Carl Jung Projection Quotes

The best political, social, and spiritual work we can do is to withdraw the projection of our shadow onto others.

Maybe the only thing each of us can see is our own shadow. Carl Jung called this his shadow work. He said we never see others. Instead we see only aspects of ourselves that fall over them. Shadows. Projections. Our associations. The same way old painters would sit in a tiny dark room and trace the image of what stood outside a tiny window, in the bright sunlight. The camera obscura. Not the exact image, but everything reversed or upside down.

Carl Jung called this his shadow work. He said we never see others. Instead we see only aspects of ourselves that fall over them. Shadows. Projections. Our associations.

...the mind that is collectively orientated is quite incapable of thinking and feeling in any other way than by projection.

The shadow can be realized only through a relation to a partner, and anima and animus only through a relation to a partner of the opposite sex, because only in such a relation do their projections become operative.

Projections change the world into the replica of one’s own unknown face.

The starry vault of heaven is in truth the open book of cosmic projection, in which are reflected the mythologems, i.e., the archetypes. In this vision astrology and alchemy, the two classical functionaries of the psychology of the collective unconscious, join hands.

the recognition of our shadow. ‘The best political, social, and spiritual work we can do is to withdraw the projection of our shadow onto others.

Not that these others are wholly without blame, for even the worst projection is at least hung on a hook, perhaps a very small one, but still a hook offered by the other person.

Projection is one of the commonest psychic phenomena…Everything that is unconscious in ourselves we discover in our neighbour, and we treat him accordingly.

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.

Man in the mass sinks unconsciously to an inferior moral and intellectual level, to that level which is always there, below the threshold of consciousness, ready to break forth as soon as it is activated by the formation of a mass. ... Since nobody is capable of recognizing just where and how much he himself is possessed and unconscious, he simply projects his own condition upon his neighbor, and thus it becomes a sacred duty to have the biggest guns and the most poisonous gas.

One of Carl Jung’s notable contributions was to articulate the character of the shadow archetype: it is what the self is and includes, but denies and represses. Though it is repressed, the shadow will be heard and is invariably projected in harmful and perhaps insidious ways. Our mistreatment of animals for food is far and away our greatest cultural shadow. Our collective guilt drives us not only to hide the violence we eat but also to act it out: in our aggressive lifestyle, in movies, books, games, and other media, and in the violence we inflict both directly and indirectly on each other.

Is it possible my lover is not the man I thought him to be? Does he see me at all? Am I projecting my own inner man onto him? Am I forcing him to take responsibility for my undeveloped talents? Am I treating my body as my mother treated hers? Am I thinking like my father? Where am I blindly reacting as they did? Where am I still reacting childishly? Is my anger coming from my gut or from my head? Is it feminine anger or animus anger? (Feminine anger cleanses; animus anger leaves me tense.) Guided by the response of the unconscious as revealed in dreams, we differentiate grain from grain, question after question, until one day we find our own authentic voice. ~Marion Woodman,The Pregnant Virgin, Page

Jung told the Society that apparitions (ghosts) and materializations were “unconscious projections” or, as he spoke of them to Freud, “exteriorisations.” “I have repeatedly observed,” Jung told his audience, “the telepathic effects of unconscious complexes, and also a number of parapsychic phenomena, but in all this I see no proof whatever of the existence of real spirits, and until such proof is forthcoming I must regard this whole territory as an appendix of psychology.” This sounds scientific enough, but a year later20 when Jung was again in England, he encountered a somewhat more real ghost. Jung spent some weekends in a cottage in Aylesbury outside of London rented by Maurice Nicoll, and while there was serenaded by an assortment of eerie sounds—dripping water, knocks, inexplicable rustlings—while an unpleasant smell filled the bedroom. Locals said the place was haunted, and one particularly bad night, Jung opened his eyes to discover an old woman’s head on the pillow next to his; half of her face was missing. Jung leaped out of bed, lit a candle, and waited until morning in an armchair. The house was later torn down. One would think that having already encountered the dead on their return from Jerusalem, Jung wouldn’t be shaken by a fairly standard English ghost, but the experience rattled him.

Viktor Frankl used the metaphor of geometric dimensions to illustrate challenges in perception and understanding. Just as a three-dimensional cylinder projected onto a two-dimensional plane can appear as different shapes depending on the angle, our perspectives are limited by the "conceptual dimensions" we inhabit. Focusing on one framework or worldview casts blind spots on issues outside its purview. Like the cylinder, reality contains more complexity than any single viewpoint can capture. What appears contradictory from a limited vantage point may be reconciled from a broader perspective. Self has this broad perspective. Frankl suggested cultivating multi-dimensional awareness (Self's awareness) to overcome biases and grasp truth more wholly. Though we cannot transcend our situatedness (parts and ego), we can seek to understand the diverse dimensions that comprise the fullness of reality. Awareness of our frames allows us to interpret experiences with more wisdom and nuance.

Carl Jung said, “He seemed he might be the double of a real person. The man Hitler might be hiding within.” (The “double” Jung referred to is translated doppelgänger. The doppelgänger is an occult concept, describing a supposed “ghostly exact double” of a flesh and blood person. Gary North in his book Unholy Spirits explains the doppelgänger as an expression of the primitive belief in a physical duality existing in each man. The second being is the basis of the experience of astral projection.)

As with Jekyll and Hyde, the shadow is our inner hostile sibling and represents what we are missing, and in that way it naturally affects our relationship to our own gender. What we admire or dislike in other men or women often reflects our own hidden face. That rejected part of ourselves is most often first encountered through projecting it onto others.

From the beginning of time, humans have dealt with what Carl Jung called their shadow side—feelings of inferiority, self-hate, guilt, hostility—by projecting it onto an enemy. It has remained for Becker to make crystal clear the way in which warfare is a social ritual for purification of the world in which the enemy is assigned the role of being dirty, dangerous, and atheistic. Dachau, Capetown and Mi Lai, Bosnia, Rwanda, give grim testimony to the universal need for a scapegoat—a Jew, a nigger, a dirty communist, a Muslim, a Tutsi. Warfare is a death potlatch in which we sacrifice our brave boys to destroy the cowardly enemies of righteousness. And, the more blood the better, because the bigger the body-count the greater the sacrifice for the sacred cause, the side of destiny, the divine plan.

Carl Jung believed that the majority of our problems are caused by being unaware of our psychological projections. Projection has been described as ‘a psychological defence mechanism in which we unconsciously project our own unacceptable qualities onto others.’ But how does it work? By not knowing that we’re projecting our blame onto others we needlessly create suffering for both them and us.

There are many follies now popular which derive from the doctrine of Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961). One of the most insidious is the New Age tactic of jettisoning any onus for honest analysis of setbacks in purported spiritual or therapeutic communities. 'We deny the existence of our shadow and project it onto others.' Thus the critic is evil; the criminal goes free, especially if he happens to be an alternative therapist.