Psychological Projection by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD

October 2019

     Over the past couple of months,  I’ve  been getting abusive phone calls from a stranger projecting a whole lot of stuff on me. Turns out, other innocent people, and writers to this paper, have been getting similar calls from this person (identified by the common phone number). While the abuser isn’t threatening violence, and thus, may not – yet – be charged with the misuse of telecommunications (use of a carriage service to harass or offend), it is nevertheless a bit unnerving. I’ve blocked the number, and advise others to do the same.

     It’s incidents like these that provide useful fodder for articles, such as this one.  The lack of truth to  her ravings point to classic psychological projection and this is an interesting subject.

     What is projection and why do people engage in it?

     Psychological projection is a defence mechanism used to unconsciously  cope with difficult feelings or emotions, positive and negative. This coping mechanism arises essentially from  a person’s Shadow side (as C. G. Jung described it). It usually involves projecting undesirable feelings or emotions onto someone else, rather than admitting to and dealing with the unwanted feelings in oneself. The rants against me were mostly about how I, the privileged one, never listens to the unprivileged. I couldn’t get a word in edgewise in this bombardment of words; there was literally no room for me to speak at all. Droll, eh, and ironic, since I wanted to invite her to come and speak with me directly. This well describes, however, how projection works. This woman can’t listen to anything anyone else says, so she projected this incapacity onto me and I became, in her eyes, the one who cannot listen.

     Psychological projection is common. As Jung says, ‘Everything that is unconscious in ourselves we discover in our neighbour, and we treat him accordingly.’ Such psychic processes are well and truly obvious in everyday life, and politics (!). It is well to remember that projections, like all other defence mechanisms, are an attempt at self-soothing, although destined to failure, because they stir up too many unmanageable emotions, rather than quietening them down in the attacker. Unprovoked attack rarely manifests anything but rejection and resistance in the one attacked. Dialogue is not possible.

     It could be said that the psychological projection expressed by our caller was something of an almost Herculean effort to haul back some control of her ailing and fragile sense of self. Why else would a person repeatedly ring strangers to yell at them?

     In psychological terms, ownership of one’s projections is part of the healing of the whole self. Jung was very clear about this. His whole psychology was one that promoted individuation. Our task is to recognize the subjective origin of our projections, withdraw them from the outside world and to integrate this element of our personal into conscious awareness.

     To be clear, individuation is the transformative process whereby the personal and collective unconscious is brought into consciousness, and what belongs to oneself is recognized as separate from what belongs to others. The business of psychological projection is actually quite useful for it identifies the unowned areas in our lives, thus giving a signpost to what needs to be worked on within ourselves.

Overcoming fear through focused body movement by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD

September 2019  

     In Germany in the 1920s to the 40s some very innovative work was going on that traversed psychotherapy and body work. Dancers, gymnasts, massage therapists and other body workers were in conversation with psychoanalysts and psychologists (including C. G. Jung) and these conversations were the seed to recognizing that no psychological problem exists without a bodily response and no psychological/emotional problem exists outside a bodily experience. It is curious, therefore, that the two forms of therapy then went off in separate directions. Psychotherapy started to think of itself as entirely to do with the mind and social domain, and physical work as having nothing much to do with feelings and thoughts. Both had got caught up in a mechanical way of doing things. I’m talking mainstream here; alternative modalities didn’t lose track of the whole embodied self.

     It is interesting that the severe anxiety response particularly in post-traumatic stress disorder is being our entré into more holistic approaches to healing. Anxiety is a fear response, a flight-freeze-fight response that stirs up adrenalin, causes cortisol levels to soar, saturates the blood with higher levels of glucose and more white blood cells, hyperventilation, saturates the mind with recurring thoughts and imaginings, stirs stomach discomfort, gives us a dry mouth, makes us feel we can’t escape,  etc. Imagine being in a sustained fear response lasting days, maybe years. Fear is crippling, and those consumed by it tend not to venture far.

     In the 80s a Tai Chi practitioner friend was involved in a study with a group of elderly people with a fear of falling, Many had already fallen several times and broken bones. My friend was hired to teach the group some simple Tai Chi exercises. The more they exercised in this flowing fluid way, the less fear was experienced. Fear of falling, and interestingly, other fears went away.

     Exercise is good, but I think there is more to what was going on here.  I have two main thoughts on the matter. Focused body movement matters.  Tai Chi is a mindful, focussed form of exercise. Mindfulness is now a tool in psychotherapy. When you are aware of what you’re doing, your thoughts are no longer on your anxiety.

     My other thought is that mindful physical exercise expands our perceptual strengths and capacities. Most of us have a dominant sensory perception, where the less dominant ones are not paid much attention.  When one perception shapes a person’s experience in a fairly exclusive way, negotiating the greater world can be compromised. Think of someone who practically exclusively gets around using just what they can see as a means of knowing what is there and how it must feel to meet the unseen, unexpected whatever. It would be scary.

     We usually talk of only five sensations: sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch, but there is another: proprioception. Proprioception, also known as kinaesthetic sense, is the sense of self body movement and position in relation to space and other things. Developing proprioception can be very beneficial for people who have an over developed sense of sight (maybe they spend all day on their phones). When fear arises from encountering the unknown (which is always there) – eg not being able to see into a dark room – having a strong body knowing, that is, a better proprioceptive sense, can give greater security, because presences and absences can often be felt actually in the body. You don’t have to see everything to feel secure.

     Focussed exercises, like those in the martial arts, where you are aware of your own sense of balance, your core fulcrum, as it were, the slowness or speed of your body movement, the grace of an arm, perhaps an unsteadiness of a leg, your breath, your sweat, expand your sense of safety and confident engagement in the world. It’s also great fun.

     As one of the early German body practitioners who worked alongside a psychotherapist, said, the therapeutic work is speeded up when patients do both focussed body work and psychotherapy. I encourage my clients in the pursuit of both for their healing.

 

I had a young client some years ago with multiple anxieties: fear of dark places, fear of spiders, fear of falling, etc etc. What I suggested to him was to take up a martial art, which he did and his fears disappeared. He now works as a firefighter. Powerful stuff, this reconnection with the body. 

Sending Love Songs for Connection by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., Ph

August 2019

     We all walk in the memory footsteps of those who came before us. In a family, a child is born from a relationship that may or may not have been loving, from parents who may or may not have known love from their parents – perhaps through war or separation – but who may, perhaps, have sought some love from their newborn. The need is reciprocal. There has been, somewhere, a deep desire for connection and if it hasn’t been met, we continue seeking it. This is true in families and the greater community.

     Connection is the medium through which we are held, nurtured, fed and, hopefully nourished from the time of our birth in all that we are. Without it, we suffer, and suffer enormously throughout life.

    The best connection is a sustained one so that when we as little children prepare to explore the greater world, we know that we can return whenever we like. This connection confirms to us that we are free to return to our caregiver’s arms or go off and play somewhere. When connection is intermittent, or worse, absent, leaving is hard and returning can be even harder. A child who never quite knows if their caregiver will be there or not, can never quite feel safe and secure with their caregivers, other people, or even, themselves. A child who feels unsafe is an anxious one; one who is hungry for sustained connection. This is true for a child and for all of us. Being met, greeted, hugged, listened to, played with, accepted are the requirements of us social animals throughout our lives.

     Scared children grow up without any sustained sense of security and safety and  they will tend to continue to seek security somehow, and can become addicted to it.  Some turn to alcohol, glue and petrol sniffing, some turn to other drugs and/or sex that help them forget their pain, some have serial relationships with other people who offer them unsafe sanctuary (though quite often with a price), some pursue power and money as ends in themselves, some clamber after danger for the thrill of it all and the satisfaction of a post-endorphin fix, and some reject other people entirely – going off on their own because seeking connection with others is just far too hard.

     We are social beings and, without other members of a group that we can connect to, we struggle.

     Johann Hari, a journalist who writes about mental health issues and addiction, has proposed that instead of asking those with addictions, “What’s wrong with you?” instead  ask, “What happened to you,” to open up where the pain has stemmed from, how it is being felt, who “missed” you when you needed them and who is here who can be with you now. It’s in here that healing can at least begin to happen, and it is not just their healing that will happen, but ours as well. We are all affected by an act of outcasting someone else. The sickness of exclusion damages all of us. We begin dividing the human race into us and them and refuse to listen to other experiences of being, becoming instead paranoid and selfish.

     When we ask “What’s wrong with you?” we put the blame on the individual and we treat them as though they are bad, crazy or just odd. Effectively we excommunicate them from the safety and security of our communities, which is exactly the act that made them seek their addictive behaviours in the first place. Hari puts it beautifully, 'For 100 years now, we have been singing war songs about people with addiction problems...We should've been singing love songs to them all along.' Love songs include and reconnects us in acts of caring communication and connection. Let’s  ask, “What happened to you?” and celebrating the homecoming, with music.

Connection by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD

 July 2019

 

Last year Kathleen, a friend I knew over 30 years ago, emailed me out of the blue and we started conversing. I wondered why she wanted to talk with me, given we’d parted ways such a long time ago. I kept asking her if she was well, but she was evasive and never responded to that question. I noticed over time that her messages were getting shorter and shorter and her words increasingly precise, and I felt more strongly that something was going on healthwise. She wanted to talk about theology, which 30 years ago I was very interested in, but now not particularly. I tried, somewhat lacklusterly, but really I didn’t have sufficient time to shape my ideas, given that my work is now psychotherapeutic. She began sharing her published theological writings where her ideas were practically inscribed in stone and she really wasn’t open to other considerations. What had been once a much more fluid mind, had become quite conservative. Last month, Kathleen’s daughter told me she’d died. I was not surprised. Her frailty was there in her syntax.

     I emailed David, a friend from years ago who I knew had been in contact with Kathleen to tell him of her death. They were both in their mid-80s, and quite a bit older than me. He then asked if I would like the missives he’d been sending her. I, being polite and a bit curious, said yes. Big mistake. The thrice daily missives were pure paranoia: on the hoards of foreign invasion, on the Chinese spying in our bedrooms, on the evils of this and that, etc etc. No mention of the health of the earth or other things that interest me, so I requested he send no more articles. There really are other things to think about, or not, and to enjoy.

     I got to wondering why David and Kathleen had felt it necessary to send me material at all. Did they fear I needed saving, was this some kind of end of life mission to set me on the “right” path, or something else.  

     My own parents were not disposed to convert me to anything at the last pip. My mother, in her 90s, was not inclined to lead me to the “right” way; she herself had lost interest even in the things that motivated her in previous years: meditation, yoga, and the wisdom of the East. Her concerns were immediate, in the delight of birds, dew on brightly coloured leaves, sunshine and clouds, oh, and iced coffee. My father, who died one month short of 101, in his way, had become a sweet lovely old man who’d left his politics of ethics and strict architectural laws behind. All he wanted to do in his extreme old age was have Walt Whitman poems (Leaves of Grass) read to him and to listen to sublime music.

     A dear friend and colleague is currently grappling with the effects of chemotherapy on a cancer he is treating and we both have decided that what matters to each of us is exquisite music and the transparency of the heart in connection with others and the lively earth. Connection is the thing that makes meaning and gives sense to life itself. It’s certainly the thing that drives me in my psychotherapeutic work, and life in general.

    A desire for reconnection is why my elderly friends reached out to me. It wasn’t to convert me to anything; they sought to connect with me. Without connection there is loneliness and depression, an implosion of emptiness, and the elderly, among others, too often lack enough real connection. Some people  become polite and circumspect, so as not to disturb the elderly, forgetting that realness is what connection is all about. I’m not sure I was particularly accommodating in reaching out to Kathleen. I did try, but I got caught up with the content of her writing and not enough for the fundament of connection. I think at least now I understand how to connect with David. Not through his missives, but just in listening to his drive towards reconnection.