One day Anna* had a serious argument with her younger brother, whom she had taken care of all her life. A few days later, he dropped out of university.
It was unexpected: before the argument, he had planned to continue his studies despite one course he had fallen behind in. That was what the argument had been about.
For Anna, this was one chain of events — she said a lot of harsh things to him, and he snapped.
This made Anna angry. She had taken care of him, and this was what he did — deliberately, to punish her.
The Other Deliberately Causes Pain
Anna discussed it in a session:
— So you think he dropped out of university specifically because of the argument?
— Of course. He snapped.
— What was he trying to show by doing that?
— It’s obvious — he did it to spite me.
— So he wanted to hurt you?
— Yes. He knew perfectly well how important his education was to me. He went straight for the sore spot.
From the Uncaring Other to the Destructive Other
This was not the first conversation that had ended with a similar conclusion. As in situations Anna had explored before, the other person’s actions very quickly acquired a particular meaning.
Earlier, it had sounded roughly like: “he doesn’t care about what matters to me.” Now something different appeared: “he knows exactly what matters to me, and he is deliberately destroying it.”
The Other was no longer simply uncaring. (More about this at the beginning of the series.) He was becoming someone who deliberately caused harm.
At the same time, Anna said almost nothing about what had actually happened during the argument. She remembered that she had been very angry. But when she returned to that state in the session, it was mostly to explain how her brother had driven her to it.
The question of what her own rage might have meant for her brother remained aside.
Anger at the Analyst: Projection in Psychotherapy
One day, the analyst got caught in it too:
— When you say that he wanted to hurt you, are you sure about his intention?
— What else could it have been?
— I don’t know. But it is interesting that you know exactly what he wanted.
— Well, of course I know!
Anna made a movement as if she were about to get abruptly out of the chair. She was angry with the analyst. But she stopped.
— You’re attacking me too!
— Perhaps this is similar to what happened with your brother.
When the Other’s Intentions Become Obvious
Anna recognised the scenario in what was happening. When a certain Other appeared within the complex, his intentions stopped being unknown. They became obvious and hostile.
The manager did not care. The children did not take her into account. Her husband ignored their agreement. Her brother wanted to punish her. And now the analyst too.
Anna was almost always the one things were being done to.
Then it became possible to change the angle of view. A few days before her brother left university, during the argument, it was Anna who had been seized by rage. She was the one saying things intended to hurt him.
But after her brother’s action, the destructive intention belonged primarily to him: he was the one who wanted to cause pain.
Perhaps her brother really did want to punish her. Perhaps his decision was connected with entirely different reasons. For the analysis, something else became important: why had the version of his destructive intention appeared so quickly and been experienced as completely obvious?
Something similar had just happened with the analyst. Anna experienced his question almost immediately as an attack.
Projection of Aggression: Something of One’s Own in the Other
At some point, it became possible to suppose that the image of the hostile Other sometimes contained something that Anna found difficult to encounter in herself.
In psychodynamic theory, this process is called projection.
Projection does not mean that a person simply “invents” the other, or that the other necessarily has no aggression of their own. The other person may indeed be angry, dismissive, or want to cause pain. But in projection, something from one’s own psychic content begins to be experienced as belonging to the Other and influences how that Other is perceived and what intentions are attributed to them.
For Anna, the essence of the question changed.
Earlier, surrounded by a “hostile” world, she had asked herself: “Why do they all treat me like this?”
Now another question appeared: “Why am I so sure that they want to hurt me?”
Seeing the Projection Is Not Yet Taking It Back
She could already doubt her own certainty. Perhaps her brother had not intended to punish her at all. Perhaps the analyst had not been attacking her.
But seeing a projection does not yet mean recognising as one’s own what had been placed into the Other.
If destructive intention did not always belong only to the Other, a much more difficult question remained: what was happening within Anna herself in moments of rage?
At first, this question might provoke irritation rather than curiosity.
That will be the next article.
* — the name is fictional, the story is composite, permission to publish was obtained. Any other similarities are coincidental.