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After reading this article you will learn about projection, regression and fixation and their measurement.
When an individual attributes some of his qualities unaccepted by the ego to another person, it becomes a matter of projection. Projection was first experimentally studied by Sears (1936). He secured self character trait ratings from 100 college students the traits being stinginess, obstinacy, bashfulness, and etc.
The individuals were then rated by others and it was found that there was no simple relationship between these two variables.
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Sears took a rough measure of insight into consideration and it was found that those people who possessed more than average amount of a trait tended to attribute more than average to others provided insight was lacking. But those who had insight did not attribute their qualities to others. This briefly means that projection of these characters to others was a function of lack of insight.
Murray found five little girls after playing a game of murder attributed a good deal of maliciousness to the photographs of some unfamiliar people. This is a clear case of projection. Wright conducted an interesting experiment on this concept of projection.
In this study Wright created in his subjects certain guilt feelings and found that projection occurs when the individual is confronted with guilt feelings. His subjects were eight year old children of both the sexes divided into Controlled and Experimental Group.
The subjects of the experimental group were given a preferred toy and an ugly toy to play. After half an hour the children of the experimental group were asked to give one of the toys to the subjects of the controlled group and interestingly, they gave away their ugly toy.
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When they were asked, what toys the other group would have given them, they replied “the ugly toys”, Wright thus found that the proportion of times the friend was considered to be generous was much less after the conflict situation in which the child himself was forced to give away the toy than it was after a contrary situation, in which the child did not have to give away a toy to his friend.
Thus, guilt feeling as well as lack of insight may give rise to projection.
Experimental studies done on the concepts of regression and fixation have made important contributions to psychopathology. The concepts of regression and fixation were first presented by Freud in connection with the “Libido Theory”. Regression from a later stage to an earlier one is a function of fixation and frustration. When the individual is frustrated in his efforts to gain satisfaction, he goes back to the primary object.
This is called regression. But the return of entire sexual organization to the earlier stage is called “Libido Regression”. A third type of regression is called “Instrumental or Habit Regression.” Some studies on different types of regression have been done on rats and fruitful results have been found in many cases.
Usually the deteriorated effects of frustration have been studied in the experiments on regression which is said to be destructive, vague, unorganized and scanty.
Barker, Dembo and Lewin (1940) performed an experiment on thirty children of above average intelligence. Each child was allowed to play alone with some toys for thirty minutes. Next day, he was given a much more attractive toy to play. After fifteen minutes, the experimenter without explanation took away the attractive toys for 30 minutes.
During this period the fine toys were in constant view of the child through wire net. It was found that not only the child showed less constructive behaviour after frustration, but these children who showed extensive frustration also showed the greatest primitive desire with disorganized behaviour. Sears thus has deduced the following conclusion.
“Both data and logic supports Freud’s statement that regression is a function of fixation and habit strength as well as the function of frustration in a secondary way.”
A more direct effect of frustration according to Freud is aggression. Considerable experimental evidence has however proved that aggression is a frequent consequence of frustration and Rosenzweig has emphasised its importance in ego defence.
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Interference with normal desire like eating and sleeping has produced great variety of aggressive actions as Sears, Hovland and Miller have shown in their summary of relevant literature.
In 1940 Lippit conducted an experiment on children play groups in which the experimenter serving as the leader strictly controlled the children. These groups showed more aggression when they were released from supervision than those who had liberal leaders. Barker and Dembo also found the children kicking, knocking, and scolding each other when they saw the toys but could not play with them.
Similarly Sears (1940) conducted an experiment on adult college students and after including certain frustrating situations he found that the subjects have become aggressive even towards the Experimenter. Amount of aggression depends upon the strength of frustration. The frequency with which overt aggression was reported viewed directly with the strength of motivation and frustration.
However, none of these studies are complete and unequivocal in its demonstration. Taken in bulk, however, they no doubt support the theoretical relationship between frustration and aggression.
Considering the experiments carried out to unveil the mystery of psychoanalytic concepts, it is found that, certain psychoanalytic concepts like sublimation; rationalization etc. cannot be proved and disproved. Though experiment on fixation and regression has brought forth important contributions, the studies on aggression, displacement and projection have defects which doubt their reliability and validity.