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In Chapter 10 Anna Freud starts by commenting that projection breaks the link between ideas that represent dangerous drive impulses and the ego. In this it is like repression, in that both act to prevent the instinctual process being perceived; other defensive processes affect the instinctual process itself. Projection is also like repression in that it can be motivated by any source of anxiety. Anna Freud refers here to the view of the English school that the infant projects its first aggressive impulses, very early in life, distorting the world around him and his personality development.
Little children use projection to disown their own acts and wishes when they threaten, by allocating responsibility to others who may be put forward as ‘whipping boys’, or accused of wrongdoing. She remarks (113, 123)1 ‘In either case it [the ego] dissociates itself from its proxies and is excessively intolerant of its judgment of them’.
While projection disturbs our relationships to others, it may also consolidate them. It does so through a ‘normal and less conspicuous form of projection’ (133, 123) which is a form of ‘altruistic surrender’ of one's own drive impulses in favour of others. An example of this is the case of a