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By Sarah Thompson, M.D.
Defence Mechanisms
Projection
About a year ago I received an e-mail from a member of a
local Jewish organization. The author, who chose to
remain anonymous, insisted that people have no right to
carry firearms because he didn't want to be murdered if
one of his neighbours had a "bad day". (I don't know
that this person is a "he", but I'm assuming so for the
sake of simplicity.) I responded by asking him why he
thought his neighbours wanted to murder him, and, of
course, got no response. The truth is that he's
statistically more likely to be murdered by a neighbour
who doesn't legally carry a firearm1 and more likely to
be shot accidentally by a law enforcement officer.1
How does my correspondent "know" that his neighbours
would murder him if they had guns? He doesn't. What he
was really saying was that if he had a gun, he might
murder his neighbours if he had a bad day, or if they
took his parking space, or played their stereos too
loud. This is an example of what mental health
professionals call projection – unconsciously projecting
one's own unacceptable feelings onto other people, so
that one doesn't have to own them.3 In some cases, the
intolerable feelings are projected not onto a person,
but onto an inanimate object, such as a gun,4 so that
the projector believes the gun itself will murder him.
Projection is a defence mechanism. Defence mechanisms
are unconscious psychological mechanisms that protect us
from feelings that we cannot consciously accept.5 They
operate without our awareness, so that we don't have to
deal consciously with "forbidden" feelings and impulses.
Thus, if you asked my e-mail correspondent if he really
wanted to murder his neighbours, he would vehemently
deny it, and insist that other people want to kill him.
Projection is a particularly insidious defence
mechanism, because it not only prevents a person from
dealing with his own feelings, it also creates a world
where he perceives everyone else as directing his own
hostile feelings back at him.6
All people have violent, and even homicidal, impulses.
For example, it's common to hear people say "I'd like to
kill my boss", or "If you do that one more time I'm
going to kill you." They don't actually mean that
they're going to, or even would, kill anyone; they're
simply acknowledging anger and frustration. All of us
suffer from fear and feelings of helplessness and
vulnerability. Most people can acknowledge feelings of
rage, fear, frustration, jealousy, etc. without having
to act on them in inappropriate and destructive ways.
Some people, however, are unable consciously to admit
that they have such "unacceptable" emotions. They may
have higher than average levels of rage, frustration, or
fear. Perhaps they fear that if they acknowledge the
hostile feelings, they will lose control and really will
hurt someone. They may believe that "good people" never
have such feelings, when in fact all people have them.
This is especially true now that education "experts"
commonly prohibit children from expressing negative
emotions or aggression. Instead of learning that such
emotions are normal, but that destructive behaviour
needs to be controlled, children now learn that feelings
of anger are evil, dangerous and subject to severe
punishment.7To protect themselves from "being bad", they
are forced to use defence mechanisms to avoid owning
their own normal emotions. Unfortunately, using such
defence mechanisms inappropriately can endanger their
mental health; children need to learn how to deal
appropriately with reality, not how to avoid it.8
(This discussion of psychological mechanisms applies to
the average person who is uninformed, or misinformed,
about firearms and self-defenceIt does not apply to the
anti- gun ideologue. Fanatics like Charles Schumer know
the facts about firearms, and advocate victim
disarmament consciously and wilfully in order to gain
political power. This psychological analysis does not
apply to them.)