Projection in Affect Theory

There is a place in Vick Kelly's chapter on intimacy in Knowing Feeling in which he presents Tonkins's definition of projection. It was easy for me to take for granted this defintion the first time I read it. But when I just finished reading it again in going over Vick's excellent chapter again, I wanted to create this posting just to have an occasion to emphasize the Tonkins's notion of projection and to invite others' discuusion of it.

From page 83 of Vick's chapter, quoting Tomkins, "If a particular attitude of a significant other person in one's past history has been the unique activator of a particular response, then the later activation of this response in some other way can be expected to uniquely activate the expected 'cause'." Here I think "respone" must be taken to mean affective response (at least the A, and maybe also the R, in an S-A-R sequence). Thus, for example, a particular caregiver from my past may have been searingly critical in certain ways that would evoke anguish and/or humiliation. Now I could experience a nearly identical affective response in a subjective state of anguish and/or shame evoked by, say, a frustration in getting my computer to work while I'm rushing to meet a deadline. While in that subjective state I begin to create the imagined experience of the caregiver from the past being searingly critical. Then, my wife's asking me calmly how things are going, the radio announcer giving the weather report, or anthing else that occurs could be the hook on which I hang the imagined "cause" of my highly disagreeable subjective state. Thus, I imagine that my wife sounds searingly critical or that the radio announcer has a detestable and insulting demeanor. This is a very precise way to think about projection and lends itself readily to empathic, nonaccusatory ways of communicating with persons feeling "tormented by persecutory projections."

I wonder if anyone would object to my added suggestion that the degree of dissimilarity between the present (projected) "cause" and the actual cause from the past--i.e., the degree to which there is no "kernel of truth" in the projection--is also determined by the intensity of affect and/or the individual's level of affect intolerance.

For Tomkins, a projection just shows that one is being reminded of times in one's past when one felt just this lousy but without also recalling in the context of a consciously-controlled recollection of the actual cause from the past of the lously feeling. (Instead the recall of the cause, from one's past, of the lousy feeling is being "enacted" in an episode of interpersonal projection. "Enacted" is a the more up-to-date psychoanalytic term that is slowly replacing the derogatory term "acting-out" inasmuch as more and more theorists are thankfully recognizing these days the important role of eactments as often the only available means of recollecting past affective burdens and traumas.)

Vick mentions that such projection episodes are likely to be found among couples with difficulty minimizing negative affect. The correlation of these two categories of behavior--frequency of projection episodes and difficulty minimizing negative affect--could, I suppose, reflect the fact that persons who have not learned much skill in modulating negative affect, because of their caregivers' deficits in the affective-training-skills department, are often the same persons who will project (in accord with Tomkins's description) memories of other deficits in affective caregiving--such as memories of distress- and shame-inducing criticism, for instance.

If this posting inspries any comments or corrections, I would be, once again, eager and grateful for another interesting learning/exhange-of-ideas opportunity.

........ You know that feeling you get when you get to the top of the stairs and you expect one more step but are disoriented that it isn't there. What is that? Shame? Distress? Startle? Fear? All of these?

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