Study of Carl Jung's Shadow Therapy

Studying Carl Jung's Shadow Therapy, we can clean up own SHADOW, Darkness, and feel much released and become more open-minded, humble, understanding, happy, craefree...

Just completed a creation of SHADOW therapy meditation to clean negative emotions... Here the article is a big inspiraion together with Wah Shan's talk.

http://mindmastery.wordpress.com/2007/03/12/perception-is-projection/

Perception is Projection explained

In this article, I will explain, simply, the concept of ‘Perception is Projection’, but first, let’s go back to the heading above. How many of us either heard or used that famous phrase as a child?

When someone called the other person something derogatory – it was the ultimate put-down to reply, “it takes one to know one”.

That simple phrase is the basis of one of the 4 themes that we teach in NLP – one that people often struggle to get their heads around – the theme of ‘Perception is Projection’.

So what exactly is Perception is Projection?

In a nutshell, perception is projection is the idea that what you see in others is often a reflection of yourself, or that what you perceive in others, you will project and this will become your reality.

There are 2 aspects to this concept, but first, let’s start with a bit of background as to where this theme came from.

Perception is Projection is an idea or a concept that originates from Carl Jung, the Swiss Psychologist, who was famous for his work on the Collective Unconscious.

Jung says that we all have a shadow self which is made up of the elements of our personality we do not like. Sometimes we dislike them so much that we repress them and deny their existence. But they are still there and they’re still at work, at an unconscious level.

We can project these unconscious parts of our personality onto other people, almost in a way to feel better about ourselves and to not have to deal with the truth… the truth that there is something there that we could work on ourselves.

He said that there is nothing in the outside world that isn’t projected from our psyche onto the world around us.

You see, while we continue to keep our own shadows repressed, we will continue to see them in others, because the world outside us is only a reflection of the world inside us.

How much time do you spend noticing or pointing out other people’s rightness or wrongness or ‘bad qualities’?

This behaviour is not very useful unless you learn something from it. Below are two questions that I always like to ask myself if ever I am faced with a person whose behaviour or actions I don’t like.

1. How is this person’s behaviour a problem to me?

2. What am I seeing in this person that I don’t like about myself?

Carl Jung once said  “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”

This is the notion of perception is projection – that what we perceive in others in often a reflection of ourselves, and consequently we have ‘projected’ this onto the other person.
So when we start to look inwards at how other people’s behaviour is a problem to us, we can start to gain a greater understanding of ourselves and also be able to do something about it.

Therefore, instead of just spending the day winding ourselves up about how much the actions of another person bother us (and remember, you can’t make another person change, so wishing and willing that to happen is frankly a waste of energy!), if we work out HOW their behaviour is a problem to us, we can perhaps begin to change our own perceptions, judgements and behaviours and quite often find that the ‘problem’ was purely a creation of our own thoughts and beliefs. That realisation can be really empowering for a person who has perhaps believed or found themselves at the effect of other people for a long period of time.

The other aspect of Perception is Projection that we can explain is something that I think most people have been guilty of at some point in their life, and this is the idea that what we believe to be true about another person we will project, and that will become our reality.

Let me put that into context a bit. Imagine you are having a conversation with a friend of yours, and they tell you about somebody that you are due to meet shortly. The conversation goes something like this,
“oh, you mean Bill? Yes, I know him – you’ll hate him – really obnoxious, and completely full of himself. You can’t trust him at all”.

What will be going through you mind at the moment when you meet Bill? That’s right – all the things that your friend has told you – obnoxious, arrogant, untrustworthy. If you are thinking all these things when you meet him, you are also projecting all of these things – you will be looking out for any ‘signs’ of any of these traits being true, and consequently you will distort and filter the information you get back from Bill and they will become your reality.

So when Bill extends his hand to you with a big smile and says that he’s really glad to meet you, you could very easily take this to be an arrogant gesture and that he isn’t glad to meet you at all (because remember, he can’t be trusted!) So what you have perceived has become your projection, and that is what you will get back. Poor old Bill!

I hope that has helped to explain this concept a bit – if you choose to take this concept on, then next time you meet someone who behaves in a way which, in your model of the world, isn’t acceptable, before you pass judgement or label that person, think about ‘Perception is Projection’. Ask yourself how their behaviour is a problem to you, and what it is that you’re seeing in that person that you don’t like about yourself. It’s a tough one, and you may just learn something about yourself that you hadn’t understood before!