Compare and contrast (Part 1)

It’s an interesting thing that humans do.
Compare and contrast.
It seems they use it to make self feel better, and to make self feel worse.

Recent research reported by Canada’s Concordia University (only in Canada!).

People who hold onto their regrets put their health at greater risk. Research demonstrated one mechanism for coping with regret was to compare self to someone who is worse off and this it was found, boosted their emotional well-being. Those who compared self with more successful people experienced a worsening of symptoms.

An interesting finding in relation to the experience of regret. Not one which I would see as particularly healthy but that is for consideration at another juncture.



As a therapist it is something that one hears clients report, not uncommonly.

“I have been thinking of coming to therapy for some time but my problems seemed insignificant compared to others”.

Another common method is to compare and contrast self with a fantasised image such as this diagram shows.



In this instance the person does not even compare to another person but to a fantasised ideal image. This I think it is safe to say is quite common. We all have things about ourselves which we would like to be different which would make us ‘better’. Often therapy is about lowering the ideal self. The closer the real self and ideal self become the more self esteem one experiences.

This can also occur when the fantasised image is projected onto another. For instance in positive transference the therapist can be idealised to varying extents by the client. The client can then compares self to the idealised image projected onto the therapist.

One could say that when a person uses the compare and contrast method they are seeking an external reference point in order to understand self.

Is this a good thing?
Is it psychologically productive to compare self to others?



The alternative is to not look outside and simply look at self and assess self in that way irrespective of others. To my mind that is probably more healthy. Simply to be who you are.

However it probably is fairly normal to do a bit of compare and contrast. It is probably normal to use others as an external reference point in order to understand ourselves. If this is the case then one would be assessing the degree of compare and contrast used and if they use it for psychological health or pathology.

There is always someone smarter, richer, funnier, more intelligent, a better conversationalist and so on. Thus one could continually use the compare and contrast method to feel continually bad as one never matches up in the end. In this case compare and contrast would be seen as pathology driven.

Then there is the other approach
This is where I arrive at what the Canadians do. Compare self to someone who is worse off then one can feel better about self. There is something not quite right about this. Whilst it may provide short term self assurance I have my doubts about its long term success. To feel better about self because someone is worse I do not think is going to work in the longer term. There is something intrinsically not right about it and that in my view will probably come through in the longer term and thus the individual will suffer as a result.



Indeed here, I have provided a new theory of life positions. One of the points I make is that the life position of I’m OK, You’re not OK is more accurately stated as I’m not OK, But you’re worse. I can make myself feel better if I can see you as worse. It is stated in the article,

“it is not possible to view others as not-OK unless one views at least part of one's self as not-OK.”

To see others in a bad light does not deal with the persons own sense of not OKness. Indeed it could even be seen to reinforce it. As a therapist I would not be willing to contract with the client who wants to see others as worse in order to feel better in them self.

Finally compare and contrast could be used as a way to maintain pathology. One finds this when working with drug users. The worst thing that can happen to the habitual drug user is for an associate to stop using. This highlights for them what they are doing with their life. To compare and contrast self with other drug users one can get an assurance of their own OKness and to keep using.



Compare and contrast is a normal human endeavour.
The less one does it the better.

Psychopathology is indicated when:
One uses it a lot.
It is persistently used to maintain a poor self view.
It is used to maintain self defeating behaviour.

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The process of projection in transference

I will answer your question with this post Roses.

The script imago diagram is one way of showing how transference occurs in relationships.

This diagram comes from here.

As the child grows it forms relationship prototypes or relationship templates. These are shows as the slots in the script imago diagram which are categorised into three types. As the child grows it establishes its relationship with mother and father. This will include all the good stuff and all the not so good stuff including the unmet needs of the child. These are usually formed in the first decade of life and become the templates for later relationships.

As the child grows into adulthood it will begin to establish relationships similar to those templates established in childhood. The person will unconsciously select people like mother and also project onto the person mother like qualities. Thus the same types of relationships will occur over and over in the persons life. The psychological process of projection is an integral part of this process.

There are three types of transference described here. Those people whom we see as more psychologically potent than we are the parental figures or transference figures in our life. We will tend to project these templates onto people in our current life who are also seen as more psychologically potent than we are. Therapy is a perfect setting for a client to see the therapist as a more psychologically potent figure (parent figure) and hence the parent figure slots are projected onto the therapist.

If the son went into therapy over time he would begin to see the therapist in the same light as his father’s haranguing. This is done by him using the psychological process of projection.

People can also develop counter transference or dependent figure templates for relationships. Often this is done by older siblings on younger siblings. This happens particularly if the parents use the older sibling as a live in baby sitter and structure the relationship so the older one takes on a parental role with the younger one. Thus the older sibling develops a strong prototype for such relationships. These people in adulthood can become therapists who spend their working life looking after others who are in the child like position in the relationship.

Thus we have counter transference and the therapist can project their archaic image onto the client and this is where problems may develop in the therapy. The younger child can also use the older sibling as another parent figure slot. Some times youngest children have very few (and even sometimes nil) dependent figure slots.

In adulthood they are unlikely to seek an occupation where they are the looking after parental one like a therapist or nurse. It just wont feel right and they will not be comfortable in that role. They will tend to be more child like and self centered and end up in relationships that have that quality.

A child like profession in adulthood

Finally we have sibling transference. If the siblings or peers are allowed to interact as equals they can develop equal figure or sibling transference slots in their script imago. These are the templates they use in adulthood for equal power relationships. If a child was isolated for some reason then it may develop few and sometimes no slots for this type of transference. Children who are home schooled can have this difficulty or when parents for some reason do not allow the child to interact a lot with its peers. Only children can also do this.

In each case the process of projection is used by the person who projects the template onto the other. It can do this with the good qualities of the relationship and the not so good qualities. If the person had good quality and co-operative relationships with its siblings then these will be projected onto equal figures in adulthood. If it was encouraged to be very competitive with its peers by the parents then in adulthood this will tend to show out in the equal relationships. The person will project this onto the other.

How the soldiers relate to each other will depend on the projection of the early relationships they had with their siblings

As we can see this is different from the defence mechanism of projection. In that instance the process of projection is used to hide from some part of our personality that we do not like. In transference the process of projection is used such that earlier templates for relationships can be employed in our current day life.

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Transference and projection

Roses asks, “Is projection a lot different to transference then?”

Many do say that transference involves a good deal of projection but that is not actually accurate in the technical theoretical sense.

Projection was originally hypothesised as a defence mechanism. Its goal is to allow the person to maintain a positive self image. It allows the person to view self in a positive light which we all want to do.

We all have Child ego state urges that our Parent ego state does not think is right, good or proper. If we consciously acknowledge these in our Adult ego state then we feel bad about ourselves. They usually involve things like sexual thoughts, greed, envy, revenge and even feelings which some see as bad such as anger.

A good example of this is the passive aggressive personality. A woman has angry and aggressive feelings in herself which her Parent ego state thinks is bad. To maintain a positive view of self she must push these feelings into her unconscious so she is not aware of them. She can use projection to do this and will start to see those around her as being angry and aggressive as the passive aggressive personality tends to do. They tend to feel poorly and unfairly treated by the angry others around her and tends to view self as righteous and decent.

Of course her unconscious anger does not go away so she will also express it in a passive way such as with sarcasm, bitchiness, slight ridicule and so forth. With the proficient passive aggressive person, after talking with them for a time you start to feel bad (and maybe even angry) and you kind of don’t know why. They are so good at hiding the expression of their anger you don’t even know it is happening. That is one of the tell tale signs of the passive aggressive personality you come away from then feeling bad about something and you can’t really figure out why.

However getting back to the point. The passive aggressive personality often uses the projection of their anger out onto others so as to defend their own self perception.

Transference involves “placing mother or father’s face onto the therapist or another person”. That does sound very projection like and often the person is quite unaware they are doing it which is also a feature of the defence mechanism of projection.

However in transference the wife’s projection of father’s face onto her husband is not to defend ones self perception. She is not doing it to keep some unwanted urge or feeling in her unconscious. Hence it is not a defence mechanism in the technical sense of the word. Thus one could argue that it is not projection which is a defence mechanism which is designed to keep something out of the conscious.

So what does one conclude? It seems to me that humans are capable of projecting out internal feelings, thoughts, urges and relationship prototypes and so forth onto others in the world. We are all capable of the psychological process of projection. However there are a variety of reasons why a person would employ the process of projection of which all humans are capable. Thus we have two aspects of projection.

1. The psychological projection process.

2. The psychological motive behind the projection.

If the motive is to keep some undesirable feeling in the unconscious then we have the defence mechanism of projection.

If the motive is to place a relationship template onto another person then we have transference projection.

In answer to your question Roses. In transference people will use the psychological projection process but for different motives than it is used in the defence mechanism of projection.

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Projection as a defence **

I was asked a question about projection today. I have put some of my response here.

Projection is what is called a defence of defence mechanism. It allows the person to psychologically defend them self against something. One thing that I have learnt over 20 years of psychotherapy is that humans are very good at lying to themselves. They are very good at hiding from themselves.

To really understand what a defence is in this sense it is advantageous to understand where the concept came from.

Freud postulated ‘projection’ in the late 1800s when he lived in Vienna, Europe.

In this diagram he suggested that a person at any one time has 5% of material in their conscious and 5% in their preconscious and the other 90% resides in their unconscious. When a person felt or thought something that was not acceptable to him he would place that thought or urge into the unconscious. For instance the married man who felt lust after his neighbour’s wife may find this quite unacceptable to him so he ‘placed’ such urges in his unconscious. Then he no longer has to worry about it (in the short term).

Remember that where Freud lived (Vienna) and when he lived (Late 1800s) sexual repression was at it highest perhaps in the history of modern mankind. Sex was completely taboo. So when people had sexual thoughts of some kind they would feel repulsed and disgusted as they had been trained since early childhood to think such things. So the unconscious allowed people to cope with such things (in the short term).

The problem was that the urge did not go away, It had just been shoved into the “too hard basket”, and in the longer term it would keep coming back. That is it would spontaneously arise from the unconscious into the conscious. This meant that in the longer term the person had to defend them self against that urge and hence the development of the defence mechanism.

In Transactional Analysis we have the ego state explanation of the dynamics of a defence such as projection. This is shown below:

This is sometimes referred to as the hydraulic theory of personality. The Child ego state has an urge. For example a married man my feel sexual attraction to another man at work. But he has a Parent ego state which believes that this is totally immoral and disgusting. So the ‘force’ from the Child and the Parent collide. There is an impasse as they say. This collision is like a wave hitting up against the rocks on the shoreline.

When two opposing forces collide there is always a result. In the human psyche it is a symptom of some kind.

The resultant collision provides the force or the energy for a symptom or defence mechanism to develop. For instance the symptom may be anxiety or depression or even something like homophobia. The man can also develop the defence of projection. In this instance instead of acknowledging the homosexual impulses in himself he will project them out onto others. So he will see other men as being homosexual or behaving in homosexual ways when in fact they are not.

So projection allows the man to trick himself or lie to himself. “I wont see my own Child homosexual desires, instead I will see others as being like that”. This allows him to feel relief that he is not homosexual but he must continually guard against other homosexual men because they seem to be everywhere. When in fact he is really guarding against his own unconscious (Child) homosexual impulses that keep arising into his own conscious. Thus his projection defends his positive view of himself.

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