiled for my own use.

I. Projection Is a Common Defense Mechanism

1. Psychological Principles

When the self is weak or fragile, it cannot contain some of its own emotions, predicaments, thoughts, and so on. In other words, it cannot handle its own issues because its capacity for containment, functioning, and engagement with reality is poor. It cannot face these issues directly, as doing so would bring anxiety and fragmentation. It therefore projects the “theme” onto others, alleviating this anxiety by judging or criticizing them, or even prompting them to attack or interact.

II. Categories

1. Judging Others by What One Dislikes in Oneself

Internal issues that one finds intolerable, loathes, or avoids—such as sexual desire, lust, brutality, malice, greed, hypocrisy, and so on—are projected onto others, who are then perceived as having these qualities.

The functions are: A. Criticism, distancing, and denial—criticizing the other person to deny that one is the same (“denial through projection”); B. Justification—everyone else is like this, so it is normal for me to be like this too.

1. Projecting One’s Own Issues

Because people feel anxious about their own issues, when they see someone who “strongly appears” to have a “similar” issue, they assume that the other person’s issue is very serious. Examples include appearance, educational qualifications, poverty, low status, social withdrawal, and so on.

Parents often project their own anxieties onto their children, which then interferes with ordinary parenting and creates issues for the children. A simple example is the saying: there is a kind of cold that consists of Grandma thinking you are cold. A common example is parents feeling extremely anxious about their children’s grades and rankings.

Middle-aged people may also have an underlying anxiety about their own health and circumstances in life, without being clearly aware of it, while overtly feeling very anxious about their parents’ health and circumstances in life. Their existential anxiety about insecurity and death is projected onto their parents.

1. Attribution Through Blame

By blaming the other person, one finds an “explanation” for one’s inner conflicts and turns one’s own issues into someone else’s issues.

For example:

Inner unease, brutality, and aggression are blamed on persecution or attacks by the other party (borderline/paranoid personality disorder [PD]/prejudice against groups/an evil world/evil people at the bottom of society/an evil Leviathan, etc.).

Inner unease and anxiety are blamed on the other person’s lack of love—accusations directed at a romantic partner or spouse, or accusations that one’s children are unfilial—or lack of commitment.

1. The Process Following Projection

Projection elicits actions, interactions, and subsequent responses from the other person, and the whole process serves to alleviate anxiety.

For example, one projects brutality onto the other person and successfully provokes brutality in them: “What are you looking at?”—“So what if I’m looking at you?”—a fight breaks out—“People these days are so full of aggression.”

One projects infidelity or a lack of commitment in a relationship onto the other person, successfully induces them to break up, and thereby “confirms” one’s suspicions.

The “dog-whistling” and “gaslighting” effects in NPD-PUA dynamics involve similar situations: they provoke “emotional instability and destructiveness” in the victim, making the perpetrator appear to be the victim instead. PUA is intentional and is not necessarily subconscious.

III. Other Points

A. Projection Is Also One Reason to Emphasize “Separating Issues” and “Inner Growth”

Many people have unclear boundaries, a self that is not robust, unhealthy or toxic patterns of social interaction, and insufficient capacity for self-containment—accepting, accommodating, allowing, and so on—and self-care. They can easily affect others through projection or be affected by others through projective identification. “Internal attrition” becomes “mutual attrition.”

B. Related Concepts

“Introjection” and “projective identification” are two related concepts. Both are substantial topics, so I will not elaborate here. Projective identification and similar processes are also among the sources of common “occupational ailments” experienced by psychological counselors. Hence the familiar advice that ordinary people should not get involved in other people’s issues or intervene in their causes and consequences.

Transference is a concept often confused with projection. The central feature of transference is that a pattern of relating to a significant object is redirected toward a third party, whereas projection transfers one’s own internal emotions onto a third party.