We've all had the experience of meeting someone and quickly coming to certain conclusions about them, their character and their characteristics — without much actual evidence. Then, when we get to know that person better, we discover that our first impressions were wrong.

Subsequent experience gives us better insight into the person's character, so we sometimes learn that they are quite different from what our initial impressions led us to believe or expect.

Few of us would ask where those ideas that were later proven incorrect originated from. We're probably lucky if we will admit that we were wrong.
 

In her Projection and Re-Collection in Jungian Psychology: Reflections of the Soul (ISBN: 0875484174), author Marie-Louise von Franz explores Freud's original notions that he called projections, Jung's subsequent re-definition and expansion, as well as her own extrapolations.

As Franz points out,

The difference between projection and common error is that an error can be corrected, without difficulty, by better information and then dissolve like morning fog in the sunlight.

Thus Jung defined projection as an unconscious, that is, unperceived and unintentional, transfer of subjective psychic elements onto an outer object. One sees this in this object something that is not there, or, if there, only to a small degree. Seldom, if ever, is nothing of what is projected present in the object.

 

As a prime example, let's examine little Jimmy Compton, whose every friend in the world stopped being friends — usually within months or a year after I met and befriended them, almost always because they or we moved away.

It wouldn't be too surprising then, for me to have been attracted to aloof guys I had some interests in common with. If the projection theory rings true, it might not surprise any of us that I would have projected upon those hapless new friends that they will not stay friends with me for very long.

 

Jungian Projection

Let's break down this scenario into its classic, component parts, as set up by Freud, Jung, Franz, et al:

 

It's not too much of a stretch then to expect that, if my mother yelled at me and frightened me when I was a child, I might be attracted to physically and psychologically similar women who could slip into the role of Vociferous Parent for my Ubiquitous Child, yell at me, all the while being the screen upon which I project my collected negative imagery.

 

In my last meeting with Dolan, we discussed some of these terms, and he suggested I sit down and have a quiet conversation with my anima and find out who she is, what she wants and how she goes about it. I was also keen to learn what images she throws up and where she got them.

I'd been procrastinating that task.

 

When the list on this page first piled into me, I was waiting in a bright hallway at the Veteran's Administration Hospital in Dallas for a Pneumonia and a Tetanus shot after my regular semi-annual doctor's visit.

For an hour and a half before that I'd been sitting in various waiting rooms it was much too noisy to talk to anything as insubstantial as an anima in— and far too crowded for any sort of 1:1.

I'd brought a book — a book I thought I'd read already. I know I read the words, and although most of the thrust of those words angered me, some of them came honing in, homing in, scintillating in, all but astonishing me.

But they really pissed me off, too. Meaning, of course, I hadn't given the book its due, and what little I had given it, never came back out. That it angered me proved, by its own internal logic, that I did not want to hear what it had to say.

Its multiples of metaphors drove me crazy. (I know, short ride.)

I wanted it to just tell me what the hell it was talking about. But I read it, and though I fought it all the way through, I subsequently did some shadow eating, that worked very well indeed, and I promised myself that someday soon, I'd read it again.

It is a little book.

28-Day Roses

A Little Book on the Human Shadow by Robert Bly (1988 - ISBN 0-26-254847-6) was a much nicer read that day at the VA.

Knowing it was all metaphors circling in on themselves helped this second reading. I didn't have to resolve anything. I wasn't required to pull it together. I could just let all those metaphors pile up into contextual inter-relationships that might eventually work themselves out. Or not.

It needn't make linear logical sense. It could just be.

top

This time I read the shadow book waiting in a loud, TV-controlled room; in a shorter, brighter, even noisier ante room after they called my name but before I got blood sucked out of me; while I ate some warm soup and icy salad in an eating area; in another far bigger (four stories high, atrium-like) but gentler waiting room for far fewer minutes; between getting weighed (under 200 for the first official medical time this century), blood pressure tested; and while my doctor ran out for something....

All that time I was reading and thinking of all the images I project onto the women in my life.

Standing in that bright hall outside the nurse's office after my doctor and I were finished with each other for another half year, I got my first serious glimmer of the imagery I have projected on all those women who've been in my life.

Amazingly, there was a pencil and a yellow highlighter on a gurney right next to where I was standing, so I penciled in the first of what later grew and grew into the great long list (below) on the inside back cover facing page of the shadow book.

 

I highlighted four of the Five Stages in Exiling, Hunting, and Retrieving the Shadow. Later, in my brightly sunlit car, I added more projections to the list in tiny ballpoint print. More came this afternoon. More a few minutes ago. Now that the channels are open, more will keep coming till, in the aggregate, it all makes some sort of sense. Maybe.

In that hallway and in my car the highlighting shone brightly yellow. Here, in my office, the yellow is ghostly, and only by only partially looking at the text but mostly not focusing any at all, can I see any color in it.

Not unlike watching my anima at work in real life...

 

We'll call the first stage of projection ... the state of mind in which shadow material, well handled by trained conspirators, comes to rest outside the owner's psyche, and seems likely to remain out there somewhere. ...

But sooner or later one of the projections starts to rattle, in the lovely word Marie Louise von Franz uses. Something doesn't quite fit any more, and we hear a rattle. We'll call this rattling the second stage... It is threatening when the projections starts to rattle. ...

I'll call the third stage that state of mind in which the distressed person calls on the moral intelligence to repair the rattle. The idea is scary because we need the moral intelligence, yet here it becomes a tool for continued unconsciousness. People with moral intelligence are often very dangerous types, because the moment the mask is about to fall off, they step forward on request to put it back ....

What is the fourth stage? Suppose that one day, exhausted, one gives up for a moment the struggle to make the mask hang onto the other person. At that moment the eyes break contact: we suddenly look into ourselves and see our own diminishment. We recognize how diminished we have been for years. I would call the fourth stage the state of mind in which we feel the sensation of diminishment. ...

We don't live wholly at any moment in the fourth stage or the fifth stage or any stage: we are in all five stages simultaneously, as we send out or receive back various rejected qualities, projected substances, abandoned powers, each absent in different degrees, or retrievable with different schedules.

It's clear that the fifth stage in this long process amounts to the state of mind in which we retrieve [our shadows] .... and the whole process of retrieval could be called eating the shadow.

Eating our shadow is a very slow process. It doesn't happen once, but hundreds of times....

Robert Bly,
A Little Book On The Human Shadow

My list, in the order it came to me:
 

The Sexual Attractor
The Good Neighbor
The Parent
The Aggressive Mother
The Healer
The Dream Interpreter
The Cook
The Cleaner Upper
Miss Manners
The Spiritual Advisor
The Organizer
The Rememberer of Important Appointments
The Social Secretary
The New Clothes Director
The Rememberer
The Alter Ego
The Candy Hider
The Sox Darner
The Vacation Planner
The Pill and Shot Reminder
The Gardener
The Social Planner
The Laundress
The Business Card Carrier
The Entrepreneurial Nag
The Nice Be-er to Other People I Feel Ill Toward
The Scolder
The Reminder
The Movie Goer
The Moral Conscience

The Seductress
The Great Kisser
The Gift Giver
The Confessor
The Approver
The Lover
The Friend
The Unindicted Co-Conspirator
The Abuser of My Power in the Community
The Best Friend
The Condemning Co-Dependent
The Harlot
The Queen Bee

The Spendthrift
The Fellow Recovering Human Being
The Bitch
The Witch
The Beauty with No Brains
The Changeling
The Victim
The Victimizer
The Pathetic One
The She Needs Me to Straighten Out Her Life
The It Doesn't Really Matter 'Cause She's Just Gonna Be Around for a Little While, Anyway
The Girl with Faraway Eyes
The Plain But Beautiful Fantasy Lady I've Always Wanted
My Better Half
The Natural Woman
The Dream Girl
The One And The Only
The Forever Girl
The Lady I've Always Been Waiting For
The Sexy Lady
The Whore
The Cure
The Woman Who Fits All My Plans
The Perfect Dumpee
The She's Too Smart for Me to Even Try Anything With
The Woman Who Is Too Beautiful
The Woman with Too Many Kids
The Woman Who's Nice Enough But her (Politics, Religion, Car, Shoes, Fashion Sense, etc.) Is Too Weird
The Lady Who's Too Tidy
The Artist Lady Whose Art I Never Really Liked
The Lady Who's Too Tall, Too Fat, Too Skinny, Too Whatever
The She's Pretty But Way Too Smart
The Dysfunctional Woman
The Illiterate Female
The Lady Who Drives Too Slow
The Lady Who Gets Upset When I Drive Fast
The Friend I Want So Bad To Be My Lover
The Lover I Just Want To Be My Friend
The Lady Who Is Too Rich for Me
The Too-Competent Professional Woman
The Too-Shy Woman
The Social Climber
The Incompetent
The Too Cute for Comfort
The Gimp Girl
The Control Freak
The Frigid Woman
The Insecure Woman
The Loose Woman
The Uptight Woman
The Lousy Dancer
She Doesn't Like the Same Musics I Do
The Too Similar Lady
The Too Much Opposites Lady
The Her Sleep Cycle Is Too Different Woman
The Woman Who Drives Too Big A Car
The Woman Who Wears Sensible Shoes
The Hooker
The Saint
The Good Catholic Girl
The Teacher
The Eternal Student
The Obvious Dumper
The Serial Monogamist
The Christian Lady
The Pagan Lady
The Controlling Bitch
She Only Wants Me For My Money
The Artist Wannabe
The I'm Not Creative Enough
The Rescue
She Needs Me More Than I Need Her
The Sad Lady
The Divorcee
The Fashion Policewoman
The Faded Fashion Plate
The Corporate Executive
The Screaming Me-Meee
The Conservative Conformist
The Budding Writer
The Bad Grammarian
The Party Girl
The Woman Who's Wearing Too Little
The Woman Who's Hiding Out
The Woman Who's Too Much Like Me
We've Got Nothing In Common
She Lives In Much Too Nice A Neighborhood
The Rebound Just Waiting to Happen
The Dangerously Smart Woman

top

There are, I'm sure, more projections swirling around in my unconscious, waiting for me to open that portal once again. And I probably will, although I don't seem to have much control over when they swoop in.

For awhile, I had a neat, sometimes sardonic, sometimes self-satisfied, occasionally Sensitive New Age Guy-ishly soft and insipid explanation for every single one of these accusations (when there were a lot fewer of them). But those stunk too high of rationale.

This is just a list of what came out when I finally opened myself to the possibility that I might learn something if I paid attention to the gush of my unconscious.

 

My New Fountain Bubbling Away in The Back Yard

It is the result of several sittings and letting my mind wander. I've only deleted one, because after I wrote that one I couldn't figure out what it meant. I probably should have kept it, but now I don't remember what it was.
 

In Jung's famous associative word game experiment, it was the words that the patient could not produce an associated word for, either quickly or ever, that marked the areas that patient was blocking. By extrapolation, if I blocked the sense of the word I took out of the list, it was probably important. But I didn't figure that out till later.
 

Some of the entries still piss me off. Several are unsettling. A few are settling slowly. I just don't know what to do with or think about a lot of them.

I must have asked my anima some pretty good questions. I just wasn't ready for her voluminous answer.

The sheer sizable aggregate of this list is impressing me that the poor women I was with never had a chance — and neither did I.

I was so busy sloshing them with my multitudinous and wildly diverse projections, no way could I ever have seen through all that backwash to find the real person, right there, in easy, arm's reach.

The burden I put on both of us was far too heavy.

top

Solstice Index