Projection and Denial 

    This post is a response to three reactions to my last posting regarding projection as an essential step in relating to another. My point is that we do not have another means to relate to another except by projecting our entity (identity) onto him to start communicating, then depending on the narcissism involved in the situation we would withdraw back some of our projection but never all of it. The objections to my formulation reminded me of a paper by Freud [Negation, 1925, S.E, XIX]. I reread the paper -after more than fifty years of the first reading- to find in it something quite central in projection. According to Freu's paper negating an idea is denying or negating projection: "if you think that I am saying this to prove your interpretation is wrong you are wrong". However, and as Freud says in his paper, negating takes different modes of expression to confirm itself, like admitting to something to deny another. 

    The point I want to make is that in projection (unconscious) there is an implicit negation of something (unconscious) related to what is said, in negation (conscious) there is an unconscious projection involved. As an example: a newly married man was making well known that he loves his father-in-law like a real father and negated that joking about him in public is expressing something different. What I want to clarify is that analytically speaking there is no psychological phenomenon that is not a duality but not a duality of Cs.\Uns. The duality is between two psychological entities of the same nature. So, a projective sentence would be both Cs and Ucs, as its implicit negation would also be of the same nature. Underlining this point makes the analysts look at projection as an entity of duality which would then require to be looked at as an antithesis of its negation. 

    In clinical practice we should examine the bipolarity of each conflict but by also revealing the bipolarity within that main bipolarity. This is the best way to bypass the structural polarity of Cs\Ucs. and get to the psychodynamic of psychological life or at least the therapeutic process. It also shows that a psychical entity has within it a denial of something not openly mentioned. In other words, projection, or the basic link we have with the other, is fundamentally negation of soemthing that either start a relationship or drop it before iy begins, unless the Other can bypass the negation in it.

    Projection and negation are the two sides of the coin of relating. Just think of transference to put this sentence in perspective,