A couple weeks ago I did a bunch of blog about projection and the 7th house. (tag – projection) A few people commented to say they were confused as to exactly what projection was so I’m back with a classic example.
There’s a gal here, going on trial for the murder of another gal – her lover’s wife. Shawna Nelson had an affair. She eventually had a baby with her married lover.
He broke up with her two years into this thing. This prompted Shawna (who was also married) to show up at his wife’s work (Heather Garraus)…
From The Tribune :
“Heather had left the office shortly before 6:15, walking out with friends, including Mindy Maeder.
As they went to their cars, another woman approached Heather, wearing a black mesh face mask and a long shimmering black cloak.
Maeder said she could tell it was a woman from the voice with which she said these words:
“You, I want you. Get on the ground.”
Heather went to her knees.”
Other witnesses then heard the suspect say, “You ruined my life.” They saw a black gun. They heard two shots. Heather collapsed.”
Read the whole article – The Tribune
Heather was killed. Shawna is now going to trial for the murder. You see the projection. Rather than take responsibility Shawna projects blame onto Heather and the projection is so strong Shawna feels justified in executing her. People who do a lot of projecting, it’s never their fault, see? Never.
Shawna will be sitting in prison thinking, Heather messed her up. “If not for Heather…”
Never mind she’s killed someone and consequently abandoned her baby. Why look at that when you can look over —> there
But this just makes projection sound like a fancy word for “blame.” How is it any different?
Because you’re not putting the blame where it belongs, therefore projecting it onto another person, or whatever you choose to put it on. It can work with other things as well, not just blame.
taking the parts of you you don’t want to accept/recognize (good or bad) and projecting them onto other people- like you’re directing the world as one big movie.
it can be real subtle. or not.
Elsa, I think that example muddies the waters a bit because it would seem that blame = projection.
Projection, in its most classic sense is attributing your own repressed thoughts and feelings to someone else because your own thoughts and feelings are objectionable or unacceptable to you. These feelings are so anxiety producing you can’t “own” them, someone else must carry the feelings.
Blame gets mixed up in the deal because usually, we don’t want to feel guilt. So we say so-and-so is acting guilty and that’s when blame steps in. But not all blame is projection and not all projection is about blame. You know, like how not all squares are rectangles and what not.
The most classic example I can think of that doesn’t involve blame is of the “straight” guy who is constantly suspecting others of being gay because he is not able to tolerate that HE is the gay one.
To me, projection as much more to do with denial than blame. To me, blame is more like the defense mechanism of rationalization: Do something wrong or stupid for reason A and then convince yourself you did it for reason B.
I think that all relationships involve projection of some sort or another. I also think that blame is definitely a form of projection that goes on between people. I have noticed that if I go to a friend for advice, let’s say, about my relationship with my husband, it is almost guaranteed that she will project her own feelings and issues with her own husband onto me. I see it happen all the time. Luckily, I can be aware of this phenomena, that’s not to say I still don’t get involved in projection with friends, family and my husband, but, I can at least be aware of it and this helps a great deal.
I don’t think it muddies the waters at all.
The killer in question has an affair with this other woman’s husband, while also cheating on her own husband, gets prego, and then the other woman’s husband breaks up with her. The woman who was killed did nothing wrong. Whereupon crazy woman breaks out with the ‘you ruined my life’ thing. I think Elsa is saying that this killer actually was ruining this other woman’s life, and then went and killed her for good measure. She didn’t kill the guy who cheated with her and got her pregnant (although that would have been all wrong too), she didn’t kill herself, she didn’t kill her own hubby, she killed Ms. Blameless over there.
I think though that the killer crossed over from projection to full-tilt psycho, at which point she’s probably past projection and well into delusion.
max
[‘A pretty good example tho.’]
Max! Did you go lurking? I missed your humour!
max- your comment is bang on.
Hi, kashmiri,
I saw that your astro information fully corresponds to mine. I think we were born on the same day…
Very good description of projection, thanks as it helps so much.
Knowing it’s projection doesn’t make me want to run over the bitch who broke up my relationship any less. 😉