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Monday, February 13, 2012

Do psychological terms hinder enchantment?

"If we must talk about projections, I’d like to see them as interesting forms of imagination, not always negative and not always representative of a person’s repressed unconscious."
— Thomas Moore

Thomas Moore unpacks the popular term projection in his blog post "Is Psychological Projection a Good Idea?" today by giving different examples of the word's psychological use and suggesting alternatives to understand its value. Moore writes about his own experiences as an author and includes one of his current favourite images from Thoreau.

He concludes, "We are simply trying to see and say something and getting it rather wrong. But if we stay on the track, instead of withdrawing it, we may arrive at the desired and accurate observation. I never noticed James Hillman, the sharpest psychologist of all time, or Ernest Hemingway, the sharpest observer and narrator of all time, ever use the word projection."