Projection and anger etc from Chapter 7

This is another excerpt from drclay's book (for which this forum exists.)[b]

8. I'm pure, others are evil. The authoritarian represses his/her aggressive and sexual feelings, then projects those traits on to stereotyped persons in the outgroup (see defense mechanisms in chapter 5). For example, it was Larry King's and other white men's dishonesty, laziness, hatred, and sexual urges that got projected to the black man (see quote above). The authoritarian, therefore, feels surrounded by people preoccupied with sex and/or violence. The psychoanalysts who wrote The Authoritarian Personality say the sexual fears come from an unresolved Oedipus or Electra complex. The hostility comes from childhood (see #2 & #3 above) too and throughout their lives authoritarians expect criminal acts nearby and terrorists' attacks around the world. They become paranoid, believing many people want to hurt them (which justify their aggression?).

9. Ethnocentrism: Everything of mine is better than yours--my country, my religion, my kind of people, my family, and my self. Research has also shown the authoritarian is more prejudiced and more prone to punish people (including their own children) to get them to work harder or to do "right" (Byrne & Kelley, 1981).

This picture of an authoritarian isn't pretty. How many of these people are there? Zimbardo's "prison study" suggests that the potential for authoritarianism may be quite high, given the right circumstances. It is estimated that at least 80% of us have prejudices. Hostility (especially the you-are-not-my-equal and I-don't-care-about-your-type) abounds in the world. Milgram's study of obedience (in chapter 8) suggests 65% of us would physically hurt someone if told to do so by an authority. Also, in that chapter we will see that most of us conform to social pressures in dress, in opinions, in behavior. Maybe there are parts of an authoritarian personality inside all of us.

Like all behavior, prejudice has multiple causes Duckitt (1992) summarized the causes of prejudice: (1) universal psychological processes in all of us, such as displacement of anger, projection of our undesirable personality traits to others, disliking people who are "different," etc., (2) dynamics between groups, such as competition for jobs, exploitation of one group by another, etc., (3) passing on of prejudiced attitudes, such as family-subgroup pressures to favor and discriminate against certain types of people, explanations of behavior (crime, desertion of family, drug use) are handed down to young people, etc., and (4) certain individual tendencies to be critical and unfair, such as authoritarians, angry people looking for someone to attack, persons with low self-esteem, etc.

Since the causes are complex, the solutions may be complex too.

Thanks, Sky. I use to have a local community college channel where I use to live that taught Zimbardo's psychology course almost every semester and I never got tired of watching the episodes, even saw when they finally updated them I've always loved Dr. Clay's book too and how it can help, step-by-step, to work on a problem.

There's a neat anger site I discovered recently. I have a favorite anger book I've kept and gotten inspiration from over the years but I really like this simple site too, Angries Out
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Projections are a defensive mechanism where we ignore what we do not like about ourselves and become upset about that same trait in another. They are the disowned aspect of our personality. Blaming others protect us through distractions and help keep a lid on the terror that knowledge of our dark side might provoke.

Projections protect us by keeping a lid on the terror that knowledge of our negative qualities might provoke. You project your own guilt and anger on to others when you judge and label the other person¹s actions instead of just observing or witnessing them. Carl Jung believed that the projection defense functions like a mirror between the ego and the unconsciousness personality. The negative characteristic that has been disowned which has been tying up psychic energy in the ego will be reflected in the person¹s daily experience.

What you resist, persists. Projections are warning signals that something is unresolved in your self. Carl Jung said that if you do not know and own the darker aspects of your self, you will project your own negative repressed elements on other people.

The intensity of your anger and projection is a function of one or more of:

1.The size of the negative part inside yourself,
2. The amount of the denial that you have about this trait in yourself,
3. The need of your soul to work out this projection, judgment and criticism.

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Good reads.

See also: Encountering Darkness