Psychological Projection

The human story in the Bible begins with psychological projections:  Adam (Every Man) says, “The woman you gave me made me do it!”  Eve (Mother of all Living) says, “It wasn’t me, it was the serpent who urged me to do it.”  Placing blame on another for one’s own actions, thoughts and  feelings has gone on for a long, long time.  This malady seems to be inherent in our psychological make-up.  Therefore, we can logically project it all on God for making us this way in the first place!  Note that Adam is very precise in placing the blame—“The woman YOU gave me.”

From early childhood we have this propensity to project the blame on to someone else rather than ourselves.  “Johnny started it.”  “Sarah made me do it.”  “It wasn’t my fault.”  Even in adulthood we continue to cast blame on others for everything in us that we do not want to own.  This shadow self exists in all of us.  We refuse to face this darkness  (responsibility, mistakes, behavior, failures, thoughts and feelings) within ourselves and automatically project them outwardly on others around us. We do this individually as Adam and Eve, and we do it collectively as communities and nations.  

If there is a lazy streak in me I sure don’t want to admit it and I don’t want you to know it.  Therefore, I’ll cast this  “laziness shadow” (what I don’t want to face in myself) on somebody else or some other group that I don’t like: “those people are born lazy!”  What have I done?  I have made this other group the carrier of my projection (my shadow). 

After tweeting many derogatory, uncivil, and callous remarks, Mr. Trump was asked if he shouldn’t be more civil.  He, in turn, accused the “fake” press of making him “more uncivil than I am.”  “We cannot stand the sight of our dark side,” writes Charles B. Hanna, "so we repress it, push it under, thinking we have thereby disposed of it.  But we have not.  We have simply pushed it into a place where it both has us in its grip and automatically projects itself on the person or the nation we do not like…”  We (Adam and Eve) were born with this malady.   While Mr. Trump blames the press for his uncivil comments, I think I’ll just blame God for mine. That way I won’t have to examine myself and face my own shadow.

Goosenecks State Park, Utah