On Psychological Projection

 

On Psychological Projection

September 16, 2020

 

First a disclaimer. I am not a trained psychologist. I claim only an informed layman’s knowledge of human psychology. I am familiar with the psychological phenomenon of projection from personal experience and from what I have seen in others. In my training as a church pastor I learned that parishioners often project a father or some other male image onto a male pastor. I was warned to watch out for it, for that projection, like all psychological projection, is not healthy. So I’m going to write about psychological projection here starting with my personal experience, then looking at a place where I see it happening in an obvious but destructive way in our public life. I’ll spare you all the details of my personal life and touch on my experiences of projection without going into all the particulars. They aren’t necessary for what I want to say here.

In about 1988 my family acquired a dog we called Friday because we found her in Friday Harbor, Washington. In 1989 my mother had most of her right leg amputated because of vascular disease. I went to Eugene, Oregon, where my parents lived, to be with them in that difficult time. I left Friday with a kennel I’d used before. While I was in Eugene I got word from the kennel that Friday had run out when they opened the door to her enclosure to feed her. I learned later that she was hit by a car and killed, but while I was in Eugene I just knew she had run away. Her running away would be a real concern in any event, but I fussed and worried about her beyond any reason. I was distraught. I was not nearly as badly devastated as I was in the other case of projection from my personal experience that I’ll tell about next. I was however more distraught, upset, and worried about Friday than I made any sense to be. After all, Friday was a dog; and I was in Eugene because my mother was undergoing perhaps the most traumatic experience of her life. Later I figured out what was happening with me, or I at least figured out what I think was happening with me. I was projecting grief I could not reveal to my family onto Friday. I didn’t want to add a concern for my parents by showing them how much what had happened to Mom saddened and upset me, so I projected that grief onto a missing dog. I wept over Friday like I could not over my mother.

In 1998 my late wife Francie and I acquired a purebred Irish Terrier. His purebred name was Kenwood’s Along Came Jones, but we called him Jake. I’ll go over the events of the years I lived with Jake briefly. I graduated from seminary in December, 2000. Francie was diagnosed with a recurrence of breast cancer and died in July, 2002. I accepted a call as pastor of a church in the Seattle area where we lived. I fell in love again and was married for a second time in August, 2004. In 2007 my twin brother suffered a severe stroke. My first grandchild was born in 2006. Also in 2006 my mother died. My father died in 2009. I resigned from one church and started serving another in late 2014. I retired from parish ministry at the end of 2017. Through all of these events both joyous and tragic Jake was my constant companion. He was my best buddy. He never failed me, not once.

Then in 2011, at age 12, Jake’s kidneys started to fail. On September 12, 2011, we had him put down to end his suffering. As I was at the vet clinic for that final act of love I completely fell apart. I wasn’t able to stay with Jake as they did what had to be done. I just couldn’t face it. My wife Jane stayed with him. I went outside the clinic, sat on a bench, and sobbed like I had never sobbed before and like I have never sobbed since. I had never fallen apart the way I did when Jake died. As I was driving to the clinic where Jake’s life would soon end Francie appeared to me and said, “It’s OK. I’m here waiting for him.” That was a powerful experience to be sure, but it didn’t help as much as you might think. Never in my life had I ever felt as bad, ever felt such emotional pain, as I did that September afternoon when Jake’s life came to its earthly end.

Why did I react so strongly? After all, I had lost three of the most important people in my life by the time Jake died—my wife, my mother, and my father. My only sibling had become severely disabled with a stroke. And after all, Jake was a dog not a person. I knew about the life expectancy of dogs. Jake had lived about as long a Irish Terriers live. He’d had a very good life as dog lives go. He had been well cared for and deeply loved. Sure, I was going to grieve his death in any event, but I didn’t just grieve Jake’s death that day. I broke down in unbearable pain and sobbed and sobbed and sobbed.

Why? The only answer I can come up with is psychological projection. I had projected unresolved grief over the other losses in my life onto Jake. As I sat outside that vet clinic a total emotional wreck I wasn’t just grieving Jake. I was grieving my first wife, my twin brother, my mother, and my father all at once through psychological projection. Poor old Jake had a decade of unresolved grief projected onto him, not that he ever knew it of course. Psychological projection of unresolved subconscious grief is the only way I can understand how I reacted on that sad, sad day.

As I understand it, that’s how psychological projection works. We don’t project things of which we are fully consciously aware onto other people or pets. We project what our subconscious knows to be issues of which our conscious egos are blissfully unaware. Or maybe our conscious mind has a dim sense that there’s an issue but suppresses it because it can’t face admitting the issue and dealing with it in a constructive way. Until that day when Jake died I thought I had grieved the losses of my life reasonably well. In truth I hadn’t, so I projected unresolved grief onto good old Jake. Thank you Jake for having been such a good companion and friend and for being there to receive my projected grief of which you knew nothing.  

An unhealthy projection of personal issues and inadequacies is going on in our public life today much as it went on with me in those two incidents I just described. One person is doing it, Donald J. Trump, for inexplicable reasons President of the United States of America. Essentially every time he says something negative about another person, which he does all the time, he is projecting his own mostly unconscious awareness of his own limitations and failings onto that person. He calls Vice President Biden “sleepy Joe.” Trump is one of the least active, least engaged presidents this country has ever had. He calls Biden intellectually dull. Trump may have a bachelor’s degree in economics from the Wharton School, but it’s hard to imagine how he got it. He is not intellectually curious. He doesn’t read. In public at least he doesn’t ask intelligent questions. Joe Biden may not be any kind of genius, but he isn’t intellectually dull. Trump is. Trump calls Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi “nasty.” Pelosi can be as tough as they come, but surely no one has been nastier when doing business than Donald Trump. Just ask his former fixer Michael Cohen.

I am sure there are more examples out there, but these will do to make the point. Donald Trump has lots of unresolved psychological issues that he projects onto other people. He does it so often that we can pretty much assume that whatever negative thing he says about another person is more true of him than it is of the other person whom he has slandered. It is not good for any person to be as psychologically unhealthy as Donald Trump appears to this layman to be. It is enormously unhealthy to have a president who is as psychologically unhealthy as Trump appears to me to be. We have a chance to get rid of him on November 3, 2020. Let’s make sure we do.