{"id":19230,"date":"2022-03-22T00:00:43","date_gmt":"2022-03-22T06:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unk.com\/blog\/?p=19230"},"modified":"2022-07-18T02:48:37","modified_gmt":"2022-07-18T08:48:37","slug":"how-to-deal-with-projection-in-therapy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unk.com\/blog\/how-to-deal-with-projection-in-therapy\/","title":{"rendered":"3 Reasons Your Clients Project and What You Can Do About It"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Do not taunt your neighbour with the blemish you yourself have.”<\/em><\/p>\n

– from the Babylonian Talmud 500AD<\/p>\n

Sometimes, when people have a strong emotional reaction against<\/em> something, it may be that inwardly<\/em> they’re actually all for it. A classic case of “The lady doth protest too much”, as Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet.<\/p>\n

One aspect of this kind of self-deception is projecting one’s own inner thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and motivations onto other people.<\/p>\n

This is what is known as psychological projection. It’s a block to self-understanding and therefore to self-development. While it may provide comfort to the projector in the short term, it inevitably causes unhappiness and fractured relationships in the long term \u2013 as diminished understanding always does.<\/p>\n

People, at least sometimes, describe themselves when they describe others.<\/p>\n

Here’s a case in point.<\/p>\n

“Why should your<\/em> child get the main part?!”<\/h3>\n

I heard recently about a woman who attended a parent-teacher meeting at her child’s school. She asked a simple question about whether the school play would be running that year.<\/p>\n

Later she received three aggressive messages from another mother demanding to know why the hell she thought her<\/em> son should play the main part in the school play!<\/p>\n

The first woman hadn’t even thought<\/em> about which children should be cast in which roles, let alone said anything about it! Intriguingly, the second woman’s son ended up being cast in the main role \u2013 partly due to the efforts and insistence of his aggressive mother!<\/p>\n

This seemed to be a classic case of projection. What was on the mind of one person was projected onto another. But there’s an important element of projection that we need to understand.<\/p>\n

Unconscious manipulation<\/h3>\n

Projection can be a slippery fish. We can’t always be sure that someone is projecting, but we can certainly feel they might<\/em> be. Hypocrisy may<\/em> simply be lack of insight, but equally it may be conscious<\/em> brazenness.<\/p>\n

For example, the behaviour of the woman in the above story might<\/em> have been some kind of conscious, manipulative \u2018first strike’ in what she perceived as a battle of wills. Projection shouldn’t be confused with manipulative deflection<\/em>.<\/p>\n

True projection is an unconscious<\/em> behaviour brought about by lack of self-awareness. Other examples might include:<\/p>\n