If I project aggression onto the other she or he is likely to become…the mirror or embodiment of the aggression I am trying to displace onto her or him.
Jacqueline Rose
States of Fantasy
Severe personality problems can often find camouflage. No one thinks “I’m a sadist” or “I’m a malignant narcissist’ or a racist.
They find a belief system, social group or person that validates their most hateful, destructive impulses and construes them as virtues.
The most toxic and hateful people in the world are 100% convinced they fight for what is true and right. They find a way to give free rein to their cruelty, to attack, to treat others cruelly and viciously, they often find allies to cheer them on who also believe they are on the side of all that is true and good.
The psychological processes in this state of mind are splitting, projection & projective identification. Splitting means not recognizing one’s own capacity for hate, cruelty, and destructiveness. The person is blind to the bad in themselves. Instead, they project the badness onto some designated other. And this other person, via the defense of projection, is now seen as the repository of all that is bad and evil and necessary to destroy. That belief is the projection. It clouds all reasonable thought and objectivity.
The person now feels fully justified in unleashing their viciousness and hate on the other person, who is now seen (via projection) as someone monstrous who must be destroyed. If the person who is projected on responds to the provocation with anger, this is now seen as further confirmation of how hateful and destructive they are (this is what is called is “projective identification.”)
The end result is that the projecting defended person can deny their own sadism, cruelty, and hate—while simultaneously acting it out without restraint. And feel themselves to be 100% on the side of truth and right as they do it. Many of us may have been on the receiving end of such behaviours – whether at school, college, our families or workplace. It is a process that can destroy your own certainty and belief in yourself.