10: Displacement

Displacement involves redirection emotions, typically from something or something less intimidating or uncomfortable than the cause of the emotions. The classic example is a person who has a bad day at the office, then goes home and initiates a quarrel with their spouse.

Displacement can have a chair-reaction type of effect: the man who has a bad day at the office starts a quarrel with his wife, she disposes of the emotional baggage by being controlling or stern with their child, and the child gets into a fight with one of his classmates.

Most commonly, displacement is identified with anger, but it can involve a wide range of emotions - such as the childless couple who dote upon their dog, the drudge worker who volunteers to work for charity, the unpopular child who becomes a video-game champion, and so on.

Displacement also plays a role of scapegoating, the very definition of which involves taking the feelings of frustration about something that cannot be controlled and directing it at something else. In the literal sense, farmers may torture and sacrifice an animal to vent their frustration at a poor harvest, and in the more common sense, a person who cannot accept their own failure blames another for having interfered in his efforts.

Displacement is also evident in hypocrisy: those who revile their own faults but refuse to change their habits are fond of criticizing others for the very same thing. It is their inability to control themselves (or even accept the need for self-discipline) displaced upon other people.

While the target of displacement is typically a person, it can also be inanimate objects (the golfer who blames his club for a poor game) or imaginary ones (belief in gods and other supernatural forces). With trials and genocide are often dramatic instances of scapegoating. Or less dramatically, the spate of executives who constantly blame "the economy" for their failure to run a profitable operation.

Scapegoating is the very basis for the christian religion, as the figure of Christ is a scapegoat for all of humanity - much in the way that lambs and goats were scarified in pre-christian religions.

One interesting form of displacement is internalization - in which an individual ascribes the behavior of others to his own shortcomings. This is a common behavior with depression and the author asserts that it can be said to underlie "almost every case of completed suicide."