for much of the time the way we feel
about and react to events is founded on
how things are in the here and now for
example I feel very scared because
something very scary is in front of me I
feel I’m being judged harshly by the
person I’m speaking to and I am I
withhold my trust because someone I’m
with truly is untrustworthy however one
of the momentous discoveries of 20th
century psychology has been that in
certain cases this isn’t what happens at
all at points our behavior is driven not
by what is happening in front of us but
by extremely formative experiences we’ve
had in childhood which color and
influenced how we behave and think
decades later unless and until we become
aware of our tendencies as the technical
term has it to project responses from
the past onto the present where they
don’t entirely belong so we feel very
scared even though there is nothing
around us to be terrified of we feel
harshly judged by someone who in fact
means very well we’ve avoided intimacy
with a person who actually deeply merits
our trust the reason we behave like this
is we are generalizing on the basis of
certain significant events from
childhood which have completely altered
our assumptions about the world and
other people in early childhood we
experienced the terrifying volcanic
temper of a violent parent now we see
the threat of violence everywhere we
were humiliated by our mother for the
first decade of life now a lot of people
seem out to humiliate us a father whom
we loved and trusted left the family and
broke off contact suddenly now most
relationships feel like they’re about to
end in disaster when we’re involved in a
projection we believe ourselves to be
utterly justified in responding as we do
and might
deep offense if someone accused us of
projecting on the basis of forgotten
past events because of this innate
denial and ignorant of our projections
psychologists have developed special
tests known as projection tests to tease
out our underlying assumptions show us
what is on our minds and enable us to
see reality more clearly the most
well-known of such tests was devised in
the 1930s by the Swiss psychologist
Hermann Rorschach who created a group of
ambiguous images then asked his patients
to reflect without inhibition on what
they felt these looks like evoked and
made them think of crucially these
images have no predetermined meaning
they aren’t about anything in particular
they are suggestive in a huge variety of
directions and so different people will
see different traits and atmospheres in
them according to what their past most
readily predisposes them to imagine to
one individual who is inherited from
their parents a rather kindly in
forgiving conscience an image could be
seen as a sweet mask with eyes floppy
ears
a covering for the mouth and wide flaps
extending from the cheeks another more
traumatized by a domineering father
might see it as a powerful figure viewed
from above with splayed feet thick legs
heavy shoulders and the head bent
forward as if poised for attack with
similar intent the psychologists Henry
Murray and Christiana Morgan created a
set of drawings showing people whose
moods and actions were deliberately
indeterminate in one example two men are
positioned close to one another with
their faces able to bear a host of
interpretations it’s perhaps a
father-and-son morning together for a
shared loss one respondent who inherited
a close relationship with his father
might say or another bearing the burden
of a punitive past might assert
it’s a manager in the process of sacking
a young employee who has failed at an
important task or a third wrestling with
a legacy of censured homosexuality might
venture
I feel something obscene is going on out
of the frame it’s in a public urinal the
older man is looking at the younger guys
penis and making him feel very
embarrassed but perhaps also somehow
turned on one thing we do really know
about these ambiguous images is that
they are not precise the elaboration is
coming from the person who looks at them
and the way they elaborate the kind of
story they tell is saying far more about
their emotional inheritance than it does
about the images themselves following
this pattern in the 1950s the American
psychologist Sewell Rosen’s vague design
tests to tease out our inherited ways of
dealing with humiliation and bad news
his picture frustration study 1955
showed a range of situations to which
our psychological histories would give
us very different templates of response
one kind of person the bearer of a solid
emotional inheritance will tend to be
resilient when someone has behaved badly
towards them or is causing a problem
unnecessarily another might be convinced
that they deserve quite bad treatment
from others a legacy of a difficult
childhood a fourth projection exercise
asks us to say the very first thing that
comes to mind when we try to finish
particular sentences that are fired at
us
for example men in authority are
generally young women are almost always
when I am promoted what’s bound to
happen is when someone is late it must
be because when I hear someone described
as very intellectual I imagine them
being being mature
means accepting with good grace that we
might be involved in multiple
projections and so maybe bringing
exaggerated dynamics and excess energy
to a lot of situations we aren’t of
course responsible for the events in our
childhood from which our projections
arose but we do have a responsibility as
adults to try to understand the nature
of our projections and to warn others
and ourselves of how they might be
if you’re interested in coming to San
Francisco to meet us at the end of March
please click on the link on the screen
now to find out more we hope to see you there
about and react to events is founded on
how things are in the here and now for
example I feel very scared because
something very scary is in front of me I
feel I’m being judged harshly by the
person I’m speaking to and I am I
withhold my trust because someone I’m
with truly is untrustworthy however one
of the momentous discoveries of 20th
century psychology has been that in
certain cases this isn’t what happens at
all at points our behavior is driven not
by what is happening in front of us but
by extremely formative experiences we’ve
had in childhood which color and
influenced how we behave and think
decades later unless and until we become
aware of our tendencies as the technical
term has it to project responses from
the past onto the present where they
don’t entirely belong so we feel very
scared even though there is nothing
around us to be terrified of we feel
harshly judged by someone who in fact
means very well we’ve avoided intimacy
with a person who actually deeply merits
our trust the reason we behave like this
is we are generalizing on the basis of
certain significant events from
childhood which have completely altered
our assumptions about the world and
other people in early childhood we
experienced the terrifying volcanic
temper of a violent parent now we see
the threat of violence everywhere we
were humiliated by our mother for the
first decade of life now a lot of people
seem out to humiliate us a father whom
we loved and trusted left the family and
broke off contact suddenly now most
relationships feel like they’re about to
end in disaster when we’re involved in a
projection we believe ourselves to be
utterly justified in responding as we do
and might
deep offense if someone accused us of
projecting on the basis of forgotten
past events because of this innate
denial and ignorant of our projections
psychologists have developed special
tests known as projection tests to tease
out our underlying assumptions show us
what is on our minds and enable us to
see reality more clearly the most
well-known of such tests was devised in
the 1930s by the Swiss psychologist
Hermann Rorschach who created a group of
ambiguous images then asked his patients
to reflect without inhibition on what
they felt these looks like evoked and
made them think of crucially these
images have no predetermined meaning
they aren’t about anything in particular
they are suggestive in a huge variety of
directions and so different people will
see different traits and atmospheres in
them according to what their past most
readily predisposes them to imagine to
one individual who is inherited from
their parents a rather kindly in
forgiving conscience an image could be
seen as a sweet mask with eyes floppy
ears
a covering for the mouth and wide flaps
extending from the cheeks another more
traumatized by a domineering father
might see it as a powerful figure viewed
from above with splayed feet thick legs
heavy shoulders and the head bent
forward as if poised for attack with
similar intent the psychologists Henry
Murray and Christiana Morgan created a
set of drawings showing people whose
moods and actions were deliberately
indeterminate in one example two men are
positioned close to one another with
their faces able to bear a host of
interpretations it’s perhaps a
father-and-son morning together for a
shared loss one respondent who inherited
a close relationship with his father
might say or another bearing the burden
of a punitive past might assert
it’s a manager in the process of sacking
a young employee who has failed at an
important task or a third wrestling with
a legacy of censured homosexuality might
venture
I feel something obscene is going on out
of the frame it’s in a public urinal the
older man is looking at the younger guys
penis and making him feel very
embarrassed but perhaps also somehow
turned on one thing we do really know
about these ambiguous images is that
they are not precise the elaboration is
coming from the person who looks at them
and the way they elaborate the kind of
story they tell is saying far more about
their emotional inheritance than it does
about the images themselves following
this pattern in the 1950s the American
psychologist Sewell Rosen’s vague design
tests to tease out our inherited ways of
dealing with humiliation and bad news
his picture frustration study 1955
showed a range of situations to which
our psychological histories would give
us very different templates of response
one kind of person the bearer of a solid
emotional inheritance will tend to be
resilient when someone has behaved badly
towards them or is causing a problem
unnecessarily another might be convinced
that they deserve quite bad treatment
from others a legacy of a difficult
childhood a fourth projection exercise
asks us to say the very first thing that
comes to mind when we try to finish
particular sentences that are fired at
us
for example men in authority are
generally young women are almost always
when I am promoted what’s bound to
happen is when someone is late it must
be because when I hear someone described
as very intellectual I imagine them
being being mature
means accepting with good grace that we
might be involved in multiple
projections and so maybe bringing
exaggerated dynamics and excess energy
to a lot of situations we aren’t of
course responsible for the events in our
childhood from which our projections
arose but we do have a responsibility as
adults to try to understand the nature
of our projections and to warn others
and ourselves of how they might be
if you’re interested in coming to San
Francisco to meet us at the end of March
please click on the link on the screen
now to find out more we hope to see you there
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