What is Transference?

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Transference occurs when an individual associates something that is said or done with a past experience and so relives the emotions of that past experience in the present. When this happens, an adult may relive an emotional trauma from childhood within a situation that does not resemble the childhood situation at all. Let’s use an extreme example for clarity purposes. Let’s say someone had been sexually molested as a child and had blocked most of the experience from their memory. If someone looked at this person in a similar way that they were looked at during the childhood molestation, it could trigger the same emotions from childhood. And so, this person would be having an emotional experience of being molested while having a conversation at a cocktail party. The emotions of the past have been transferred to the present. This can all be a conscious or unconscious experience. If it is an unconscious experience, then the adults may act out in an adult way to protect themselves from being molested even though they are in no danger at all. If conscious, then the adults can allow themselves to feel the traumatic feelings and make new healthier choices, which enable them to heal the emotional trauma.

At ASIS, our Communications and Ethics classes adress these psychological issues we may meet in a therapeutic session.

What Is Projection in Jungian Psychology?

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How Interpersonal Relationships Work

© Megge Hill Fitz-Randolph

Projection, according to Carl Jung, occurs when a person sees in another qualities they themselves possess. This phenomenon goes on daily in most relationships and encounters.

Whenever a person is convinced that the awful qualities seen in another person have nothing to do with him or herself, a projection is mostly likely being engaged. This does not mean, however, that these qualities are not present. It merely means that they probably exist, to some extent, in the person observing them.

The Shadow in Jungial Psychology

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The Collective Shadow in Jungian Psychology

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When groups indulge in ethnic, religious, racial stereotyping they are using groupthink and practicing a dangerous shadow projection of the collective unconscious.

According to Carl Jung there are two types of shadow projection: the personal and the collective. The personal shadow is a projection of the individual’s unconscious and unlived life onto another individual. The collective shadow is a projection of the collective unconscious onto another group. Similarly, the projection may arise from one whole group onto another group.

This is how entire populations of people are made into enemies. This is also what props up racial, religious, and ethnic suspicion and hatred. Whenever one feels oneself or one's group superior to another one is engaged in shadow projection. This “other" becomes the “scapegoat” to carry away the “sins of the father.” The so-called sins are never carried away. They just go underground where they breed more hatred and shadow material. It sets up a vicious cycle.

Read more: http://americanaffairs.suite101.com/article.cfm/feeding_at_the_trough_of_cable_news#ixzz0R7FoBjQH