Are you master in your own house? Do you fall into a mood or does the mood fall into you? Why do you see the speck in your friend’s eye and not the log in your own?
Oftentimes, we don’t just observe the world, but we are affected by the world. The two are quite different. When the environment merely informs us, we don’t project any of ourselves onto the world; if it affects us, we are possibly a victim of our own projections.
What is a projection? A projection “occurs when we attribute an element of our personality, which resides in our unconscious, to another person or group. We can project both negative and positive characteristics, however, there is a greater tendency to project the former rather than the latter.”
The term “projection” was originally popularized by Sigmund Freud, who believed that projection was a type of defence mechanism, to avoid the anxiety of having to claim one’s faults as their own.
We all have blind spots. Traits and tendencies that we refuse to accept and cast into the world as a projection. The projection of negative emotions and qualities onto others is common in our society and can have sinister consequences, both personally and collectively.