Abstract
The second defense mechanism to be discussed in detail, projection, has its beginnings in the earliest years of the child’s life but does not become predominant until late childhood and early adolescence. In the broadest sense, projection protects the child from disruptive anxiety by attributing unacceptable feelings, wishes, and impulses to someone else; the disturbing thoughts are placed outside of the self—“ejected” into the external world and attached to some other object.
The first judgment of the ego distinguishes between edible and nonedible objects: the first acceptance is swallowing, the first rejection is spitting out.
Otto Fenichel (1945), p. 146
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© 1991 Springer-Verlag New York Inc.
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Cramer, P. (1991). Projection. In: The Development of Defense Mechanisms. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-9025-1_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-9025-1_4
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