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Now I want to return to projection. Discovering the underlying process was a completely unexpected result of modeling how the self-concept functions. Projection begins with negated internal images of what I’m not, and the rest is my natural response to these negated images. Now that you have an understanding of this process, you will be sensitized to it and start noticing it in what other people say and do. Knowing how this process works also points the way toward how to change it. Assuming that negated images cause projection, how would you go about changing it, so that someone would project less?
Sally: Well, this sounds too easy, but couldn’t you just ask someone to make positive images of what they have been negating? “OK, you’re not cruel; what are you?” That would get them to make positive images of being kind or whatever the positive quality is.
Exactly. If you say to them, “OK, you’re not cruel, so I assume you’re kind,” what are they going to say? It’s something that they have to agree with, because of the logic—and usually paranoids are very logical, which is one feature that makes it hard to work with them. And when you change a negated representation to a positive example, you are only changing the representation, not the meaning, so that makes it very easy to do.
“Tell me one of the ways in which you are not cruel.”
“I don’t torture cats.”
“OK, great. What do you do with cats?”
“I pet them and feed them.”
“Great, put an image of petting and feeding them in the place of that image of not torturing them.”
You first change the summary label for the database from “not cruel” to “kind,” and then have them go through their entire database and change each of the representations to positive ones of kindness. That might seem a bit tedious, but it actually goes very quickly, especially when you group similar examples. And usually the person’s unconscious mind gets the idea pretty fast and does the rest on its own.
Of course this process is a lot more difficult if someone has progressed all the way to full-blown paranoia, because then you are part of his dangerous and threatening surroundings, so he can’t trust you. If you suggest changing negated representations to positive representations, he will probably think that is part of the plot against him, and refuse to do it.
Sally: How can you tell if someone has gone too far into paranoia?
I thought that probably you were one of them, too. But when you asked that trick question, you revealed yourself for what you are.
Sally: Oh crap. All right!
Dan: What if you told them in great detail what not to do? “Don’t change any of your images of what you’re not into images of what you are.” It seems to me that if you are not trusted, and you tell him not to do something, that could be taken as a good indication that he ought to do it.
That could work, but I think you might have to build in some rationale for doing it that paced his belief system—perhaps something, just casually mentioned in passing, about the great danger in making negated images, because they tend to blind you to what is really going on around you, and of course that makes you vulnerable to people who want to harm you.
Another way to go about it is to pace the mistrust by saying. “Don’t trust me.” That paradoxically makes you at least somewhat trustworthy, because you are agreeing with their belief system. “I want you to carefully scrutinize everything I say and do, to be sure that there is nothing harmful in it.” That paces what s/he is going to do anyway, while presupposing that “There is nothing harmful in it.” Then you could go on to say something like, “Even if I’m acting with the best of intentions, I might do something to harm you inadvertently.”
That sentence may seem like a pretty innocuous pace, but it presupposes two very important and closely-related distinctions: One is the difference between intention and behavior, and the other is the difference between intention and accident. A paranoid takes perceived harm as proof of bad intentions, so thinking about the possibility of harm resulting from good intentions, or accidental harm completely separate from any intention, introduces two different kinds of possible counterexamples to his belief system in one sentence.
Just as very few people understand the consequences of negative commands, most people have no idea how important it is to have positive representations of their qualities (even if they don’t like them) rather than negations. They don’t realize how a self-concept that is defined negatively can get them into serious trouble. There are plenty of people who can benefit from learning how to think of themselves without negations, and this is a change that is usually very easy to accomplish once you know what to do.
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