"I
don't like that picture on the wall”, said my little grandson one day. He was
upset with his mom because she refused to give in to one of his little, willful
demands. Just for the record, my daughter-in-law is a wonderfully patient
mother so her son's frustration was illegitimate. His mother, who is as firm
as she is patient, is well capable of repelling one of his tantrums which he
well knows. So he diverted his anger to a picture on the wall, an object not
associated with his defeated confrontation. Projection, then, is the diversion
of any sentiment originating from an external source, onto another person,
place or thing.
Because
the command to "honor your father and your mother" is deeply encoded
in every child's psyche, any guilt arising from hostility toward parents
compels some children to first conceal and then deny their shame. This
invariably causes the volatile rage to internalize itself inside the child.
Then the unavoidable happens, the child begins a lifelong, quicksand-like
struggle to regain its parents' love by one means or another.
Hostility
toward authority, first toward parents and teachers and later toward all
authority, eventually finds expression in innocent victims. As in my grandson's
case, the hated picture on the wall could easily be a person, an abused cat, an
accidentally-on-pur-pose broken piece of furniture. All of this typifies the
principal of projection. It works this way; a child or adult responds to a
situation (person) with anger. The inability to confront the hate object,
sometimes a parent, causes the angry one to foist upon a weaker person or
object, the wrath of his rage. In choosing a scapegoat there is only one
requisite. The goat always lacks the ability to fight back.
Only
as the last straw do desperate victims turn against their abusers, having sensed
the bully's hidden fear. It is important to understand that all bullies are
cowards but such “bully vs. victim relationships”, are childish. Now that you
have reached physical and spiritual maturity, you must realize you are no longer
a little child. You must overcome your pattern of projecting your resentments
onto others you know cannot repel your attack.
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