Projection was defined by Freud in “Further Remarks on the Neuro-Psychoses of Defence” (1896), the Schreber case history (1911), “Instincts and their Vicissitudes (1915) and in Section IV of “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” (1920) as a means of ego-defence in which the subject attributes its own unconscious motives and ideas to objects outside of itself. The individual thus disavows what it does not want to admit about itself and discovers in the external world feelings, qualities or objects which originate in its own unconscious. Since Freud drew attention to such processes projection has become a by-word and stock device in the representation and diagnosis of the paranoid, and especially of murderers, but for Freud and his …
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Citation: Clark, Robert. "Projection". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 24 October 2005; last revised 11 November 2009. [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=902, accessed 23 November 2024.]
