[Knulp]

Hi All

This is my first post on the forum. I am in the process of reading Benjamin's book and, so far, think it amazing. I say this because I have spent the best part of 20 years trying to get to the bottom of what's wrong with me and ended up with, after many fruitless diversions, similar conclusions to Benjamin. The first, that I had been traumatised somewhere along the line; the second, that thought is an impediment to happiness.

My sticking point with the book is the matter of projection. I understand and accept that unconscious processes lead me into situation that are designed to heal, but do not understand or accept that I project attributes onto others to further this end. My understanding is that I would pick people who all ready have those attributes, and therefore have no need to project anything onto them. I merely have to interact with them long enough for the 'fun' to start. Of course when buttons are being pushed the giveaway sign is the tendency to overreact, but that doesn't mean that button pusher was a blameless prop in the scene.

As an example, I remember an incident that I was told, by my psychotherapist at the time, was my projection.

I was riding my motorbike along a private hospital road that had traffic slowing islands punctuated along its course. Many times I had nearly hit cars due to drivers ignoring the give way signs, forcing me to swerve in to miss them. This isn't uncommon for motorcyclists, four wheeled vehicles often bully us, but on this occasion I recognised the car as having been a culprit in the past. So as I approached the gap with right of way, this lady had no intention of letting the squirt of a motorcycle take precedence over her big car and drove directly at me forcing me off the road. I lost it. I double back and followed her to the car park (we were both hospital staff) and let rip. She in turn, defensively, denied she had done anything wrong and told me I was a brute of a man for getting angry at her. This denial made me even more angry and I could have quite happily have seriously hurt this woman at that moment.

Now, without going into detail about my past, I can say that boundaries is a major issue with me, as is having my thoughts and feeling dismissed. These are themes in my life. So, I often find myself in situations where my boundaries are trampled over and/or people ignore me. In that context it's easy to see that this lady pushed some pretty sensitive buttons. But she was not an innocent party. She did indeed run me off the road. It would have been more accurate to say that I had a big percentage of my anger was due to displacement, than to say that I was projecting onto her.

Am I missing something?

[Benjamin Fry]

Yes, you are missing your admission that you ran yourself off the road! You knew what would happen, but you used it to show her how wrong she was. Then you reacted to having your buttons pushed. That reaction implies the projection. You are feeling in the interaction with her that your "thoughts and feelings [were] dismissed". That's where you made her into someone else and used her for a "fun" reaction.

Perhaps it is easier if you consider what is the reality, rather than the projection. She might have been a bad driver who was frightened by other road users and men in general. She may have experienced you as an aggressive road user and pedestrian, pressing all sorts of her own buttons. So how much was real, and how much a useful projection?

It is really hard to see the truth with clarity, which is the whole point of projection, of course. Generally it's about 20% real, and the rest you have to take responsibility for yourself. And that hurts.

Good luck.