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Video Description
The dark side you refuse to see in yourself does not disappear — it lands on someone else. This lecture from Academy of Ideas explores Carl Jung’s shadow and the defense mechanism called projection. When we cannot face our own faults, we project them onto other people, then persecute them for what is really inside us. Taken far enough, that habit becomes scapegoating, propaganda, and even war. Jung’s warning still cuts deep: know yourself, or you will be driven into world war to see what beasts you are.
Full Video Transcript
The sad truth, wrote Carl Jung, is that man’s real life consists of a complex of inexorable opposites, day and night, birth and death, happiness and misery, good and evil.
We are not even sure that one will prevail over the other, that good will overcome evil, or joy defeat pain.
Life is a battleground, it always has been and always will be.
Of the many metaphors used to describe a life in process, the metaphor of a battle is one of the more appropriate.
In this battle, our own self is both our greatest ally and greatest opponent.
with a dynamic tension existing between those elements of our personality moving us forward into personal growth and those holding us back.
Each person must also contend with the potential for both good and evil that lies within.
Whether our strengths and capacity for good get the upper hand or our weakness and capacity for evil is
very much a product of this battle waged within the self.
Far too many people, however, set themselves up for defeat as they are unwilling to acknowledge the destructive side of their being,
Utilizing various psychological defense mechanisms, such people do their best to stay ignorant to their faults and weaknesses.
In so doing, these elements of their personality are relegated to their unconscious and make up the realm of the psyche Jung called the shadow.
The shadow exerts an active influence on our personality and affects our behavior in a myriad of unforeseen ways.
When we behave in a manner which is a product of our shadow,
Perhaps we treat someone poorly or take part in a self-destructive behavior rather than taking responsibility for such actions
Most people make use of the psychological phenomenon known as projection in order to avoid facing up to their shadow in this video
We are going to explore the phenomenon of projection by looking at the dangers
It poses to the well-being of both the individual and society at large
Projection occurs when we attribute an element of our personality which resides in our unconscious to another person or group
We can project both negative and positive characteristics, however, there is a greater tendency to project the former rather than the latter.
Sigmund Freud, who popularized the term in the mid-1890s, believed projection to be a defense mechanism used to avoid the anxiety that is provoked when one is forced to face up to their faults, weaknesses, and destructive tendencies.
Jung’s view of projection was similar to Freud’s, and as he explains in Archaic Man,
Projection is one of the commonest psychic phenomena.
Everything that is unconscious in ourselves we discover in our neighbor, and we treat him accordingly.
Jung, however, stressed that projection was both an inevitable and necessary component in our psychological development,
as it is one of the primary means by which we can gain an awareness of elements residing in our unconscious.
After projecting an element of our unconscious, the healthy thing to do is to recognize the subjective origin of the projection,
to withdraw it from the external world, and to integrate this element of our personality into conscious awareness.
Only by withdrawing our projections and becoming aware of the faults we previously projected onto others
can we ever hope to take corrective measures.
This process of withdrawal and integration is a difficult task,
for it takes courage to face up to one’s weaknesses and dark qualities.
But while difficult, this task is crucial in the battle of life.
For failure to confront one’s shadow leaves these elements free to grow in scope and influence, as Jung explains,
and to shift the responsibility elsewhere.
The fact is that if one tries beyond one’s capacity to be perfect,
the shadow descends into hell and becomes the devil.
Those who rely too heavily on projection to shield them from their shadow,
who never strive to question whether the image they hold of themselves is perhaps too perfect,
go through life forever in need of scapegoats or people on whom to blame all their problems.
Often a friend or family member is chosen as one’s scapegoat,
scapegoat. But the problem with this choice is that it irreparably damages, and in many cases,
forces an end to the relationship. After driving away one’s scapegoat, it is usually discovered
that one’s problems persist nonetheless. This spurs some to look within, and to face up to
the elements of their personality they have for so long tried to deny. But rather than partaking
in this internal reflection, most people merely look for another scapegoat. In this process,
it is often discovered that the most effective form of scapegoat is not any individual in
particular, but rather entire groups of people. This tendency of scapegoating to occur on a
collective level can have dangerous consequences for a society. Those unwilling or unable to face
up to their shadows are easy prey for collectivist movements which have ready-made scapegoats
in the form of political opponents, members of different ethnic groups or socio-economic classes.
Scapegoating at the level of collectives, or in other words, projecting our problems onto groups
of people who differ from us, proves attractive for several reasons.
It allows us to avoid the damage to our personal relationships which occurs when we use someone
close to us as a scapegoat.
Furthermore, given that our interactions with members of the scapegoated group are usually
limited, we do not risk awakening to the realization that these people are not nearly like the
distorted image of them we hold in our psyche.
Scapegoating at a group level is made easier by the fact that those in the scapegoated
group, being composed of individuals with their own weaknesses and flaws, may in fact
behave in ways that provide legitimate reasons for indignation .
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.
But as Jung recognized, there is a tendency within collectivist movements to take this
small hook offered by one’s opponents and to hang on it virtually all that is wrong
with oneself and the world.
When we cast a group of people in this negative light, seeing them as the primary source of
all that ails a society, it becomes possible to justify persecution, violence, and perhaps
even extermination of the group in question.
Projection at the level of collectives becomes even more dangerous as those in positions
of power can divert attention away from their own activities and the harm they may be causing
by using propaganda, false flags, and other manipulation techniques in order to cast blame
on to ready-made scapegoats.
Due to the terrible consequences that can emerge at both the level of the individual
and of society when we fail to recognize, in the words of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, that
the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being, it is of the
utmost importance that we strive to recognize our shadow qualities and to integrate them
into our conscious awareness.
Only then will we be in an adequate position to evaluate the true sources of evil in this
world.
other hand, if we fail to recognize the subjective origin of our projections, not only will our
own well-being suffer, but we will contribute on a global scale to much unnecessary conflict.
Jung went as far as to suggest that if psychological projection at a collective level became too
widespread, war would be the likely outcome. For he believed that the greatest danger to
civilization lay not in the weapons we have at our disposal, but in our inability to understand
our own selves. For it is this ignorance and the failure to face up to our own weaknesses
and destructiveness that causes what should be an internal battle to manifest itself in
the external world. Modern people, wrote Jung, are ignorant of what they really are. We have
simply forgotten what a human being really is. So we have men like Nietzsche and Freud
and Adler who tell us what we are quite mercilessly. We have to discover our shadow. Otherwise
we are driven into a world war in order to see what beasts we are.
Source: Academy of Ideas