Projection

Literary/ Cultural Context Note

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  • The Literary Encyclopedia. WORLD HISTORY AND IDEAS: A CROSS-CULTURAL VOLUME.

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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 followers, notably Melanie Klein, projection is a part…

381 words

Citation: Clark, Robert. "Projection". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 24 October 2005; last revised 11 November 2009. [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=902, accessed 19 March 2024.]

902 Projection 2 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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