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Transference and Projection

Sharon [no longer around] said May 24, 2008, 2:55 PM:
 

Can somebody please explain the accurate meaning of these….Transference and Projection?I often hear of them being referred to in a negative way in accordance to relationship, but recently it has been introduced to me that these can also be beautiful if benevolent???  When do we project? Why do we transfer? Is it allowed? Is it acceptable? Can it be creative and not destructive? feedback would be really appreciated. With thanks, Sharon
  Jane : riversong

Re: Transference and Projection

Jane said May 24, 2008, 4:02 PM:
 

We have been bandying these concepts a lot around the ranch lately too…here is what I have figured out….


Transference is when you transfer characteristics from one person to another, characteristics about who you believe the other person is.  This happens in psychotherapeutic relationships when the therapist may be come the 'stand in' for the unavailable father, and the client will create a belief system that the therapist is really an unavailable asshole like her/his father was… This can be helpful in such a setting if the space and room are allowed for the client to claim her/his own feelings/power around that person and begin to establish an new pattern of behaving when that constellation is encountered again. 

Projection is basically when I tell you what you are feeling or thinking.  ie) “I know you are angry.”
I love how Susan Campbell in Getting Real writes about this… she says bascially that we must be very clear about what we 'know' from observable facts/truths, and what we interpret from those facts.   More clearly, I might say, “I noticed that you are red in the face, you are screaming, and you punched the wall out.  Are you angry?”  In obvious situations, this may seem silly, but really, the practice of reclaiming projects and reframing them into  language that looks more like: “I notice…….” “Are you …..?” “I feel….. when you punch out the wall.”  is the basic, 'must-do' fundamental building blocks for any of us in learning how to show up and present for a relationship.  
Even as I say this, I have to practice this continually…. and so much other clear languaging as well… on the Integral Institute site, Fred Koffman calls this Verbal Aikaido…. and it seems almost kindergarten like to listen to, but without the basics of this language we all get into the many messes and phony baloney relationships that time and again we have to dig ourselves out of…. I think authentic relationship can only be taken to the next level with there is a conscious mutual commitment of BOTH partners to use clean language and to be open to honest feedback when either is falling short. 
I have never gotten out of the starting gate in a relationship where both of us have made this commitment to clean languaging… and I think this reflects how difficult this concept really is for people to really get.  In the past, I was more engaged (narcisistically) in  my 'ability to read people', to 'intuit' what was going on for them(and I am not that bad at it either) than to learn how to use clean language and respect the process, often pain-staking as it may be, of getting to authentically know them, and letting them authentically know me. 
 

Re: Transference and Projection

Sharon [no longer around] said May 25, 2008, 5:18 AM:
 

Thanks Jane… projection yes… almost assuming, thinking you know what and how the other feels..using that old intuition thing and giving that importance. Like you, I would also choose to be in a conscious relationship where we speak facts as opposed to projected feels about the other. Is there ever an occassion where projection serves as a positive purpose?
The same for transference.. do you think it's possible to be in an intimate relationship and transfer in a creative way? outside of a professional therapeutic relationship. Or is the major step to actually realise that we transfer unconsciously when choosing relationships, waking up to that and stepping out side of that model???
If a relationship is healthy is it ok to transfer? Or if a relationship is healthy would there be no sign of that?
  Jane : riversong

Re: Transference and Projection

Jane said May 25, 2008, 6:29 AM:
 

I think that in a 'healthy' relationship, the issue is not to transfer or not, project or not, but to wake up to the process as soon as possible and become conscious of what has just happen, reclaim feelings, stay present, let go of controlling the outcome…again staying present, repeating, repeating repeating…. 


When I project something, I am by nature of the projection, moving off of my side of the street and into 'yours'.  I love it how in the posted interview with Katie and Gay, one of them said that in an airplane flight, 90% of the flight is 'off course' and the relationship to getting to where the pilot and passengers what to go is about 'correcting'…and that is OKAY,  indeed it is healthy.  And really, it is a wonderful relationship between two people to are committed to increasing consciousness and openess to corrections.  We each have to bring 100% of ourselves to our 50% of any relationship.  When I project on to  you I am taking up your space, and not allowing for you to bring yourself fully into being present with me.  We all do it.  Can we do this with the intention to wake up to it sooner and sooner?  I think this is the issue.  

In a healthy relationship, transference of qualities from one person onto someone else not related to those qualities may be part of a 'getting healthier' process, in as much as we can wake up to the conditionings and complexes that we held in relation to the original person…and then proceeding to untangle those complexes, regain our power and also appropriate relationship to original person…. to in a 'process' way transference can be healthy…however, if I want a mature authentic relationship with another mature authentic adult, I cannot make him/her an icon of a child/parent/teacher etc and hold that for any great amount of time.  If I want to be a man's lover, I cannot be playing(in his unconscious) the role of his nurturing mother, or his unavailable father, or the shrew-like women that came before me…… He will not be having an authentic relationship with me, and I will certainly not be having a relationship with a mature peer partner…. it is as simple as apples and oranges.  

Still, this is all about waking up… My sister said the other day, a Sufi quote:
“Remember your mission, awaken from your dreams, stay together.”   THIS is all about awakening from our transferences and our projections, and learning the skill set for staying present in our experience(especially not numbing ANY of our feeling, even numbness, including not relating from our feelings (becoming reactive)  Learning as Robert Masters said to become curious about what we are feeling and 'relate to' them, and express them in a curious way) speaking the truth, and getting real–no matter what.  This takes a certain fortitude and the road has some truly lonely patches in it…. but on the other hand, the reward is truth and freedom like no other!  At this point in my life, with a heap of experiences of trying other approaches, I am totally ready, even though far from perfect at it, to commit to this process of getting real and showing up. 

Thanks for your questions and thoughts on this.  I hope I am not sounding pedantic… I am really enjoying thinking and writing about this.
Jane
 

Re: Transference and Projection

Sharon [no longer around] said May 25, 2008, 12:53 PM:
 

No Jane.. you don't sound pedantic..and anyway I love pedantic!  I just spent half an hour responding to you but Gaia ate it all for themselves..so I'll get back to you tomorrow…. blessings
 

Re: Transference and Projection

_ [no longer around] said May 25, 2008, 1:35 PM:
 

Jane, it’s good to see you in a shared group again.  I’ve often felt connected to a lot of what you had to offer in the past.  This thread is no different. 

I was wondering if you could open up a little more about “becoming reactive”.  I can definitely get caught up in this one, and when I do it’s usually after a recurring theme keeps popping up… sometimes with the same person, sometimes not.   Are you saying this is because I wouldn’t be effectively addressing my feelings in respect to these certain events, which is obviously quite possible?  I usually end up reacting at a certain point, which then allows me to further explore what’s behind the dynamic at play, but that in turn usually puts a strain on my relationship with the other person/s involved.  I’m kind of at a point where I often do this consciously so I CAN explore it further.  But like I said it doesn’t always seem to be the healthiest approach.  Do you have any additional thoughts on this?

Thanks for bringing up Robert Masters name… after checking out his website I think I’ll be reading some of his material.

Seth

  Jane : riversong

Re: Transference and Projection

Jane said May 25, 2008, 2:54 PM:
 

Thanks Seth for your kind comments. 


This reaction, reactivity thing is a really key piece of being able to stay present…and I am becoming way more clear at how I have botched things up in the past, mostly because I have botched things up…and I am starting to be able to witness another person's reactivity without flanning the flames with my own…(though I have a long way to go before I would want to send me on a mission to a really unenlightened, untidy communicating land).

What I have figured out so far, it that in a difficult situation, I have three basic options when it comes to staying present or not.
1.  When feelings come up for me, I can dettach or go numb…basically repress what I am feeling.   I have done this a lot in my life, nurturing an inauthentic, and unconscious belief, that somehow my feelings did not matter, and were not safe to express and I would likely be abandoned or rejected if I expressed them.  This is an abandonment complex, where because of my fear of 'rocking the boat' and the resultant waves, I have basically abandoned myself, my feelings and been left to try to manage the rest of the drama without ever having shown up.  I have suffered from an eating disorder which is absolutely linked to this……I have been caught in compulsive eating pattern in lieu of  showing up and telling someone that I was having 'feelings'…. Expression dark 'feelings', unless it was in the righteous cause of saving a life or something, has been like pulling teeth for me.  Especially expressing fear, and anxiety, and anger.   What Robert Masters said to me in a workshop in February is: “you can be numb, that is a feeling too. AND you don't have to be numb to your numbness.”  
2.  When feelings come up for me, I can be reactive.  If for instance I am angry…. I might say, “you really make me made, I've had enough of this crap, I am out of here.” and then stomp off.  In this case, I have 'enacted' my feelings of anger.  I have related to the other person 'from my anger'.   I have an extremely hard time witnessing my own 'frustration' when I believe that a few twists or turns would solve a problem, and when no one else is stepping up to the plate.  To take a deep breath and 'notice' my body sensations, to acknowledge my feelings and to hold space for the relationship is a challenge when this 'reactivity' is the usual pattern.  Reactivity may be to withdraw quietly too, stonewalling, just as much as it might be taking a hissy fit.  In any event, I react in an unconscious effort to control the situation and the outcome and this is co-dependency! And it makes for being a phoney persona having phoney relationship with an unknown quantity on the other side.    
3. When my feelings come up for me, I can take stock of them, feel the body sensations that arise, maybe go through my memory file of other times that I have felt this way, and I can stay present with the other person in relationship and I can 'express' my feelings;  “I am feeling angry.”  “I felt this way when you did …..” This is done to relay information about my interiority to the other person without a hidden or not so hidden agenda of wanting the other person to change.   If reactivity flares in the other person, then the next job is to stay present with my feelings in relation to the reactivity….. And if the other person stays present authentically too, they will tell you how they feel about hearing that information…. and deeper opening and intimacy becomes possible.   AND  this is hard…. It is like me wanting to read the end of a book before I have gone through the middle chapters; impatiently, I want to find out if the ending makes the book worthwhile….yet in this circumstance the ending changes with the ability to stay present, using clean language, accepting responsibility for 100% of my half of the relationship….and I can't know what is going to happen until it happens…this is Tantra(I think), this is being present at the event horizon open to what is. 

And things often don't work out as in riding blissfully off into the sunset, but what they are is REAL, and that is as good as it gets.  I think when two people get to the stage where they can both mutually commit to staying present with whatever comes up(even when that may result in consciously deciding to go separate ways), the fireworks should go off and there should be a six gun salute…. 
…and then beyond that is the  the Beloved….. some person who has learned to show up, like you have…and even with all the warts and whatevers, y'all actually really, believe-it-or-not like each other and want to hang out in that magnificent field of arising that field that Rumi writes about!..  Imagine that!
Jane
 

Re: Transference and Projection

_ [no longer around] said May 26, 2008, 10:54 AM:
 

Thanks for opening up a little more, Jane.  I have to watch I don’t hijack Sharon’s thread by taking it to off course.  I feel I’m becoming clearer on how I’ve botched things up in the past as well.  It will be interesting to see if we have both set the ground for a more conscious relationship to enter our lives.  I still sense a bit of anxiety when I think in terms of another relationship… I wonder what that’s about.  I think it might be fear of not being able to live up to one.  I’ve had a bit of an abandonment pattern myself in the past.  Not sure I can relate to becoming numb though.   In my last relationship my partner claimed something of that nature.  It was quite evident when the downward slope hit.  It made communicating a little rough.

When it comes to this reactivity thing I was more or less speaking of relationships in general.  Actually choosing to harness your intense feelings and expressing them, because they seem to be recurring, and in many instances increasing in intensity.  Maybe projections are involved and maybe they’re not, but just in the name of getting past what cannot be seen… a when all else fails type of thing.  I would hope that in my future intimate relationships open communication will help resolve times like these from happening.  There must be room for people to become reactive though, that’s if it doesn’t become flat out abusive.  We do have to be real with ourselves and others.  Warts and all, right!           
 

Re: Transference and Projection

Sharon [no longer around] said May 26, 2008, 12:35 PM:
 

oh and hijack away Seth!.. I too am benefiting!
  Jane : riversong

Re: Transference and Projection

Jane said May 26, 2008, 3:43 PM:
 

Seth, Numbness for me is a long standing reactive pattern and it is triggered when I do not feel safe, when I feel frightened.  My mother was a very reactive person who insisted by her behaviour that she was the only one allowed to have an emotional process when I was growing.  My father was not much different… and this is very likely exactly the way they were parented too…. so it becomes a generational thing.  Alice Miller's books on this: For you own good, Breaking down the wall of silence, et al. are wonderful on this topic, how we get shut down (soul murder she calls it) as children, and then are bereft as adults to have an appropriate, mature response to feelings that will kill us one way or another if they are repressed.  


I agree that there 'must be room for reactivity' is so far as it is not abuse, AND it is fodder for waking up to it and applying corrective measures. It does not help the airplane, if when it is off course, every one parachutes out the hatch. However, if corrective measures are not taken by identifying what has happened(the reactivity), and subsequently both parties owning the associated feelings and staying present, and repeating as necessary, the relationship will be off course…and this over time will magnify until it is so off course that it will 'crash land'.   I suspect practicing on the small 'insignificant' stuff, allows for a pattern that can then accomodate bigger risks when more serious things happen.  

Some of this work is real grunt work, and it might even feel humorless…. One of my most fabulous ways of indirectly saying what I want to say is by humour… and this too can be an unhealthy way to show up.  Most comedians have had totally dysfunctional childhoods, and it is no wonder they have honed such skills….

Showing up, straight, radical, naked, and open and vulnerable is one of the scariest things we can do……and yet it is the only  choice if we want to learn to lead real, authentic lives, with other real authentic people…. 

I am not surprised you have anxiety about another relationship… I for one always get attached and fall in love and keep on loving even when the plane has crashed and I am a lonely traveller out on the desert with a little trail of footsteps and tears leading back to ground zero… But dammit, I am learning fortitude…. I am starting to collect a bigger number of crashes to my credit, and I seem to love each person more, and strangely be able to let go on them that much more easily with blessings…….I still cry my eyes out though, with big swollen eye lids and snotty nose and all :). 
Jane  
 

Re: Transference and Projection

Sharon [no longer around] said May 26, 2008, 12:33 PM:
 

Jane your sharing has given me a much clearer perspective.

“Remember your mission, awaken from your dreams, stay together,”….. clicks for me, in accordance to transference and projection. Thankyou. {I wrote so much more yesterday- it got eaten- yet today I feel no need to expand so will leave it at this, for now.} Thankyou.
 

Re: Transference and Projection

Gay said May 27, 2008, 8:57 AM:
 

I appreciate this discussion a lot. Transference and projection are two of the most difficult things to understand. Then, transcending them in the heat of the moment requires an even more nimble set of moves.


One thing about projection to emphasize: it's usually something about myself that I'm projecting onto the other person. In other worlds, If you're projecting onto your partner that he/she's sexually attracted to someone else, it's often because you've been hiding some sexual feelings of your own toward someone else. 

I didn't really get how transference and projection worked until well into my thirties. I've often wondered why schools don't teach things like that, since they play such a huge role in whether relationships work or not.
 

Re: Transference and Projection

Sharon [no longer around] said May 27, 2008, 1:13 PM:
 

Ok back to the drawing board. Thanks for clarifying projection a bit more Gay. Now I feel I need some help to put this into other contexts….

Unless we are always the observer, looking at all that's going on, is there ever a time that we are not projecting? And, slightly aside from relationships, is being an observer not a projection within itself?

Interesting the subject of Numbness and Reaction coming up in Jane and Seth's exchanges. I'm trying to understand, but am probably convoluting, how numbness plays a part in projecting..

Through numbness is it possible to still project the unfelt feelings onto the other person?
 

Re: Transference and Projection

_ [no longer around] said May 27, 2008, 4:03 PM:
 

Sharon, I’m kind of where you are in trying to understand the depth to which we as humans actually do project.  It’s something I’ve been trying to wrap myself around over the last few years, and I’m still seeking to feel grounded on the matter.  Sometimes I’ve thought – everything is a projection – and then at other times I contemplate where they start and where they end.  Of late I’ve kind of been seeing it as taking ownership over one’s own interpretations, opinions, and feelings towards anything external; owning your own experience.  I think it’s important to be able to separate experience from fact.  For an example, let’s say there is a female standing a few yards in front of me who I think is beautiful.  The fact in that situation would be the female standing a few yards ahead of me, but it’s my own interpretation (projection) that she’s beautiful.  She wouldn’t be aesthetically beautiful or ugly in actuality.  It’s really just my own projection of her.

I don’t know if the act of simply observing qualifies as projection for the simple reason that I don’t feel we create an external object by simply observing it.  We do however give stories to what we observe.  The stories are the projections.  Of course there is that double blind experiment in quantum mechanics that shows by simply observing the experiment you get a totally different outcome, but I don’t think that challenges what I’ve already said.  
 

Re: Transference and Projection

Sharon [no longer around] said May 28, 2008, 2:07 AM:
 

Very interesting Seth,,thanks…. so what I'm thinking now is… focusing on your statement about distinguishing experience from fact is….

If I feel a special connection with a man who I find extremely inspiring- spiritually, and he's not bad looking either…. I develop feelings in my body…. thoughts in my mind (desire, hope, fantasy, dreams)… to me those feelings are my EXPERIENCE AND FACT… if I choose to express this part of myself, my feelings, to the man…  then what exactly is it that I am doing?… apart from being honest..I'm putting something out there… is that a projection?
  Jane : riversong

Re: Transference and Projection

Jane said May 28, 2008, 4:44 AM:
 

No, it is not 'projection'.  That would be authentic communication coming from your heart to tell him what you are feeling and thinking in relationship to him.  You have given him real true information.. 
If he does not respond to your communication in any kind of a timely fashion or at all,  and you decide 'he doesn't like me', that  would be projection.  It might also be true, but it might be all kinds of other things as well.  The only way to know what is going on with him is to ask him AND for him to tell you….If in this scenario, you feel anxious, sad, worried as you wait and wait and wait, you might start to feel frustration and anger…. you might walk away from the relationship, even “what an asshole,' you might think…. And all of that is not about him, it is about not liking  how you feel in relationship to his lack of communication. 
So projection would look like:  “you are such an asshole, it is clear you don't like me, and you are rude for not writing me back.” followed by some reactivity to those thought–flatten his tires and say, “I'm so outta here”\
Authentic communication would look like:  “I feel sad and frustrated when I wait for you to write me back.  Do you have any feelings for me?”  And then wait some more.
And if he never writes back…it might be true to then say: “I am utterly devastasted by your lack of response. I am not waiting any more….”  and even then you don't know what has really gone on for him, you just know that it is painful, and that you no longer choose a connection.

 

Re: Transference and Projection

Sharon [no longer around] said May 28, 2008, 4:51 AM:
 

Brilliant Jane…. I laughed so much when reading your response…… the truth of it! Like dry humour… my favorite kind. You are a very talented writer.
  Jane : riversong

Re: Transference and Projection

Jane said May 28, 2008, 8:42 AM:
 

Well, I think MY experience is MY fact… it is MY truth.  And 'my truth' implies that it comes from me, and is honed by my idiosyncratic perspective, which itself is twisted and turned by my conditionings and complexes, my projections and transferences.  

 If I like brocolli and you don't,  we don't need to agree about whether broccoli is delicious to able to hold the differences of our perspective. And the broccoli doesn't change or care if I like it and you don't.  Seth if you were to say that the beautiful woman was the 'most beautiful woman in the world' and then to proceed to argue anyone who disagreed, you would be insisting that your truth was the only truth and that would be ridiculous.
In the journey to showing up authentically, we all have to be able to own our our perspective, and allow for differences.  Holding differences can be a really challenging truth skill..and Susan Campbell writes about this at length in “Getting Real”.  When holding differences, we then have to show up to the feelings of lonliness and fear that often arise when there is disagreement.  It is so much easier to become reactive, and try to collapse the difference by conceding or by getting huffy and trying to impose my view. 

About numbness…. going 'missing in action', really…. this is a control pattern which underneath is based on a projection.  The projection is that, consciously or not, I do not think that the other person in the relationship can hear my truth and hold the relationship….. So before making myself show up and risking abandonment or rejection, I have already started micromanaging the situation, I have begun lying or withholding much needed information about my internal reality….I have dissociated from my feelings, and thoughts and I am faking  who I am in order to maintain the status quo, and because I am just plainly too frightened to show up and be honest and let go of the outcome–no matter what that might be.   It is a fear based stance, and I am sure it is learned at a very young age for most of us who were regularly exposed to raging parents.  It was not safe to show up, so we didn't…and now we have a maladaptive pattern that we bring to risky situations.  This pattern no longer serves us, but even more puts us into harms way, and all sorts of other muddles.  In the past year, my insight into how I have been going numb and thereby sabotaging any possibility for authentic intimate connection with another has become so clear to me..halleleuja!…I think I have finally, really got this!  And I will believe that I am away to the races until I am face to face with the same issue in another relationship. I will have to test my mettle to see if I really have any gleaned any fortitude in staying present with myself and refusing to invisibilize my core being out of the relationship.   And even if I have!! praise the lord! that won't by any stretch of the imagination mean that there is any sort of a guarantee that the 'other' will have the same capacity…but AT LEAST I am open to the possibility that they might be capable of staying present…..and this is a quantum leap from where I have been mulling around before. 
 

Re: Transference and Projection

Sharon [no longer around] said May 28, 2008, 12:39 PM:
 

Jane I salute you for the progress you share about yourself.
 
I have been thinking about your previous post and what you said about my question; wether I was projecting by sharing my feelings with a man.. you said that's not projection but from- the- heart -fact. Your feedback made feel good because I felt like my feelings were being validated. I do, however, think it's projection. Whatever good I see in him and feel about him, it's because I feel it in me about me. I just think that focusing too much on the other stops me from taking reponsibility for myself.
 

Now. onto this numbness thing….. is that the same as passive anger?…..
I found  a great quote by Diana Cooper… “If you bury your hostility and express it as passive anger you will project hostility onto those around you and will imagine people are aggressive whether they are or not.  You wil selectively imagine angry or threatening attitudes where none are intended or expressed. Those who project their hatred think everyone is out to get them.”
                        I have been Queen Numb in the past and am starting to gain sensation in an awesome way…it's great to feel again. The only way that happened was through feeling seen by other people …aware, spiritual people that PROJECT love and respect.. it has been great having that mirrored at me.

I was in a relationship where I was bombarded with hundreds of projections daily,  90% negative, and I probably repaid with 100% negative. The difference is.. I didn't blatantly say what I thought about him because I knew it was projection…but he'd come out and say it, blatantly projecting onto me “you” are this and “you” are that… I'd say to him…you're just projecting onto me….. even though I hated every second of it…. he'd say “I know I am, but can't you see all the time I'm just talking about me”…… So what set of nimble moves do I need to develop to transcend that? I felt like I had to, but resisted, become his therapist or unconditional mother- love. Just felt really tight and convuluted.
  Jane : riversong

Re: Transference and Projection

Jane said May 28, 2008, 2:12 PM:
 

Seph, 

I just have a few moments to consider this statement of yours:  Whatever good I see in him and feel about him, it's because I feel it in me about me. I just think that focusing too much on the other stops me from taking reponsibility for myself.

I don't agree with this statement.  For example, If someone is a really good singer and you suck major time, the ability to appreciate another's gifts and talents do NOT depend upon possessing them yourself.  The ability does depend on you having ears and the capacity to hear, and an appreciation, innate or even culturally coded for what they are presenting, but it does not depend on you having that particular gift.  This is not about focussing too much on another person, but rather taking an honest account about what is going on in the outside world beyond 'me', and what is going on in the inside world which is all about 'me', ie) what I have control over and what I don't.

Your capacity to experience another's goodness is about you.  Their actual goodness is not about you.  You did not make Gandhi good! or Hitler bad! This is the kind of troublesome thinking that gets a lot of people into trouble these days…especially the 'Secret' fans. It means that the boundary of where my responsibility starts and stops has gotten way out of kilter.  I do NOT have control about what happens.  I have control about what I do about what happens. 

If someone around you is treating you badly, you are not responsible for their behaviour.  Your are responsible for listening to your feelings and siddling up to the plate to tell them how you feel and what you want from them to make the abuse stop. 
 

Re: Transference and Projection

_ [no longer around] said May 28, 2008, 6:19 PM:
 

Well this has turned into an interesting thread.  I’m not sure where I sit in it though… my last post seems to have been taken somewhere other than I recognize.  I guess it was kind of sloppily written.   Reading back into John Ruskan’s work I can see where I’m getting some of my influence on this subject.  Here’s a short general definition he gives for projection in his book emotional clearing.  He also lists five different types of projection: dualistic, shadow, clearing, manifestation, and spontaneous clearing.   

Projection

Projection results from the accumulation of energy generated by suppression.  It is an automatic, unconscious mechanism, which assigns subjective value and identity to persons or events in the “outside” world.  Feelings that are suppressed are experienced indirectly through the other persons or events – it appears as if the feelings are caused by or coming from others.  In addition, suppressed qualities are attributed to others.  Others are usually then criticized for the feelings or qualities that we have projected onto them.  In advanced cases of projection, we actually attract people and circumstances to us that correspond to the feelings we are holding within.

Sharon, when it comes to your statement about “…it's because I feel it in me about me.”  That just doesn’t ring true for me.  The truth is that you feel it in you about him.  They’re YOUR feelings though.  They also don’t determine his goodness, but they may influence goodness in him.

I’m still trying to determine how deep projection goes.  When is it projection and when isn’t it?  If I’m unconscious to it how can I tell if I’m projecting… especially when it comes to positive attributes.
 
 

Re: Transference and Projection

Sharon [no longer around] said May 29, 2008, 12:33 AM:
 

Thankyou Jane and Seth, I appreciate your directness very much…..I feel uncomfortable and have something to learn here. Can feel myself wanting to respond prematurely… out of reaction…. but am going to mull over all that you have said. I am full of gratitude that you both turned up.
  Jane : riversong

Re: Transference and Projection

Jane said May 29, 2008, 1:44 AM:
 

I am travelling for the next while and don't know what time I will get on the computer….this is a really great enquiry though,…. 

and I look forward to it unfolding.
Jane
 

Re: Transference and Projection

Sharon [no longer around] said May 30, 2008, 12:58 AM:
 

Is all projection a symptom of supressed emotion?  The truth is we can never really know how another thinks or feels.. so I might have a fleeting thought like, “She's saying that because she hasn't dealt with her past issues” or “He must live in that area if he's wearing something like that”  or “She doesn't know the answers, why is she trying so hard.” Is there a difference between a judgement, a guess, intuiting and projection?
  Jane : riversong

Re: Transference and Projection

Jane said May 30, 2008, 3:17 AM:
 

I don't think that projection is just generated from suppressed emotion, though the angrier sloppier manifestations of it can arrive from suppression. Projection comes from not having differentiated self and other….. and then creating  a bee's nest of thoughts that depend on the lack of differentiation.  This bee's nest perspective  gives me the illusion of omnipotent powers to know and judge the world out there….and from this 'I create my version of reality'.


Something like 90% of our information comes from non verbal cues….. so how we 'project' onto another person is basically a kind of 'pattern recognition'.  When our pattern recognition involves the patterns of our  our own unexamined and unintegrated emotional process, (our own shadowed complexes and conditionings) then when I have a 'feeling' rise up, I will project it out to the world and hold the world up as 'the cause' of that feeling. Get a whole mess of people doing this, and mix in George W. and the rest, and hey, look at the situation that has arisen.  

Seph, you write: ”The truth is we can never really know how another thinks or feels..” 
In an ultimate way, this my be true unless we are 'God”, but in a relative way, it is not so true.  You can know how I think and feel if you ask me.  If you take time to get to know me, really know the pathways and patterns of my life, and if I do the same thing, and you ask me, and I tell you the truth, my best rawest most vulnerable truth, you can know 'what I think or feel'.  This is what relationship is….uncovering layers of truth, of sentience in another, of inner essence and of revealing ourselves.   I love Sam Keene's book, “To love and be loved”…which is 'to know and be known'.  

Projection is a faulty wiring, or maybe just a short  circuiting.  It will only tell me more about myself if I am the one projecting.  It does not allow for indeed, insist upon bypassing the sometimes painstaking, laborious work of brailling forth into the outside world and 'discovering' the other.  It is a very serious and very insidious way of doing 'relationship bypass'.  It is how, people can be married for 30 years and not really ever 'know' the other.  It is an important aspect of co-dependent relationships.   

When Gay writes, that he thinks that this might be taught in school, it is that important.  I agree.  I also don't know if there is a stage in psychological development that this can be gleaned, or if it is something that really healthy parenting and teaching would actually eliminate it, such that we would hyperplane to a new collective level of global consciousness.  What is true, our parenting methods have been breeding grounds for teaching all of us to Project.  Alice Miller writes about the 'poisonous pedagogy'—basically, an authoritarian, soul-murdering parenting method, that has not encouraged a child to learn to lead from his sensing heart, and that maims the ability to differentiate self and other often at an age when the 'memory of the maiming' is also obliterated. The poisonous pedagogy teaches us as children to go underground in order to stay safe, to NOT reveal our truth at all costs, to become clever enough to out smart the system, to already know what a raging father will do before he does it and to plan around it, including never showing up real and vulnerable…..  We are rarely like Oliver Twist with his gumption and courage to recognize our hunger and state:  “I want some more.”  We would have be bonked on the head for this kind of “audacity” when I was growing up. And thusly, we begin our understanding of this world not as a gorgeous world of love and abundance, but of a scary place that will not give us what we NEED, let alone what we want. 

This huge task of learning about projections and transference is of major significance in sorting out the horrible ways in which we as individuals and as a collective have gone off balance…… 

I am in the midst of a road trip, writing early morning from the Caravelle Motel… beautiful day in Quebec….
love Jane
 

Re: Transference and Projection

Sharon [no longer around] said May 31, 2008, 3:29 AM:
 

Jane- love knowing you are on the road in contrast to my mum- at- home- stay- still- status. I am understanding about the importance of really grasping the ability to differentiate between self and other. That clarity, I feel, enhances each individual and their effectivness in the world. Am starting to be aware of projections daily between myself and others….. changes everything.
Liking the sound of Alice Miller very much.

I get what you mean about the Oliver Twist thing. When I was growing up (about 7 years old)we got a new dog..that chewed stuff. My dad would threaten it with the lead…. unknown to me the dog would yelp before, or without even being touched….I was in the other room and thought she was being beaten so I shouted from the top of my voice “THAT”S ENOUGH.” Then I ran to my room… mum came up about an hour later and said ” you know you've done wrong, don't you,”  yuck… I did right.


Do you think it's possible to project onto yourself? (what about people that self harm, or are bulimic, anorexic, self-crical? or is it that a different thing?)
  Jane : riversong

Re: Transference and Projection

Jane said Jun 3, 2008, 5:44 AM:
 

Seph, I am presently in North Carolina, having had a glorious drive through the Blue Ridge Mountains yesterday…. and I am just looking at you question “is it possible to project onto yourself?' and pondering it. 

In a way the whole story of Narcissus is about projection onto self…mistaking ourselves, or being captivated by our own 'reflection', and assuming it to be the 'real thang'.   I think we all build stories up about who we are, what we are worth(or aren't worth), what I deserve, what I don't deserve, and then we live our lives out shackled in the walls of our own self projection……I think this is what Pema Chodron is referring to when she says in one of her books, 'drop the storyline'…. what happens if we drop the story line and simply just 'are'…. It seems to me this is also the very simple Zen message, or the Power of Now message…. 
As I drive with my mother on this trip, she tells me about her delightful friend Molly, age 80 something, who has lost almost all of her short term memory, and with it 'the recent storyline'.  Molly is apparently fearless in this, and aware of her memory problem…and not at all demented.  Simply, she continues to find herself in one big wondrous, surprising situation after another!  “The Dairy Queen, I wonder how I got there”, that sort of thing.  How amazing this life would be if we could all hold this awe, fresh and new, in every instant….  
I often help delivery babies, and I am alway captivated by their brand newness, often opening their eyes and looking around for the first time while examine them… What an incredible surprise they must be feeling…”What the heck, it was just wet and pink and gurgly! And now what is all this” or whatever thoughts babies think without any words to think them with. 

So I guess I am on a bit of a diversion, but all the same, we do project onto ourselves all the time, and we often forget or may never really even have known the real 'me'… the little divine spark that peers out into the world after 13.7 billion years of arriving….and perhaps again, this is why this work of untangling the projections is so utterly important.
Jane
 

Re: Transference and Projection

Sharon [no longer around] said Jun 23, 2008, 1:11 PM:
 

Ok Jane so I am here again!
I love your little stories and appreciate your sharing.
Have been away… I suppose on  little growth spurt….. I was spinning around with all these questions I had…. that you and Seth responded to.

Yes I feel I am slightly different to when I was last here…and have become aware of how much time I spend fantasizing…. and emotional…. it came to my attention that my belly chakra…the orange one… relating to family… is well, I was going to say underactive, but I think it's over active!…. The reason I mention this is because i thought I was in love with a man… and I knew this was crazy because I'd never met him in person…but I was consumed with the thought and feel of him day and night..like drugged… I couldn't contain myself and after a few months, told him… and felt better for releasing it, but worse for feeling like a complete a-hole! but I didn't care I wanted to take the risk and he respected what I told him and rightly mentioned that it is difficult to know what is real and unreal… projection, transference etc… I agreed and was just glad he didn't run a mile but stayed quite constant and centred and present— still, even.

Is it possible that if all our chakras were balanced that the potential for projection would be diminished? or even non-existent?
 

Re: Transference and Projection

_ [no longer around] said Jul 1, 2008, 5:33 PM:
 

lol… cute post!  I don't know if projections are necessarily dependent on how balanced an energy system is.  I would think it's plausible that a projection could trigger an imbalance in a balanced energy system.

What came first the chicken or the egg?

A projection to me is a fairly neutral thing, meaning it's not a negative, therefore they don't equate to being harmful.  Having not read back through this thread I think a projection is just putting, you, out there, so to speak.  If I claim that a certain tree is beautiful, then that's me projecting me onto a tree.  If I claim a tree is solid however, well that's true because it being solid is not dependent on me, where as it being beautiful is.

I would figure that I could be perfectly balanced energetically and still see a certain tree as being beautiful without suffering any ill effect.

These are just my thoughts on this.
 

Re: Transference and Projection

Sharon [no longer around] said Jul 2, 2008, 3:39 AM:
 

! am glad you think it's cute Seth :o)

I see what you mean…. it can be a projection or a thought put out there that can spin a balanced energy system out… very interesting… makes me aware of distant stuff I am yet unable to grasp…. given time I'll get a perspective, a feel, an angle…
thanks
sharon
  Jane : riversong

Re: Transference and Projection

Jane said Jul 3, 2008, 6:00 AM:
 

Sharon, I only just noticed you were writing again on this thread…. and here you have been off declaring love to the mysterious Beloved!  

I am sure that all of us need to undertake the activity of mopping up our projections and owning them if we are to arrive at the intimate interface able to be present and to participate with the Beloved.  I don't know if the journey to that place is about 'diminishing' projections, but rather recognizing them for what they are, and mining them for the information they are holding, not about the 'other', but about YOU…..my projections give me amazing information about ME…..about my deepest longings, about my yearning to connect, about what turns me on and makes me dance…..

I do not believe that we can 'know' a person that we have never met, and not only not met but spent a considerable time with, and not only spent honey-moon time, but also dreadful, stonewalled, “i- have-never-felt -so-alone,-you-shithead-bastard”, time.   Until we are in the muddiness of the mud of our relationships, do they even begin to have the potential to become crucibles for our awakening…..Robert Masters last book, Transformation through Intimacy is lovely expose of this.  In a chapter, 'taking charge of your charge', he is talking about owning projections…..When any of us falls in love with someone we have never met, we are exposing a deep, and everso human longing to be fully met…. This longing is so vulnerable and tender and poignant, and so often has years/centuries of frustration heaped onto it, that to let it simply be there, to feel into it, to feel the pain, and the desire, feels very scary for most of us.  It is so scary, that I think we often only admit this deep longing when some 'external' stimulus(the man) comes along and infuses us with a wild hope that 'OMG, could it be, could this be the one?!'  And it is way easier to imagine(project) that the 'one' is the never-met man, than it is do the grunt work, and the disillusioning work of actually finding out who I am sitting with my wild longing, and then who they are beyond being some shadowy, embryonic form extending olive branches/ecstatic poems/intimations of intent through the distant fog….

But  what I have figured:  grunt work it is! there is no escaping it….  and it can be fun if any of us can comes to term with the inevitable issue of rejection… both being rejected when we are not 'the one', and rejecting the other when they are not 'the one'….  Indeed, in this Gaian world, or in the world of internet dating, the Wizzard of OZ lives on in all of us in magnified porportions… through smoke and mirrors, through fabulous intellects and wonderful words, we can spin illusions as deftly as any graduate from Hogwart's…. (and this is fun)…. Yet, to love and be loved, to see and be seen, to know another and be known in kind THAT is the deeper journey…and there ain't no such thang as a free lunch…

I have written this elsewhere, but a friend who is a Sex Addiction counsellor, says in the manual  the stages of relationship are 1. acquaintence 2. affection 3. friendship 4. commitment 5. intimacy…. in that order.  over on the II pod thread, 'what happened to the interpersonal line' we have been writing about this issue….  to skip stages in relationship is, I think, creating only faux intimacy, a narcissitic projection of my deepest wildest longings….and in the meanwhile, the 'other' remains an uncharted entity, an unknown….

I hope you have lunch or coffee, or decaffienated chai with your lovely  man….. I have done this before,learning to witness myself, paying attention to all my bubbling feelings(my charge), feeling  the projected distance between  two hearts….the chiasm of longing…… brailling into this space.  I am suddenly thinking of times when I have been speaking at a conference, of that moment at the podium, looking out in sea of people, acutely aware of the dryness of my throat, the lump in my chest, feeling my diaphragm contracting, and then thankfully, also my feet on the ground, supported by this earth and my place in the whole scheme, then the rhythm of my heart beat and my breath relaxing…. self consciousness dissolving into being…. 

I”that which you are seeking, is also seeking you”…..

 

Re: Transference and Projection

_ [no longer around] said Jul 3, 2008, 10:02 AM:
 

Nicely put, Jane! I really enjoyed reading that. I’m actually starting to feel grounded in all this.

You definitely have a way with words. Thank you.

Sharon, thank you too, for opening up and being honest with where you’re at. I too can relate to similar situations in my past.

I have that Robert Masters book sitting over on my book self unread. I should almost give it a read.

Enjoy the day, guys!
Seth
 

Re: Transference and Projection

Sharon [no longer around] said Jul 3, 2008, 11:05 AM:
 

Gosh, little me is feeling like I'm lagging behind in the grunt -work department…. bring on the grunt work- but relationship grunt work, I'm very seasoned in the solitary kind. With the right connection I would happily grunt (ha ha double entendre.)

For the record, if there is work to be done..that's the kind of work I want… relationship work.

I'm sure I'll meet him oneday Jane..we said we would…. definitely….