ABSTRACT
This chapter mentions projection mainly in the context of the impulse to expel. Projection, however, does not only serve the mind as it tries to fend off what is unpleasant. It is a basic feature of thinking and takes a key role in how our reality perception is constituted. Sigmund Freud used the term projection to describe a number of distinct mental processes: what they have in common is that they are all acts of relocating mental contents to the external world. The psychoanalytic concept of projection demonstrates the Buddhist notion that the human individual, normally, does not see reality as it is. The mind uses (external and internal) reality in order to again and again define the self and experience it as concrete, and it uses the experience of self to define and understand reality in relation to it.
