Carl Jung on the effect of Projection
The effect of projection is to isolate the subject from his environment, since instead of a real relation to it there is now only an illusory one. Projections change the world into the replica of one’s own unknown face. In the last analysis, therefore, they lead to an autoerotic or autistic condition in which one dreams a world whose reality remains forever unattainable
The resultant sentiment d’incomplétude and the still worse feeling of sterility are in their turn explained by projection as the malevolence of the environment, and by means of this vicious circle the isolation is intensified.
The more projections are thrust in between the subject and the environment, the harder it is for the ego to see through its illusions.
A forty-five-year-old patient who had suffered from a compulsion neurosis since he was twenty and had become completely cut off from the world once said to me: “But I can never admit to myself that I’ve wasted the best twenty-five years of my life!”
It is often tragic to see how blatantly a man bungles his own life and the lives of others yet remains totally incapable of seeing how much the whole tragedy originates in himself, and how he continually feeds it and keeps it going. Not consciously, of course for consciously he is engaged in bewailing and cursing a faithless world that recedes further and further into the distance.
Rather, it is an unconscious factor which spins the illusions that veil his world. And what is being spun is a cocoon, which in the end will completely envelop him. ~Carl Jung, CW 9ii, Para 17-18
Projection Anthology
Of course you really don’t make pr0jections: they are; it is a mistake when one speaks of making a pr0jection, because in that moment it is no longer a projection, but your own property. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1493.
Such things can happen: a projection is a very tangible thing, a sort of semi-substantial thing which forms a load as if it had real weight. It is exactly as the primitives understand it, a subtle body. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1495.
Of course you really don’t make projections: they are; it is a mistake when one speaks of making a projection, because in that moment it is no longer a projection, but your own property. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1493.
If a complete or divine consciousness were possible, there would be no projection, which means that there would be no world, because the world is the definiteness of the divine projection. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 132.
Medical treatment of the transference gives the patient a priceless opportunity to withdraw his projections, to make good his losses, and to integrate his personality. ~Carl Jung; The Psychology of the Transference,” CW 16, par. 420.
So long as the self is unconscious, it corresponds to Freud’s superego and is a source of perpetual moral conflict. If, however, it is withdrawn from projection and is no longer identical with public opinion, then one is truly one’s own yea and nay. The self then functions as a union of opposites and thus constitutes the most immediate experience of the Divine that it is psychologically possible to imagine. ~Carl Jung; “Transformation Symbolism in the Mass”; CW 11, par. 396.
A man who is unconscious of himself acts in a blind, instinctive way and is in addition fooled by all the illusions that arise when he sees everything that he is not conscious of in himself coming to meet him from outside as projections upon his neighbour. ~Carl Jung; The Philosophical Tree; CW 13; Alchemical Studies; Page 335.
Nothing has a more divisive and alienating effect upon society than this moral complacency and lack of responsibility, and nothing promotes understanding and rapprochement more than the mutual withdrawal of projections.” ~Carl Jung; The Undiscovered Self; Page 72.
What happens when man introjects God? A superman psychosis, because every blockhead thinks that when he withdraws a projection its contents cease to exist. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 407.
Ghosts and Spirits. These phenomena are projections from the background of the psyche, autonomous inner images of a subjective nature, obeying no conscious intention, but coming and going at their own volition. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 1, Page 40.
Our pro0ections on other people behave like the icicle, they return to us, we do not remain unpunished when we make projections. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 2, Page 174.
The dissolution of the transference often consists in ceasing to describe the nature of one’s relationship as “transference.” This designation degrades the relationship to a mere p0ojection, which it is not. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 475.
The projection upon the feminine partner contains the anima and sometimes the self. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Page 244, Footnote 15.
Our projections on other people behave like the icicle, they return to us, we do not remain unpunished when we make projection. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 18Jan1935, Page 174.
Christ contains all pr0ject!ons. Men projected head and called him the Logos, and women pr0jected heart and called him Love. ~Carl Jung, Cornwall Seminar, Page 16.
What Freud calls ‘the dream façade’ is the dream’s obscurity, and this is really only a project!on of our own lack of understanding. We say that the dream has a false front only because we fail to see into it. ~Carl Jung, CW 16, Par. 319.
Individual existence is the crime against the gods, disobedience to God, the peccatum originale. Out of this project!on of spiritual fire is born the anima. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Ostrowski, Page 32.
The projecti0n of anima and animus causes mutual fascination. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 402.
Although I have never been to Lourdes I cast no doubts on them. So far as they are medically verifiable I do not consider them “project!ons” in any sense. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 440-442
Withdrawal of projecti0ns is obviously a truth whose validity is only of limited application. It is pretty certain that they can be withdrawn only to the extent that one is conscious. How far a man can become conscious nobody knows. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 504-506
We have as a matter of fact been able to correct a number of pr0ject!ons. Whether this amounts to much or little, and whether it is a real advance or only an apparent one, is known only to the angels. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 504-506
From what we know of genuine primitives today, the stars play an astonishingly small role in their lives, a fact which may justify the assumption that the pr0ject!on of the constellations and their interpretation coincided with the beginnings of a reflecting consciousness, i.e., with the first steps in civilization. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 563.
We must bear in mind that we do not make project!ons, rather they happen to us. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 563.
I would say: the introvert also tries, through the hypothesis of abstraction, to reach the object, actually reality, which seems to him chaotic only because of the project!on of his unused and therefore undeveloped feeling. He tries to conquer the object by thinking. But he wants to reach the object quite as much as the extravert. ~Carl Jung, Jung-Schmid Correspondence, Pages 55-62.
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