Healthy cognition requires a reciprocal exchange between subject and object that projection destroys

Evidence

When the subject is no longer able to return to the object what he has received from it, he becomes poorer rather than richer. He loses the reflection in both directions: since he no longer reflects the object, he ceases to reflect upon himself, and loses the ability to differentiate. Instead of the voice of conscience, he hears other voices; instead of examining himself in order to decipher the protocol of its own lust for power, it attributes the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” to others. … The resistance of which the paranoiac individual incessantly complains is the consequence of the lack of resistance, the vacuum which he generates around himself. He cannot stop. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 150

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The subject-object reciprocity claim is the load-bearing economic metaphor at Dialectic of Enlightenment’s core — worth sitting with.
• XREF: connects to: Knowing assimilates its object without destroying its in-itself structure — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1353; The cognizable object intermediates rather than terminates cognitive acts — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 229; Projection both enables and rationalizes the direct expression of repressed impulses — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 552 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• The cognizable object intermediates rather than terminates cognitive acts #corroborates (0.85) — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 229
• Projection both enables and rationalizes the direct expression of repressed impulses #expands (0.80) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 552