[Update: Note that several links have been added below the break.]
One of the most common defenses of childhood is externalization. It is not at all atypical for a child to react to a disappointing grade with the explanation that the teacher is unfair or needlessly rigorous. The fault is therefore not the child's perhaps less than stellar study habits or preference for TV and video games to study, but is rather the responsibility of the teacher, who treated the child most unfairly. A refinement of externalization is projection. In projection, a more immature and pathological defense, the child did poorly on the test because the teacher holds a particular animus for the child. "My teacher hates me and marked my test unfairly." When projection is transient and situational, it falls within the spectrum of "normal pathology"; ie, the typical neurotic reactions that we all have to one degree or another at one time or another. However, when the projection becomes fixed and codified, it takes on the force of a character defense; a person whose character is dominated by a particular pathological defense has a diagnosable Character Disorder. (The Character Disorder most associated with the use of projection is the Paranoid Character.) Finally, when the immature and pathological defenses predominate and reality testing fails, psychosis is the result; the person shows a complete break down in their ability to assess and deal with reality.
The individual who adopts projection as a characterological defense is a well known type. Typically, the person is a loner who is usually noted muttering to himself about the lazy/evil/nasty blacks/Jews/Arabs who hold him down. They believe that everyone not identified as supportive is a potential enemy who wishes them harm. Such an individual can be functional but is deeply suspicious, assumes everyone is trying to do to him what he wishes to do to others, and can, under the worst case scenario, decompensate in a dangerous fashion. Some cases of shooting sprees pertain to individuals who are paranoid characters and decide to redress their imagined grievances by finally acting on their quasi-delusional belief that others have it in for them.
For the individual who adopts a more specific, targeted projection, the outcome is more perilous. Here the enemy is identifiable and contains all the venom that the individual cannot tolerate recognizing within himself. Further, the assigned enemy becomes the explanation for all of the person's failings. The dynamic takes several steps:
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