In my recent exploration of the implied theory of ghosts (in Reginald Hill’s short story), I stumbled, in fact repeatedly, over a certain ambiguity in the notion of “projection”. That is one of those terms from older psychology (think Freud, Jung) that has sunk into common parlance and popular culture, but unfortunately in a potentially misunderstood way. To sort it out, let’s look at an example.
1. Suppose you and I are sitting in comfortable armchairs, engaged in conversation. Suddenly, I point to a side of the room and tell you that the leprechaun who’s standing there has just waved. You look, and smile, and tell me how cute you find this. Nothing strange is going on, however: there is a film projector in the room, which has been running all the time (although we’d mostly ignored it while engaged in our conversation). The projector runs an old movie, and the leprechaun was just a small detail in it. When I pointed it out to you, you saw it too. There is no leprechaun in the sense of a physical object, of course; but there is a certain pattern of light which produces an image on the wall, for both of us to see. Now this is called “projection”, but not in any psychological sense: it’s straightforward physical projection of light patterns from a translucent strip of celluloid onto a white wall. As a physical process, it’s part of the external world we both share.
Let’s change the example to a second scenario: say we both sit in the same room, again in conversation, but this time there is no film running. Suddenly, I point to a side of the room and tell you that the leprechaun who’s standing there has just waved. You look and tell me (somewhat concerned) that you don’t see any leprechaun, but I insist that he’s there, and he’s waving. Now this time, I see something that isn’t there. At least not in the external world we both share: that is, there is no light pattern or image we both can see. What I see is somehow produced in my mind only: it has psychological origins. But it’s not really there, and other people (in this case, you) cannot see it. In psychology, this is typically called hallucination (not projection).
It’s true: physical projection and hallucination have some similarities. Neither involve a real object (leprechaun), but only an image of some sort. Both are understood to be processes which somehow first produce the image, and then lead to a perception of it. But there is a difference: in the case of physical projection, both the origin (the film and the light source) and the resulting image (light patterns on the wall) belong to the external physical world. You and I can both see that image, and if we’d make a photo, it would appear there, too. On the other hand, in the case of hallucination the origin is part of a personal psychology (mine, in this case), not part of the shared world — and so is the image: you cannot see it, and if we were to make a photo, it would’t show up there either.
Now imagine a third scenario. Suppose again we’re both sitting there in conversation (and no film). You’re calm and relaxed, and you mostly listen; I, on the other hand, am uncomfortable and uneasy, my hands a slightly shaking, I fidget around and babble. After a while, I start asking you what’s going on, why you are so nervous. Surprised, you tell me you’re not: you tell me that it’s rather me who appears to be nervous. I react strongly, and intensely deny any of this: it’s you (I say) who is nervous, whereas I’m entirely calm.
What’s going on here?
Well, in that scenario I certainly am in an unusual psychological state. (We can safely assume it’s me who is: if we had a video camera running, it would faithfully record my fidgeting.) But I’m not aware of it myself — in fact, I must have some mental blockade from noticing it, for even after you point it out to me I fiercely deny it. (Thus it’s not just that I happen to not see it, I seem strongly to not want to see it.) But that’s not the whole story: in some sense, I do actually perceive my own nervousness, fidgeting and so on — but I perceive it (wrongly) in you. It appears to me (in my state of emotional upheaval) as if it actually were your psychological state. Thus (we might say) although I’m not consciously aware of my own state, I’m unconsciously perceiving it, only in a distorted (or rather, misplaced way). Rather than recognizing it as part of my psychology, I mislocate it outside (i.e., in you). It’s for this phenomenon that older psychological schools coined the term projection.
In this case, I perceive a real person sitting in front of me (namely, you), and I perceive real nervousness and fidgeting. I don’t perceive anything which isn’t there. Where I go wrong is that I perceive the nervousness in you, whereas in reality it’s in me. Thus psychological projection has certain similarities, both with physical projection and with hallucination (although it’s neither). With physical projection it has in common that there is a real phenomenon to be observed; with hallucination it has in common that the source of the phenomenon lies in personal psychology. But there are grave differences: physical projection produces an intersubjectively verifiable perception (an image that everybody sees, and that appears on photographs), whereas psychological projection produces a perception which, if subjected to scrutiny, will in fact be falsified; and psychological projection differs from hallucination in that it first and foremost needs a real phenomenon, something that is there in the shared external world, in order to project onto — whereas only in hallucination one sees something that isn’t there at all.
2. Many of the misunderstandings of the term “projection”, in connection with psychological phenomena, likely come from the fact that most people who use it nowadays (and their audiences) are really not particularly familiar with such marked examples as that in the third scenario above. (Yet these examples were what Freud, Jung, et al. had in mind when they used the term.) People’s understanding of the term “projection” rather comes from everyday experience with physical projection, and so they misread some of the earlier psychology that uses it.
Hill’s story is a case in point. The way he presents the ghost episode (and even the occasions when Natasha and later Chislenko himself call it a “projection”) are reminiscent of physical projection, and actually inconsistent with “projection” in the psychological sense.
