The Five Stages in the Withdrawal of Projections
The
process of gaining insight into a projection takes place in several stages.
As an example Jung refers to the case of a Nigerian soldier who heard a
voice calling to him from a tree, whereupon he tried to break out of the
barracks in order to go to the tree. When interrogated, the
soldier stated that everyone who bore the name of this tree heard its voice from
time to time. To us this is a case (archaic identity),
because, for the soldier, the tree and the voice were obviously identical.
A separation of the idea of the tree from that of the voice or of a
tree-demon (as the ethnologist might put it, in this case) is actually a
secondary phenomenon, corresponding to the next stage of
consciousness, since a
differentiation
has now taken place. A third stage would arise with
the need for a moral evaluation of the phenomenon of the voice, which
would be seen as the manifestation of an evil or good
spirit.
A fourth stage would go still one step further in the process of
elucidation. At this stage the existence of spirits would be
denied altogether and the experience written off as an illusion.
At the next, or fifth stage, one would have to reflect on how such
an overpowering, extremely real, and awesome experience could suddenly become
nothing but self-deception. P&R 10