Projecting and the Law of False Attribution

Joseph Burgoin
Defense Mechanisms
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Relationship Issues
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Unbearable Emotion
41

I've been meaning to write this post for more than a year now; from the beginning, I've had this particular title in mind although I'm not 100% sure that it's the right one. If anyone has a better suggestion for how to name this particular mental process, feel free to submit a comment.

I call the phenomenon I want to describe a "law" because it seems to be a fundamental principle of human mental functioning, an in-built assumption that if I am feeling bad, then someone or something is causing me to feel that way. In other words, we attribute a cause-and-effect relationship between the way we are feeling and the actions of people around us. Sometimes this attribution may be accurate -- Your continual criticisms are causing me to feel terrible -- but on other occasions, it may be false: The way you chew your food is driving me crazy! In the latter case, I am probably feeling irritable, tired and grouchy; rather than recognizing that I feel the way I do because I didn't get enough sleep last night or because work today was highly stressly, I falsely account for those feelings by attributing them to you and your irksome way of chewing.

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Feeding the Therapist

Joseph Burgoin
Points of Departure
29

Following my vacation last week, I've returned with a renewed respect for the importance of time off from work. Since I first launched this site, and even moreso since undertaking my book on psychological defense mechanisms, I've been working very hard to develop good content and enlarge my audience. I'm passionate about this project; ensuring that my posts are of high quality demands a lot of energy. I've also taken on a number of new clients this past year; I can't do my best work without a significant emotional investment, so these additional relationships have also called upon my internal stores. By the time I delivered a draft of my book to members of my writer's group, just before vacation, I realized I was very tired.

This is not to say that I don't get "fed" in important ways by my practice and my writing. I do. But when you're in the business of caring for others, with underage children still at home, it's easy to get depleted. When you have important goals you want to meet, it's easy to ignore your own limitations in the drive to achieve them. At the same time, because I absolutely refuse to give up my time at the piano when life's other demands suggest it would be wise to do so, sacrificing sleep instead, I can easily exhaust myself. So by the end of July, a combination of professional and family demands, ambition and brattiness had worn me out. I needed a vacation.

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What I Mean When I Use the Word Shame

Joseph Burgoin
Self-Esteem and Self-Sabotage
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Shame/Narcissism
110

I'm just about ready to deliver a draft of my book on defenses to the other members of my writer's group; as part of the final revisions, I've been attempting to clarify my ideas about shame as they're so central to the work I do; the text below is adapted from a chapter about defenses against shame and reflects my efforts to sharpen these ideas.

Although I can't print her name, I'd like express my thanks and acknowledge my debt for all the help I received from one of my long-term clients, a gifted therapist herself and a women who cares as passionately about this subject as I do. She pointed out some holes and inconsistencies in prior posts and helped me clarify what we both believe to be crucial ideas. Thanks, S.

Of all the painful emotions humans must bear, a core sense of shame is the most excruciating, the most difficult to bear. My views on shame and its origins likely differ from how you normally think about it; before describing the most common defenses against shame, let me clarify these views with a brief detour into neurobiology and early infantile development.

Upon birth, we human beings are intensely vulnerable and reliant upon our mothers and fathers to help us grow. The course of our development depends upon how they respond to our physical and emotional needs, and we enter this world with a set of in-built expectations for what those responses ought to be. Winnicott referred to this genetic inheritance as a “blueprint for normality.” When our parents respond appropriately, in keeping with that blueprint, it feels natural, right and good, instilling us with a sense of safety in our world and of our own intrinsic beauty. This experience forms the core of self-esteem.

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Listening to Pain

Joseph Burgoin
Depression and Bipolar Disorder
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Society and Culture
87

Early in my practice, a client said something that has stuck with me for the last 30 years. A trained dancer, she told me she avoided taking pain relievers because, in her view, pain was her body's way of providing important information to her and she needed to "listen". Although you'll sometimes hear medical and body-work experts echo this view today, when you move from physical to psychological pain, it's rarely mentioned. The idea that one needs to "listen" to one's emotional pain gets short shrift, especially if that pain has been labeled depression, anxiety or an eating disorder. In the current mental health profession, dominated by cognitive-behavioral therapy and psychiatric medication, pain is something to be removed or eliminated. Take this drug. Try this CBT technique.

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Bearing Witness and Being Seen

Joseph Burgoin
The Psychotherapy Relationship
54

Many features of the psychotherapy relationship contribute to growth and psychological "healing" to the extent it is possible. In an earlier post about attachment theory, I discussed the importance of the emotional bond between client and therapist for development, especially the therapist's ability to empathize with and ultimately feel genuine affection for his or her client. Implicit in that emotional attitude is the therapist's conviction that the client's experience, however painful and chaotic, is worth paying attention to. It has value and meaning. The simple fact that the therapist devotes his or her full attention to the client's experience -- bears witness to it -- contributes to the healing process in ways we don't often mention.

Human beings are social animals: part of our sense of self comes from our relation to other humans -- being seen, acknowledged and validated by other members of our pack or tribe. To an important degree, this is what it means for life to have meaning. I have a number of clients who live extremely isolated lives; they're deeply pained because they feel they don't matter to anyone, that they're invisible and that it wouldn't matter if they were to disappear. It isn't just that they feel lonely and long for emotional contact with others; without anyone to bear witness to their lives, they have trouble maintaining a sense of their own personal worth and the meaning of their existence.

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