Projection and other Defense Mechanisms
In parashat Devarim, we find a verse that reflects the psychological defense mechanism known as projection, “Because of God’s hate for us, He took us out of Egypt, to hand us over to the Amorites to destroy us.”[1] In fact, this verse can be identified as the origin in Torah for projection. Freud was the first to speak about defense mechanisms in modern psychology, but obviously they have been around since the earliest stages of our existence. In short, defense mechanisms are set up by the ego to protect itself. When they “operate” properly, they are usually subconscious. Defense mechanisms distort reality in some way to allow our sense of self to continue to function.
What is projection? The basic example is that I hate someone but for one reason or another cannot bear that reality. So instead of accepting my hatred, I project it on the person I dislike and build a mental reality where it is he that hates me. Understanding projection as centered on emotions—at the most basic level, about love vs. hate—is the easiest way to understand it.
Returning to our verse, Rashi explains that it reflects a type of collective defense mechanism. Out of God’s love for us, He took us out of Egypt and promised to bring us back to the Land of Canaan. But following the spies’ report that it would be impossible to settle the land because of its current inhabitants, the people were disillusioned. Perhaps they felt manipulated, perhaps the reasons were deeper, but they came to hate God because of what they considered an impossible situation He had placed them in. But they could neither admit nor face their hatred and so they projected it onto God: It is God that hates us, they claimed, that is why He took us out of Egypt to destroy us.
Though by some accounts there are upwards of 30 different defense mechanisms found in the psyche, all used to protect the ego, we can identify three that are the most basic: denial, projection, and repression. As we will see, they correspond to many basic Kabbalistic structures among them the three lower Worlds—Creation, Formation, and Action.
Three Practical Actions to Bring Mashiach
Since we are in the middle of the Three Weeks, we begin with the question of what we should focus on to bring the Redemption and Mashiach. We say in our prayers that because of our transgressions we have been exiled from our land, meaning that we are responsible for the sad state that the Jewish people are still in without a Temple, without a redeemer, the world is not in its ideal state. There is suffering in reality. The first question is: Who is to blame? The obvious answer is that “I am to blame.” Every individual must take responsibility for the state we are in. This is the contemplative meditation we should perform during the Three Weeks.
There is a famous saying from the sages, that any generation in which the Temple has not been built is like it has been destroyed in their generation. That is the usual way it is quoted. But, in the original quote in the Talmud, it does not say that, but rather “that it is as if we ourselves destroyed it.” Some sources even place the burden on every individual: Whomever the Temple has not been built in his days, it is as if he himself destroyed it. That is a very strong saying.
Going back to the first saying that we have been exiled because of our sins. The sages say that the all-inclusive sin for which we are in exile is baseless hatred. Therefore, the rectification is the very opposite. What we need to do to bring Mashiach is to reach a state of unconditional love. Just as the sin was unconditional hatred, so the rectification is unconditional love.
Are there other practical things we can do to bring redemption? In the Zohar, it says that the way to bring about redemption with kindness and compassion is by disseminating the teachings of the Zohar itself. Raya Mehemna (the soul of Moses) says to Rashbi, “with your teachings, the entire world will come out of the exile with mercy and compassion.” This took on even deeper meaning after the Ba’al Shem Tov asked the soul of Mashiach, “When are you coming?” And Mashiach replied, “When your wellsprings spread to the furthest possible extremes.” That is a condition. For Rashbi it was a question of the manner in which the redemption will come. By the Ba’al Shem Tov it was even clearer: the only way that Mashiach will come is when your teachings—the inner soul of the Torah—will spread far and wide, to everyone. That is the second thing we can do to bring Mashiach.
A third thing we can do to bring Mashiach is described in the Torah’s revealed teachings. The Rambam says that at the end of exile, the Jewish people will do teshuvah, and immediately they will be redeemed. Meaning that the Redemption depends only on teshuvah. The simple meaning of teshuvah is at a personal level, taking an account of what I am doing wrong relative to the Torah’s teachings and commandments. If we all think about our actions and regret what we have done wrong, and decide to never repeat it again and live up to this decision, then the Mashiach will come. This is the simple revealed condition for the Redemption to come. Every person should do this before Rosh Hashanah and make a decision that tomorrow I will be a new person.
Correspondence to Three Lower Worlds
These three practical actions correspond to the three lower Worlds in Kabbalah. The three lower Worlds can be described as the realms of thoughts, emotions, and deeds. Each of the three actions we can and should take corresponds to one of these Worlds. Since all three lower Worlds have evil in them, with growing proportions, each action is meant to heal the evil in that world. Though we will not develop it here, it is important to note that the World of Emanation that is above the three lower Worlds is already rectified.
| World | realm of | proportion of evil | rectified by |
| Creation | thoughts | mostly good | spreading the Torah’s inner dimension |
| Formation | emotions | equally good & evil | baseless love |
| Action | deeds | mostly evil | teshuvah |
Spreading the Torah’s Inner Dimension corresponds to the World of Creation and represents a shift in mindset. Changing our mindset is like what the Rebbe said that we need to open our eyes to see reality differently. That is the rationale behind the inner teachings of the Torah—to see reality with our inner eyesight, to see Mashiach. It says that for Rashbi, the author of the Zohar, the Temple was never destroyed, he continued to see it standing. If it was only up to Rashbi, he wouldn’t have to fast on Tisha B’av, but since he is part of the Jewish people, he mourns because of our state of consciousness. To change our mindset, Rashbi taught the Zohar, so that we could adopt his state of consciousness. This is in the world of Creation, where there is only a little bit of self-consciousness (or ego). The World of Creation is mostly good and only a little bit negative and it is defined as the world of perception of reality. Good in Creation means perceiving reality correctly. Evil in Creation manifests as perceiving reality incorrectly. Thus, rectifying the mind by spreading the wellsprings of the Torah’s inner dimension to see the world correctly, and not live in an illusion parallels the World of Creation. Creation is thus about perception vs. illusion.
The World of Formation is the seat of emotions. Most often we say that the two basic emotions are love and fear, however at times fear is replaced by hate. The World of Formation is half good and half bad. Which would mean that if love is good and hate is bad, then it is 50 percent love and 50 percent hate. Hate however is not always bad, because it says that those who love God shall hate evil, and God Himself hates Esau, even though he is Jacob’s brother.[2] The same Esau that God hates, Isaac loved (more than Jacob). The fact that we have two brothers here already presents a half and half situation. Nonetheless, we will say that hate is a bad quality in general and love is needed to rectify the world of Formation, as we said, to love unconditionally.
The World of Action is obviously rectified by doing teshuvah, getting our act together and fixing our conduct: from the moment we wake up to the moment we go to sleep. Consciousness permeates all three lower Worlds. If the question is “Who’s to blame?” and in these Three Weeks the answer is, “I am to blame.” That is the answer in the lowest world. Certainly, I am responsible for my mindset (Creation) and for my lack of love (Formation), but the thing I am most to blame for is for destroying the Temple because of my actions (Action). Most people shun responsibility or blame. Another word for blame is guilt. The World of Action is the world of guilt vs. innocence. When two people appear before a judge because of a dispute, the final decision must be that one is guilty, and the other is innocent. That is what the World of Action is about. You are either guilty or innocent. If you can take responsibility, then you have revealed the good in the World of Action. However, the World of Action is mostly evil, which means that almost no one can take responsibility.
This leads us to a parallel between the Worlds and defense mechanisms. In the World of Action, the defense mechanism against responsibility is repression. If I am found guilty in a court of law that is a huge blow to my ego. If the trauma of being guilty is too much to cope with, then I repress my guilt, I forget it. In the World of Formation, where good is love and evil is hatred, the defense mechanism is projection, which we began with. Using projection, we project our hate on the person we hate. Finally, since the World of Creation is about our perception of reality, the defense mechanism is known as denial. If the reality we are facing is too difficult to handle, we may end up entering a state of denial. This is not common, because the majority of Creation is good—meaning that people tend to accept reality, but some cannot handle it and end up setting up a denial defense mechanism.
During the Three Weeks, we have a chance to learn how to properly cope within the context of the three Worlds.
Above the three Worlds, there is a World that is entirely good. It is known as the World of Emanation and those who are tzaddikim live in its state of mind. How do great tzaddikim perceive reality? They see what you and I see, but they see everything like a garment for God. In the World of Emanation, God is always removing a garment and dressing in another garment, as it were. At a certain point, perhaps God will strip off the clothing and we will see Him, “eye to eye, when God redeems Zion,” “Your teacher will no longer be enclothed” you will be able to see Him directly. Every one of us should strive to experience reality in this way. Everything that happens and that is in our experience is just an external expression of God. To reach this state of mind, we learn Chassidut and try to teach and spread it. Just as living life in the three lower Worlds requires the ego to protect itself with defense mechanisms, so the tzaddik who lives in the World of Emanation has no need to protect his ego at all. Thus, there are no defense mechanisms per se in the World of Emanation. Let us summarize this in a partzuf:
| World | realm of | good and evil about | defense mechanism | rectified by |
| Emanation | nullification | all good: clinging to God | none | already in a rectified state |
| Creation | thoughts | perception | denial | spreading the Torah’s inner dimension |
| Formation | emotions | self-image | projection | baseless love |
| Action | deeds | responsibility | repression | teshuvah |
Alternate Terminology
Is there another way to describe the issue in the World of Creation, which we identified as perception vs. illusion? We could say even more simply: knowledge vs. ignorance. That explains why the Creation is also viewed as the realm of Torah. When people are ignorant, they live in an illusion. Knowledge builds perception. Socially we could call this literacy vs. illiteracy. The world is like a book. Some people know how to read the book—they are literate. Others are ignorant and cannot understand reality. If they cannot read the text, they end up most likely living in some form of an illusion. All the inner teachings of the Torah are meant to make us literate and able to perceive what is really happening.
The Power of Confession
The three evil aspects of the three Worlds are thus illusion, hatred, and guilt. How do we know this period is about guilt, about feeling guilt? Because there are 22 days, and the scroll of Lamentations that we read on Tisha B’av is based on the 22 letters of the Alephbeit, in acrostic form. The reality we blemished, the World, is like a text. We made ourselves illiterate and blurred the text. Every form of rectification of reality begins with confession. In fact, in the Torah itself, the practical element of doing teshuvah is confession. Why? What makes confession superior to just deciding to never sin again? Confessing with words brings to the fore of the consciousness forgotten or repressed memories. Without spoken confession, I will never remember these repressed memories I was not able to cope with.
What is the first word of the confession is “We are guilty” (אשמנו). The confession follows the order of the Alephbeit because it means to rectify all our words, all our memories. It is the general confession that we are the ones who are guilty. That word corresponds to the first day of the Three Weeks. Each day corresponds to one of the 22 words in the confession.
Torah and Defense Mechanisms
We began our exploration of Defense Mechanisms with a verse from Parashat Devarim, which is always read just before Tisha B’av. Just as this verse contains a clear example of projection, every one of the defense mechanisms identified by modern psychology has an example either in the Torah or in the rabbinic writings and all of them can be categorized based on our identification of the three primary defense mechanisms—denial, projection, and repression—corresponding to the three Worlds of Creation, Formation, and Action.
(based on a class given on the 25th of Tammuz, 5779)
[1]. Deuteronomy 1:27.
[2]. Malachi 1:2.
