Moral Judgment and projection
The bias of psychoanalysis.
There are a few skills learned in the therapeutic analysis. One is the ability to detect projections, including the ability to distinguish one’s own counter projections from those incoming. Another is to realize what your real desire or intentions are, which may reveal one’s own self-deception eg false consciousness, false self, etc. Whether knowledge of your true desire permits you to change is a different story.
These skills involve very careful and subtle distinctions that are mostly below the threshold level of conscious awareness and must be sensed in altered states: dreams, sleep, reverie, etc.
Talking only works with people who can be asked questions, or “confronted,” and responds genuinely.
Projection occurs following the splitting process of my good self and bad self, what is categorized as me and not me, and from assessments of others as good or bad.
This is a dimension of personality which may be related to earlier experiences and to social conditions. Attributing splitting and the projection of the negative qualities to a virtue deficiency may be your counter-projection.
Personally, I have no way of defending myself at the moment unless I also project back if the other is a destructive narcissist, borderline or bipolar. However, during reflection which is not an altered state but is quite different from an attending and responding position, likewise, the analytic attitude, in its variations, has a defined difference from “social” behavior, I can absorb and interpret the other’s “behaviour” and try to understand what happened and is going on. This may help to secure a finer and stronger boundary. Ultimately, the other needs to question their feelings and thoughts, their object relations and realize what they are doing, eg intruding, overconforming or renouncing, not recognizing or demeaning others - prejudice is unconscious!
Intuition is abroad notion which could be fleshed out by mentioning skills, techniques or even theoretical orientations.
What I notice in your statements is an emphasis on social interaction, behaviour and talk but these are largely controlled by situation, setting and power hierarchies or roles. Addressing the psychological in situ and over a period of time gets at personality and object relations, patterns.
There is perhaps a gap between thinking-feeling and moral judging. Kohlberg measured degrees of moral adequacy, Gilligan found gender differences and many researchers have explored nuances of morality; most people think it’s a given, they were born with their moral precepts and everyone knows what morals are!! This nativist view is deeply mythical and full of error. For example, in many fields morality is utterly irrelevant: wars, the street, family life, organizations where money and power arbitrarily determine thinking, feeling and judgments.
Projecting proceeds from splitting. There are other psychological defences to consider.
Projecting in its functional and benign form involves signalling to communicate. But, often projecting is attacking in some way - recognizing that one is being attacked may involve a subtle and careful reflection on one’s feelings and thoughts.
The most insidious form of projecting is possessiveness. This is taken for granted however because most people are under myths, following myths, and unconsciously. The family triangles, the similarity between peer and sibling roles, and the generalization of family roles and assumptions - all most people do is family - speaks to the relevance of notions like the universality of the Oedipal Complex, and to the religious myths each is born into. No one ever wonders why Jesus is not considered central instead of Oedipus. It is a bias of psychoanalysis.
The bias of psychoanalysis.
There are a few skills learned in the therapeutic analysis. One is the ability to detect projections, including the ability to distinguish one’s own counter projections from those incoming. Another is to realize what your real desire or intentions are, which may reveal one’s own self-deception eg false consciousness, false self, etc. Whether knowledge of your true desire permits you to change is a different story.
These skills involve very careful and subtle distinctions that are mostly below the threshold level of conscious awareness and must be sensed in altered states: dreams, sleep, reverie, etc.
Talking only works with people who can be asked questions, or “confronted,” and responds genuinely.
Projection occurs following the splitting process of my good self and bad self, what is categorized as me and not me, and from assessments of others as good or bad.
This is a dimension of personality which may be related to earlier experiences and to social conditions. Attributing splitting and the projection of the negative qualities to a virtue deficiency may be your counter-projection.
Personally, I have no way of defending myself at the moment unless I also project back if the other is a destructive narcissist, borderline or bipolar. However, during reflection which is not an altered state but is quite different from an attending and responding position, likewise, the analytic attitude, in its variations, has a defined difference from “social” behavior, I can absorb and interpret the other’s “behaviour” and try to understand what happened and is going on. This may help to secure a finer and stronger boundary. Ultimately, the other needs to question their feelings and thoughts, their object relations and realize what they are doing, eg intruding, overconforming or renouncing, not recognizing or demeaning others - prejudice is unconscious!
Intuition is abroad notion which could be fleshed out by mentioning skills, techniques or even theoretical orientations.
What I notice in your statements is an emphasis on social interaction, behaviour and talk but these are largely controlled by situation, setting and power hierarchies or roles. Addressing the psychological in situ and over a period of time gets at personality and object relations, patterns.
There is perhaps a gap between thinking-feeling and moral judging. Kohlberg measured degrees of moral adequacy, Gilligan found gender differences and many researchers have explored nuances of morality; most people think it’s a given, they were born with their moral precepts and everyone knows what morals are!! This nativist view is deeply mythical and full of error. For example, in many fields morality is utterly irrelevant: wars, the street, family life, organizations where money and power arbitrarily determine thinking, feeling and judgments.
Projecting proceeds from splitting. There are other psychological defences to consider.
Projecting in its functional and benign form involves signalling to communicate. But, often projecting is attacking in some way - recognizing that one is being attacked may involve a subtle and careful reflection on one’s feelings and thoughts.
The most insidious form of projecting is possessiveness. This is taken for granted however because most people are under myths, following myths, and unconsciously. The family triangles, the similarity between peer and sibling roles, and the generalization of family roles and assumptions - all most people do is family - speaks to the relevance of notions like the universality of the Oedipal Complex, and to the religious myths each is born into. No one ever wonders why Jesus is not considered central instead of Oedipus. It is a bias of psychoanalysis.
