Cat's Pajamas. About The Victims Of Our Projections

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-01-31 14:10

Ray Bradbury has a story about a girl who personally tailored and sewed pajamas for her kitten for the night. In fact, the story is not about this, but about the meeting of two young people, each of whom was very kind to his pet and saw in him something more than just a cat.

My story is about PROJECTIONS. About who we see in our pets. And not only in them, by the way.

Projection is generally an amazing thing! This is the ability of our psyche to endow things, animals, people (especially children) with those qualities that may have a very weak relationship to them, but are very significant for us

Imagine that each of us is equipped with a special cinema projector that can project our own cinema onto any suitable object. Moreover, the content of this "kin" will completely depend on our experience and what we know and what we are able to assume - what "we carry in ourselves."

For example, take a look at the photo of this girl. What do you think of her? Who is she? What does he do? If you write your vision of the heroine of this photo in the comments right now, then we will be able to discover how different projections we can “hang” on the same person.

This projection ability helps the detective to identify the bandit - he can assume, as the bandit thinks, he may be “a bandit”. But with the same probability the investigator is able to project onto an innocent person something to which he has nothing to do with, to see in him someone else.

But we will not be able to assume in a person what we have no idea about. Everything that we attribute to another is part of our inner world, it is in ourselves, to a greater or lesser extent. Therefore, all detectives are a little bandits, and bandits are easily retrained into righteous and implacable detectives.)

Projection is an unconscious mechanism. We cannot force ourselves to see what is “needed” in others. Rather, by what we project onto others, how we see them - we can determine the components of our own personality.

The following principle is at work here - we see more clearly and more strongly in others those qualities that we are repressing, we are not aware of in ourselves. What is difficult for us to see in ourselves, we clearly see in other people. As if our personal movie projector helped us see the pieces of our own essence. Not only to see, but also to find. Any entity strives for integrity, and the projection mechanism helps us to enter into a dialogue with those parts of our own personality with which a dialogue inside is impossible. Whether it will be love and admiration or hatred and enmity - the main thing is that the dialogue will take place. A classic example is people who are categorically opposed to homosexuality. Rage is also a dialogue.

"Whatever you call the boat, so it will float.""Call a man a pig, he will become a pig."

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The other side of the projection mechanism is how our projections change the object at which they are directed.

Surprisingly, a certain “field” is created between two people, especially close ones (I. Fromm), which changes both subjects. And the one that is initially set to match the vision of the person who is significant to him changes faster.

it is animals and children that are the best screens for our projections

Once again - the projection mechanism is unconscious, we do not say to another: “Be like this”. We unconsciously need him to be like that. And he becomes so.

Projections can also be verbally broadcast:

"You are the same as grandmother Anya …"

To be the same as grandmother Anya meant to be greedy, narcissistic, thinking only of herself, stupid, narrow-minded, and generally to be a very unpleasant person.

“Look what a slob you are! You absolutely cannot organize yourself!"

In this case, the child becomes the bearer of her mother's “slovenliness”, with which she cannot enter into a dialogue in any way.

A five-year-old boy in a family of three women can carry a projection of “the only man in the family,” “the man on whom everything depends,” and carry this overwhelming burden on his shoulders.

Victims of projections do something for someone else, become heroes of someone else's cinema. They play someone else's role, often taking on someone else's obligations, someone else's illnesses, someone else's fate. They seem to be trying to do and complete what the one whose projection hangs on him did not do.

animals and children are wordless, malleable material for our projections

The dog can readily carry on itself the projection of your second or third child and be for you. And a cat can become a reflection of your rebellious soul.

Animals adapt very well to the needs of the owner. Even outwardly, they can be incredibly similar to the owners.

By the way, adopted children often behave in this way, they become more like their adoptive parents than their relatives and can even adopt genetically inherited (!) Congenital diseases of the genus. Everything in order to become a part of this system, to join it, to become “like a native”, the same as a “real son” or the same as “dad”. Justify the expectations and … projections.

Animals also “happily” take over our projections. If they succeed, they can root for us, which is not human ailments. They can die from oncology and diabetes, freeing us from the need to live these diseases, "walking" in our family system. They can die instead of us after a loved one or their death to express our deep depression.

often the most common thing for us becomes something much more

The child, who did not grieve after the death of his mother, suddenly falls into a deep regression after his grandmother decided to throw out his old, battered baby blanket. For several years in a row, this blanket was his “mother”.

Once on the net, I found a comment from one of the users of the site of designer bags. This woman became the owner of a small suede handbag with a fringe: “This bag for me is just my female genital organ! I will never part with her! Even so.

thanks to the ability of our psyche to project, we can meet outside with what is difficult for us to meet inside. in this way we are trying to restore our integrity

But we restore this integrity at the expense of others.

A daughter can become an opportunity for a mother to realize her feminine attractiveness and sexuality. Mom will dress her up instead of herself and use it as a shield, demonstrating to society as her projection. And the girl will be forced to play a role alien to her, to be her mother's replacement. Often, in her relationship with her father, she has to play the role of “wife” and “grown woman”, taking care of herself and showing sexuality instead of her mother.

The sons of single women often bear the projection of the "only man" and "faithful life partner", which does not allow these men to "betray their mother and live their own lives."