A friend wrote me the other day and told me that her analyst one told her that the real job of dogs was to receive human projections, and I thought it was one of the wisest observations I had ever heard about the new work of dogs. How many times have you heard someone attribute a thought or narrative or motive to a dog that says more about them that it could possibly say about a dog?
Technically, according to Wickipedia, a psychological projection, also known in the psychiatric field as blame shifting, is a theory in psychology in which humans defend themselves against unpleasant impulses by denying their existence in themselves. A person who is rude may constantly accuse other people of being rude, a bully may accuse others of bullying, a lonely person may see others as lonely.
The projection of one’s own negative qualities onto others is a common occurrence in every day life, part of the process of self-delusion and a reluctance to really know oneself. Freud considered that in projection, thoughts, motiivations, desires and feelings that cannot be accepted as one’s own are dealt with by being placed in the outside world and attributed to someone (or something) else.
What the ego doesn’t want to believe is simply transported to another being.
With dogs, projections may be somewhat broader in definition. People tell me all of the time what their dogs are thinking, who they resent, what they aspire too, what they find funny, who they mourn and how, how they are willful and defiant, jealous or resentful. This kind of thought-shifting onto dogs and cats especially, (horses too) is a very new phenomena in the annals of the human-animal bond, at least on this scale.
Dogs used to exist on the periphery of life, they have recently moved to the center. They have human needs, sleep in our beds, have better food and health care than many people in America. They are often seen as surrogate children.
The culture feeds into the emotionalizing of animals. The Rainbow Bridge, a poorly written, sappy and ludicrous story about how dogs wait for us in heaven so that we can throw balls for them for all eternity, is the most popular – and selfish – dog story in the world. (As if Red or Fate would rather chase balls for me for all time than go find some sheep.) Still, it is a wonderful and successful example of projection – we assume that dogs must want the same thing we want, mostly because we can’t accept the idea of losing them.
Projections often defy science and reality. Dogs do not have our language or vocabulary, they do not know or possess our human narratives, they don’t need or want the same things we want and need, they don’t know what death is, how could they mourn us for years and make plans to play with us forever in heaven? We are an arrogant species, we think if we love something, it must love us in the same way, or be just like us have our emotions and foibles.
I’ve had border collies for years, and they are very smart about many things and very stupid about other things. My dogs have never needed to master hundreds of words I keep reading that they now know – “get the sheep” and “lie down” usually is enough. Rose was a genius at moving sheep around, a blithering idiot when it came to trying to herd town plow trucks in snowstorms. Can’t you tell the difference?, I used to shout, between a big truck and a ewe?
Dogs are, in fact, the perfect receptacle for human emotions. Because they are a blank canvas, because they don’t speak, because they are wholly dependent on us for survival and can’t voluntarily leave. We can take all of our human neuroses, our shit, if you will, and dump it right onto them.
They misbehave because they are abused, they are jealous if we touch another dog, they disintegrate if they are left alone, they miss us so much we can’t leave (or they chew up the furniture.) This is, in a way, blame-shifting. We are reluctant to take responsibility for our poor choices in acquiring dogs, or our confusion or laziness in training them, our need to see them as something they are not. Somehow, it’s always their fault, never ours.
This, in part, is why hundreds of thousands of dogs are now on anti-anxiety and anti-depression medications, something they never needed or had for most of their long history. We are making them as crazy as we are.
If you pay attention to the people projecting their emotions onto dogs – if you listen for a bit – you will learn quickly enough that they are talking about themselves in most cases, not the dogs. When I get or dog or train a dog, I remind myself every day that the key to understanding them is to accept the respect the idea that they are not like us, they are a different, alien species. They don’t speak in words, think in words, project dog narratives onto us, emotionalize us, or love them in the way we love them. We can’t communicate with them if we stick only to our own words and narratives, we have to listen to theirs.
Yes, of course they have emotions, but they have animal emotions, not people emotions. They think in images, not words. Our struggle to understand dogs are complicated by the corruption of modern science and behavioral studies and growing value in the animal welfare industry. No graduate student or trainer or behaviorist has ever gotten a grant or sold a lot of books or gotten on TV by discovering that dogs don’t think like we do, or are not intelligent in the ways we wish them to be.
We are told constantly how smart they are, how many emotions they have, how much they grieve, how telepathic they are, how they can spot cancer, read our minds, can’t bear for us to leave them, sense death days before it comes. There is a lot of dubious science out there about dogs, take a look at the Amazon dogs page. But if you talk to any vet or serious animal researcher, they will shake their heads in wonder at the new and scientifically dubious ways in which animals like dogs are being viewed.
Science, in many ways, is no different than politics. Scientists need to survive, they often tell us what we want to hear, especially when it comes to animals. Dog scholars like James Serpell of the University of Pennsylvania – he has spent his life studying the domestic dog – are true scholars. They seek the truth, not the emotionalized fantasies of needy human beings. They will not get rich or famous.
Serpell’s landmark book, The Domestic Dog: It’s Evolution, Behavior And Interactions With People, is the best and most seriously researched book I know of about dogs.
I have never found a truer or more helpful guide to understanding dogs, if that is what you really want. You will not see Serpell on TV performing magic with angry pit bulls or selling $30 videos about the Rainbow Bridge. But you will learn what dogs are really like.
Projections are inevitable when it comes to dogs, human nature seems to need to see the domestic pet as an emotional surrogate for disconnected and needy humans. Dogs become what we need them to become, we are much more powerful than they are.
I project all of the time, it is almost an instinct. But I also know that my projections are invariably false and self-serving. Fate does not herd sheep out of love or loyalty to me, but out of her own ferocious instincts. I can read what I wish into it, she can’t tell me otherwise or walk away. I believe that dogs have a greater purpose for us than to be the garbage cans for our emotional yearnings and blame shifting. It is, of course, so much easier to put it all on them then to take responsibility for ourselves. They do pay for that.
Dogs are much more equal than that in my mind, they walk with us through life.
I try and always remember when I can that the key to understanding them is to respect them as the wonderful animals they are, not a neurotic and emotionalized version of us.
I happen to love dogs because they are not like us, not because they are. Dogs are never cruel, vengeful, greedy or envious, they never sue one another or go on cable news programs to shout and argue. They deserve better projections than we can offer them. Perhaps it would work better the other way around: if they projected their acceptance, adaptability, respect for one another and deep affection onto us.