Kali, could you explain more what you mean by "projections"?

Thanks,
Trevor

From "Psychoanalytic Diagnosis," by Nancy McWilliams (1994), pp.107-110:

“Projection, Introjection, and Projective Identification

I am combining the discussion of two of the most primitive defensive processes, projection and introjection, because they represent opposite sides of the same psychological coin. In both projection and introjection, there is a lack of psychological boundary between the self and the world. As mentioned earlier, in normal infancy, before the child has developed a sense of which experiences come from inside and which ones have their sources outside of the self, we assume that there is a generalized sense of "I" being equivalent to "the world." A baby with colic probably has the subjective experience of "Hurt!" rather than "Something inside me hurts." It cannot yet distinguish between an internally located pain like colic and an externally caused discomfort like pressure from diapers that are too tight. From this era of undifferentiation come the processes that later, in their defensive function, we refer to as projection and introjection. When these processes work together, they are considered one defense, called projective identification. Some writers (e.g., Scharff, 1992) distinguish between projective and introjective identification, but similar processes are at work in each kind of operation.

Projection is the process whereby what is inside is misunderstood as coming from outside. In its benign and mature forms, it is the basis for empathy. Since no one is ever able to get inside the mind of another person, we must use our capacity to project our own experience in order to understand someone else's subjective world. Intuition, leaps of nonverbal synchronicity, and peak experiences of mystical union with another person or group involve a projection of the self into the other, with powerful emotional rewards to boh parties. People in love are well known for reading one another's minds in ways that they themselves cannot account for logically.

In its malignant forms, projection breeds dangerous misunderstanding and untold interpersonal damage. When the projected attitudes seriously distort the object on whom they are projected, or when what is projected consists of disowned and highly negative parts of the self [SHADOW in the Jungian sense], all kinds of difficulties predictably ensue. Others resent being misperceived and may retaliate when treated, for example as judgmental, envious, or persecutory (attitudes that are among the most common of those that tend to be ignored in the self and ascribed to others). When a person uses projection as his or her main way of understanding the world and coping with life, he or she can be said to have a character that is paranoid.

Introjection is the process whereby what is outside is misunderstood as coming from the inside. In its benign forms, it amounts to a primitive identification with important others. Young children take in all kinds of attitudes, affects, and behaviors or significant people in their lives. The process is so subtle as to be mysterious; yet when one sees it, it is unmistakable. Long before a child can make a subjectively voluntary decision to be like Mommy or Daddy, he or she seems to have "swallowed" then in some primal way.

In its problematic forms, introjection is, like projection, a very destructive process. The most notorious and striking examples of pathological introjection involve the process that has been labeled, somewhat inappropriately in view of its primitivity, "identification with the aggressor" (A. Freud, 1936). It is well known, from both naturalistic observations (e.g. Bettelheim, 1960) and empirical research (e.g. Milgram, 1963), that under conditions of fear or abuse, people will try to master their fright and pain by taking on qualities of their abusers. "I'm not the helpless victim; I'm the powerful inflictor" seems to be the unconscious attraction to this defense. An understanding of this mechanism has critical importance to the process of psychotherapy. It crosses all diagnostic boundaries but is particularly evident in characterological dispositions toward sadism, explosivity, and what is often misleadingly called impulsivity (see "Acting Out" in Chapter 6).

A different way in which introjection can result in psychopathology involves mourning and its relation to depression (Freud, 1917a). When we love people or are deeply attached to them, we introject them, and their representations inside ourselves become a part of our identity ("I am Tom's son, Mary's husband, Sue's father, Dan's friend," etc.). If we lose any of the people whose image we have internalized, whether by death, separation, or rejection, not only do we feel that our environment is poorer for their absence in our lives but we also feel that we are somehow diminished, that a part of the self has died. An emptiness or sense of void comes to dominate our inner world. We may also, if we are focused on restoring the presence of lost objects rather than on giving them up, become preoccupied with the question of what failure or sin of ours drove them away. The appeal of this usually unconscious process is the implicit wish that if we can figure out what we did wrong, we can bring them back (another manifestation of infantile omnipotence). When mourning is avoided, unconscious self-criticism thus takes its place.

Freud (1917a) beautifully described the process of mourning as a slow coming to terms with this condition of loss, in which "the shadow of the object fell upon the ego" (p.249). When a person is unable over time to separate internally from a loved one whose image has been introjected, and consequently fails to invest emotionally in other people (the function of the grieving process), he or she will continue to feel diminished, unworthy, depleted, and bereft. In one regularly uses introjection to reduce anxiety and maintain continuity in the self, keeping psychological ties to unrewarding objects of one's earlier life, one can reasonably be considered characterologically depressive.

Melanie Klein (1946) was the first analyst to write about a defensive process that she found to be ubiquitous in more disturbed patients, which she called "projective identification." This fusion of projective and introjective mechanisms has been compactly described by Ogden (1982):

'In projective identification, not only does the patient view the therapist in a distorted way that is determined by the patient's past object relations; in addition, pressure is exerted on the therapist to experience himself in a way that is congruent with the patient's unconscious fantasy. (pp. 2-3)'

In other words, the patient both projects internal objects and gets the person on who they are projected to behave like those objects, as if the target person had those same introjects. Projective identification is a difficult abstraction, one that has inspired much controversy in the analytic literature (see Finell, 1986). Some have insisted that it is not qualitatively discriminable from projection per se, while others regard the introduction of the concept as having major clinical and theoretical significance (Kernberg, 1975). My own understanding of the term involves the ideas implied in the previous paragraph; that is, projection and introjection each have a continuum of forms, running from very primitive to very advanced (c.f. Kernberg, 1976), and at the primitive end, those processes are fused because of their similar confusion on inside and outside. This fusion is what we call projective identification.”

To me, when you are projecting, you are basing your interpretation on what you TIHNK the other person feels or will do based on your own feelings, fears, past experience, rather than really listening to them, and hearing what they are saying.

A quick and dirty example...
I have a friend who saw a photo of my dogs, and immediately decided that they were bad, mean animals because she'd had a 'bad experience' with one of that breed once before, when in fact they are both fairly quet, gentle, sweet, and more submissive than any dog I've ever met.

1. Simply put, a projection is a feeling or knowing that the projectee accepts. Yes, as many as there are asanas. No. It is implicit in human nature. Correct.

2. If there is market demand then you will have a supply. Globalization is not new. No. A Market and a Love are synonyms. (I forget the name of the term/case where demand equals supply perfectly, college was a little while ago)

A shadow projection is not an asana. Shadows reveal much of our human hubris.