on projection ANS

This was a reply in the comments. It is about projection, the defense.  I just thought the analysis was interesting. 
Find it in the comments here:  http://www.nonesoblind.org/blog/?p=9542 
--Kim


Andrew Bard Schmookler Says:
January 30th, 2011 at 9:19 pm

As I'm sure you know, HMJ, the projective defense is not equally practiced across all personality structures. It is in particular the authoritarian personality structure –heavily identified with a harsh superego, in denial about the impulses in its own id– that uses the defense of projection.

On the liberal side of the divide, I would wager, the defects in the psychic life are not only less likely to take the form of projection, but less likely to take the form of denial altogether. At least, not denial of intra-psychic material. What is more likely to be denied– and this kind of denial is not really what the depth psychologists usually have in mind with the term– are things about the surrounding world.

In our times, the liberal political forces have been very keen, it seems to me, to deny the darkness of the forces they're up against, very slow to see how determined those opposing forces have been to destroy much of what liberalism holds dear. Liberals often seem to deny the genuineness of differences and conflict, believing that if only there were "better communication" everybody would get along. Denial of such darkness also plays into the particular weaknesses of liberals in the realm of international affairs: if the right is inclined to see ENEMIES everywhere, and to in fact NEED enemies, the problem characteristic of liberals is a tendency to be unable to see enemies where they do exist, and to need for there to be harmony.

These are, of course, TYPES. I am not saying there aren't people on the right who are uninfected by the need for enemies,* nor that there aren't people on the left who can confront the reality of enemies. Just that there are tendencies, between the two groupings, toward different and contrasting forms of distortion in the perception of reality.

* I misread Ronald Reagan in this respect, incidentally, in the early 1980s. I saw him as one of those people who required an external enemy, but he proved me wrong with the relationship he forged with Mikhail Gorbachev, which was one of the most fortunate developments in world history. I do recall, however, how many of those around Reagan –right-wingers like Dick Cheney– who worked to try to stop Reagan from trusting Gorby, insisting that no Soviet leader could be trusted, wanting Reagan to keep the cold war going as it always had.