Displacement, Substitution, Superimposition

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings, my dearest friends. God bless everyone of you. Blessed be this lecture. Blessed be every step toward growth and unfoldment that each one of you undertakes. May the progress continue by those of my friends who are already deeply involved in this Path of self-confrontation. And may those of you who did not as yet find their way into this path in a more direct way find the realization and the enlightenment necessary to start the work within themselves.

In this lecture I should like to discuss a subject that has come up before, but which is not yet fully understood in its deeper significance by any of you. This is the topic of displacement, of substitution, and of the superimposition of feelings and needs. I believe that this subject deserves a more careful scrutiny and a deeper understanding. I can see that, particularly at this time, it is essential for all of you to realize this in order to make further progress. I can also see that some of my friends at the present time find themselves in negative involvements which they cannot fully understand, and therefore cannot resolve, unless this vital factor is recognized specifically -- as it applies to each individual.

When a person is confused in a situation, when he is negatively involved in a relationship, and when he cannot come out of a disturbed feeling -- in spite of certain recognitions -- then it is an absolute sign that certain emotional needs or that certain specific feelings have been either shifted into different channels or have been superimposed by other feelings. No matter how deep a problem or how severe a fault, it could never create a deep, abiding disturbance if the person were completely aware of it in its original form -- that is, without displacing it, superimposing it, or substituting feelings other than the genuine ones.

Each emotion, each feeling, each thought, each attitude, and each need is an energy current. There are many different types of energy, corresponding to the type of feeling or the type of need. A full, rich life in the integrated individuality expresses many different needs, feelings, and outlets -- not just a few. The more integrated a person is, the less do these various needs interfere with one another, and therefore the less friction they cause both within and outside the life of the person. The healthy life requires fulfillment in many directions. And it is certainly possible to attain this manifoldedness for which the entity is destined by nature. The exclusion of certain fulfillments at the expense of other fulfillments is the result of erroneous unconscious concepts, of limited understanding, and of the lack of self-awareness. In the healthy psyche one type of self-expression supports and strengthens the other -- rather than cause conflict. For example, displacement and superimposition result in a conflict between the need for vocational self-expression and the need for mutuality in a love relationship; the need for solitude and the need for companionship; the need for physical activity and the need for mental activity; the need for sexual expression and the need for creative expression; the need for self-assertion and the need for flexible adjustment; the need for ego gratification and the need for unselfishness. These and many other apparently contradictory needs and self-expressions can live side by side harmoniously in healthy interaction only if there exists no confusion as to the rightfulness and the fundamental genuineness of these different forms of expression, so that no superimpositions and no displacements occur. What appears as a contradiction to the conflicted, blind person is no contradiction in reality, but is merely proof of the richness and the manifoldedness of creation.

It is the belief that a need or a feeling is necessarily wrong that eventually makes it wrong. One's wavering uncertainty, one's fear, one's guilt, and one's shame about the existence of a feeling that one believes one "should" not have create an unhealthy climate that makes even the healthiest emotional need into something bad. This fact requires hiding, denying, and repression. Since the existing energy does not dissolve into thin air but seeks an outlet, like a stream, then the original energy converts into a different type -- a displacement. Or else it changes into its opposite, due to the feeling that the original emotional need is unacceptable.

It is very important to first become aware of what may seem like two contradictory needs and then to realize that they are not necessarily so, but that they are actually part of a full life.

The most prevalent denial, due to false guilt, is in the area of receiving. Anything that you wish to attain for yourself often causes you a vague feeling that this is wrong. Just because the need to receive is completely disapproved of and is therefore denied, its counterpart, the need to give -- as part of a rich, healthy, and fulfilled life -- cannot grow into maturity. Denying the need to receive causes the psyche to remain childishly selfish in this respect, so that a one-sided greed exists. Then this may be superimposed with a false, compulsive giving which -- just because it is superimposed and not the result of natural growth -- brings disharmony, resentment, self-pity, and often unjust exploitation.

A good example is man's need for sexual expression. Due to false guilt, the sexuality remains selfishly childish and is, therefore, unable to melt with the need to give and to receive love and affection. Consequently, the need for sex is denied and is superimposed with substitute needs.

Feeling erroneously guilty about the natural need to receive automatically impairs one's capacity to give -- no matter how forcefully and artificially giving may be practiced in order to squelch the gnawing guilt. This impairment encourages the false assumption that wanting to receive is wrong, thereby increasing the denial, the displacement and the substitution. To recapitulate: unfree, compulsive, problematic giving is often the result of denying a need to receive. The latter may be overgrown and disproportionately strong just because it is thought to be wrong and bad. It has to be ascertained specifically in each individual case and in what particular respect of one's personality this holds true. By unrolling this whole process, taking cognizance of it, a great deal of relief is given to the soul.

The following conflict regarding giving and receiving frequently exists. There is the compulsion to give and the guilt for wanting to receive. These two emotions may be comparatively easy to recognize. In connection with this factor, the person feels unfairly treated, exploited, victimized, and resentful -- while still being unable to stop the compulsion to give and the guilt for desiring to receive. He is faced with the unsatisfactory alternatives of either giving and then resenting it, or of receiving and then feeling unfree, inhibited, and guilty about it. If you cannot find the way out of this predicament, then you may be sure that you have not faced an underlying selfish, one-sided greed; nor have you fully understood that this greed is merely the result of a confusion, which ignores the fact that you are indeed entitled to receive something. If this is worked through, then your giving will be freer and so will your ability to receive.

I said before that if the original fault were fully conscious, then there would be comparatively little disturbance. Let us apply this truth to this particular facet of the human psyche. If the person could clearly see the childish, greedy selfishness -- which expresses: "Since I am so selfish that I want everything for myself, then I do not deserve to receive" -- then the conflict would cease, even before the greedy selfishness disappears entirely. The mere fact of being aware of it -- together with its consequent conclusion and self-denial -- would enable the person to reason and to understand that although the hitherto hidden one-sidedness is indeed unfair, the subsequent measure against it -- namely complete self-denial -- is equally unfair in the opposite extreme.

Whether it concerns the aspect of giving and receiving, or any other legitimate need and self-expression, hidden one-sidedness often creates overt one-sidedness in the opposite extreme. This form of substituting the disapproved need or the disapproved emotion with its opposite is very frequent, and is at the bottom of many conflicts which, in spite of various recognitions, do not dissolve.

Let us take another current problem, self-assertion. Suppose that a man feels guilty about expressing his healthy masculine aggressiveness, confusing it with unhealthy hostile aggressiveness. He finds himself in the following predicament and conflict. He desists from expressing his natural need for masculine self-assertion in the confusion that this makes him wrong. Consequently, he emasculates himself. His weakness causes self-contempt and resentment for others, whom he then blames for the unpleasant results of his own weakness. Or he does express his aggressiveness and because he vaguely feels that this is either unkind or unspiritual, he wavers. This wavering, in itself, makes the expression of his self-assertion, of his independence -- in other words, of his natural, healthy aggressiveness -- problematic because his own attitude to it is uncertain, either consciously or unconsciously. But, in addition, his resentments -- the result of suppressing his natural aggressiveness -- now mingle with the confusion, so that he no longer expresses its healthy facet, but actually the negative version of it.

Often my friends on the path have come to the point where they recognize the conflict -- both unsatisfactory alternatives: weakness versus hostility -- but they cannot find the way out until they find that they denied their original need for expressing their natural masculine aggressiveness while ignorant of the fact that it is a healthy need. When they give it a right to exist, then they will have no reason for feeling hostile -- at least in this particular respect and problem area -- so that expressing it will not create guilt. They will also be able to make the distinction between the rightfulness of this need and the equal rightfulness of a need for interdependence, of a need for relinquishing, of a need for flexibility. These latter aspects are most ardently denied by the person who weakens himself due to the above mentioned misconception. He substitutes for the weakness and the shame its concomitant, namely an exaggerated strength, confusing flexibility, adjustability, the ability to take advice with weakness, and then confusing rigid stubbornness with strength. He constantly wavers between giving in at the wrong time and in the wrong place -- because he disapproves of his aggressive tendencies -- and asserting himself where his reason would show him that to do so is detrimental.

In addition to substituting the opposite trend for the one that is denied, another current form of displacement is the shifting of the need into another channel. Where there is an exaggerated involvement -- an involvement which disrupts inner and outer peace, an involvement that leaves other important functions in life unfulfilled -- then one may be sure that such a shift has indeed taken place. Let us take some illustrative examples. An over-concern with one's creative abilities hardly leaves room for other needs to express themselves -- regardless of how constructive such self-expression may be in itself. Such an over-emphasis may be an indication of a denied need in another area of the personality. The resultant inner friction may become noticeable only gradually, after extensive progress in self-awareness. Tension, frustration, discontent, unexplainable hostility, over-reaction -- to the degree of even seeing that the intensity of the feeling is not commensurate with the occasion, and yet being unable to prevent it -- or numbness and the impoverishment of feelings in other areas are frequent indications of the inner friction which is the result of denying a rightful need. Outer friction with one's environment is often a further result.

There are many reasons possible for either denying or for ignoring the rightfulness of the original need. But whatever the specific circumstances -- such as the early influences and the personal images -- may be, it has to be recognized that this original need does indeed exist, even though one fears to acknowledge it. The need may have manifested clearly and openly at certain periods during one's past life. But now it may manifest only in the displacement area. If you are truly desirous to know the truth about yourself, then it will not be too difficult to synchronize the feelings of the original denied need and the feelings in connection with the substitute needs. Doing so brings immeasurable relief and peace.

For example, you may be frightened of love and you may therefore substitute your need for it with the expression of a talent. You ignore the fact that there is room for both -- and for many more forms of expression -- in your psychic life. Hence your fear to acknowledge the original need forces you to abandon an, in itself, equally legitimate need. You may still lack the necessary information about your inner misunderstandings and misconceptions responsible for your fear of love. Hence you fear that when you recognize the existence of your need, then you will be forced to plunge into it. Therefore you battle against recognizing the displacement -- or if you do recognize it, then you do so only in a flat, intellectual way. You also ignore what harm you inflict upon yourself, apart from the perpetual starvation that you expose yourself to. For example, the harm is that any unfulfillment, any hurt, any rejection, any disappointment causes an infinitely deeper suffering in the displaced area than the suffering connected with the original need. You need to be fully aware of your psyche's expression: "I am still afraid of love. I do not yet fully understand why, and therefore I am not ready to love and to be loved. But I do know that love is a universal need. What does its denial do to me? How do I really feel this lack? How many of the emotions involved in the substitution actually belong to my need for love?" Your growing peace, your additional insight, and your increasing ability to cope with issues that previously you could not cope with will prove to you how essential it is to live in truth. You gain full possession of yourself, even though you may still shirk love. You will prevent needless real guilts and putting yourself unnecessarily under the power of detrimental influences, which merely encourage that in you which is so harmful.

Shifting original needs into different channels may take various forms, apart from the example cited above. In other personalities the fear of loving may create an over-emphasis, an exaggerated need for a purely sexual expression. A compulsion for sex may also be the result of the denial of one's need to assert oneself, or the result the denial of one's need to execute a creative talent. An unbalanced, one-sided need for spirituality and for seclusion may be the manifestation of displaced needs in any of the forementioned aspects: The fear of love, the fear of sex, the fear of self-assertion, the fear of vocational expression. This fear is the result of ignoring the fact that all these needs -- and more -- in their healthy interaction are natural and universal, and therefore are no cause for guilt and for denial.

A generally ignored need is the need for ego gratification. The most enlightened people are under the false impression that to have a need for it at all indicates neurosis, disturbance, immaturity. In the well-functioning personality the need for it is acknowledged, but it is not exaggerated -- in other words, at the expense of other functions and other expressions of the self. A lack of the ability to give the ego its necessary gratification is a result of ignoring its healthy, unexaggerated existence. Being dependent on others, who then fall short of fulfilling this need, is a sign that the self disregards its rightful place in the overall scheme. However, if you are able to acknowledge, "I do need some measure of approval, some degree of gratification of my ego," then chances are that, provided you do not feel guilty about it, ways will begin to open which will offer you this fulfillment. Then it will be much easier to find certain factors within yourself which had prohibited the fulfillment of this need -- perhaps certain destructive behavior patterns that you previously could not see -- so that now you can guiltlessly acknowledge this need.

It is of the utmost importance to ascertain all your needs: to what extent they are fulfilled and to what extent they are unfulfilled. Think about the variety of universal needs and then look inside to see if you have given all of them a rightful place. Ascertain which particular needs you feel guilty for and ashamed about. Ascertain which needs must remain unfulfilled due to your personal image, to your main problem, to your unresolved conflicts, to your pseudo solutions, and to your idealized self-image. Then look further into your personal displacements: in what way -- either substitution by its opposite or shifting the denied need or the denied feeling into different a channel -- and to what extent. Then look at them from the opposite approach: observe your present negative involvements, your disturbing emotions, and any impasses that you cannot extricate yourself from because the available alternatives of inner and outer reaction are equally unsatisying. What real needs could possibly be at the bottom of such a nucleus? What needs have grown disproportionately strong due to your denial and to your false guilt?

The value of such an approach to yourself cannot be measured. I can see that it is of the utmost importance for all of you to undertake this step. Many lingering negative situations -- about which you may have gained some understanding but which you have been unable to completely come out of -- are the result of ignoring this vital step. After extensive insight has been made, your permanent personality problems and your unfulfillments often require only the final approach of this subject before a true liberating transformation can take place. It is also the best way to increase your ability to accept yourself in a spirit of realism.

Displacement and substitution not only occur with one's fundamental problems, with one's main image, and with one's inborn conflicts -- all waiting for the necessary understanding in order to be resolved -- but they also apply to temporary situations. After a poignant disappointment, an individual may deny a hitherto accepted need and, subsequently, shift the respective energy into a different outlet. It goes without saying that a fundamental personality problem may in some way be connected with this way of reacting. Nevertheless the displacement may not be permanent. It is of equal importance to be aware of situational displacements, otherwise the permanent denial of a need and, consequently, a substitution may come into existence.

Such temporary displacements may occur, particularly in the course of this pathwork, as an interim phase. Let us again take an example. Suppose you have a problem in regard to a partnership relationship, a difficulty in relating to the opposite sex. Let us further suppose that before you started and progressed on this path your pseudo solutions, your idealized self-image, and your defense mechanisms have given you some measure of fulfillment in spite of the existence of your unresolved problems. Of course, such fulfillment was always limited, problematic, fraught with tension, and disappointing in the end -- for it cannot be otherwise if one attempts to solve a problem by false means. But there was some measure of fulfillment. Progress in your pathwork has begun to dissolve, to a considerable extent, your pseudo solutions, your idealized self-image, and your defense mechanisms, but your original problem may not yet have been fully worked through and then understood on the deepest level of your being. Nor are you conscious of your needs and of their rightful place in your life. Hence, in the interim you find yourself in a transitory stage, which may confuse you because you know that you have grown, while you are experiencing a greater emptiness than ever before -- at least in this specific area of your life. You do not know why this is so. Now your needs are less fulfilled than before, but since you do not concisely acknowledge this fact, then their energy current shifts into another outlet.

Not being aware of the original need and of its present unfulfillment is bound to cause it to attach itself to another situation. Perhaps it produces a tight over-involvement with your work, where now there are too many intense reactions. Or perhaps it produces an over-involvement with a specific friendship, into which all your feelings and all your needs are shifted.

It does not suffice to be generally aware of the unfulfilled need of a mutual relationship, the need for a mate. It has to be specifically recognized that several needs are imbedded in this expression. For instance, there is your need for the pleasure principle; there is your need for being needed; there is your need for feeling important; there is your need to give; there is your need to receive; there is your need to be protective; there is your need to be protected; and there is your need for ego gratification. All these needs are legitimate, provided they are not overgrown and provided that one is not disproportionate to another. For example, if the need for ego gratification in a partnership is disproportionately stronger than the need to give and to receive love, affection and pleasure, then such an imbalance has to be recognized and the reason found. But even if all these various needs in this one form of expression are healthy in interaction but are ignored in such a temporary phase, then the entire nucleus of needs might be blindly shifted into another outlet. Then all these needs might experience a measure of fulfillment in the new transferred area -- in a different form, of course. Being fully aware of the substitution will make the shift harmless, even healthy and necessary. But ignoring the process must create untold and unnecessary hardship and confusion.

If a boss, an employee, a person you work for, a friend, a group of people, an activity, or an interest you have is supposed to furnish you with all of the unfulfilled needs of the missing mate, then you must become overly tense, hostile, and insecure. Every little slight, or every apparent slight, will hurt you much more than if you were aware of what goes on in you. Such awareness will make you joyfully accept those fulfillments that can be substituted for, but it will not make you expect what cannot possibly be expected -- therefore avoiding disappointment and frustration.

I do not mean to imply that the pleasure principle can be displaced into another outlet in its original form, of course not. It transforms itself. A hankering after luxuries may be such a transformation, or a craving for food, or a craving for drink. The full awareness of this will lessen the intensity and the strain, even if the displaced need has to find some outlet until it can be fulfilled in its natural way.

Let us take one more example. Let us assume that your main problem is a difficulty to make the best of yourself. In the course ot this work you have found and dissolved your idealized self-image, your pseudo solutions, etc. Hence, the small, precarious success that you had before is temporarily lessened. You now find it harder to assert yourself because your defenses no longer work, while you have not yet found the clarity of acknowledging your real needs without the fear of imagined dire consequences and false guilt. You now understand that your previous limited accomplishments were not a satisfactory solution. They were fraught with tension and with anxiety, and therefore in the end your ventures always failed, but without your really seeing why. Now you know. But you are not yet in a position to express your abilities and your talents without conflict and without uncertainty. It takes a little more insight and understanding before you can do so. In this interim phase, one in which you find yourself more frustrated than before, your respective needs are left without any outlet. Unconsciously you seek a substitute channel.

Again, it is important to recognize the various needs connected with this one issue of your need for vocational self-expression. Apart from your need to make a living -- which is the most obvious and the most readily recognized -- there are others. There is your need for creative accomplishments; there is your need for ego gratification; there is your need for self-esteem; there is your need for carrying responsibility; there is your need for coping with a challenge; there is your need for the pleasure of accomplishment; there is your need for self-assertion; there is your need for cooperation; there is your need for interaction. Provided one need is not disproportionate to the others, then all of them have their rightful place, and therefore should not cause you any guilt. By not acknowledging these needs, they are displaced either into a relationship or into a side activity. As in the former example, the fact of doing so cannot harm you, provided you are fully aware of it. This awareness prevents you from undue over-reaction, from tension, from frustration, and from the inner disorder and the imbalance which are always the result of the lack of self-awareness.

Look at your present activities and at your relationships in this light. Ascertain any possible over-reaction, any lingering or frequently recurring anxiety, and any other negative emotions. Then first examine and then ponder over the needs behind it. In this way it will become possible first to find and then to clearly determine the displacement. Then it is particularly important to ascertain to what degree you feel that you ought not to have these needs, and whether or not they are distorted due to your resulting denial.

It is essential to verify the various layers of superimposition and of substitution. The more these various layers are first undertstood in their true significance and then emotionally experienced, the sooner fulfillment can occur. However, the frustration of one's needs does not hurt half as much in actuality as the fact that, either consciously or unconsciously, one thinks that frustrated needs are painful. This false idea is one of the predominant reasons for repressing one's needs, thereby believing that they cease to exist. Thus you imagine that the pain of your frustration is supposed to be eliminated. In reality the displacement and the substitution result in much more severe and bitter suffering than would the relaxed admission of an unfulfillment.

Let us now consider the possibility of these various layers of substitution. Originally the need exists. This is the first layer. But you may unconsciously, or vaguely half consciously, feel that you, as a mature and good person, ought not to have it. Therefore you deny its existence. This denial is the second layer. In order to make the denial successful, you over-produce its opposite. Not only do you try to convince yourself that the need is non-existent, but you "prove" it by emphasizing its opposite. Then this becomes compulsive -- just because of the process involved. That is the third layer. As a further result, there must come resentment and dissatisfaction. This is the fourth layer. The fifth layer consists of is guilt about the resentment. In the sixth layer there is confusion, because all of these powerful emotions cannot be dealt with. They are merely a result of denying either the original need or the original feeling.

Displacement is horizontal, as it were. That is, one layer covers the other. Vertical displacement is when one substitutes one form of self-expression with another. Compulsiveness is also the result of vertical shifts, just as in the horizontal ones. The intensity of the preoccupation resulting from such displacements applies to both forms.

For example, if you are afraid to be rejected in love and, subsequently, you displace the respective energy current into the channel of vocational success, then the slightest real or imagined rejection in that field hurts infinitely more than would a real rejection in the original area.

Discussing such a topic must perforce happen in an over-simplified way. When it comes to the dynamics of the human psyche, there are many details which must be taken into consideration. Therefore, it ceases to be a question of clear-cut denial or admission. It is often somewhere in-between -- a half measure -- which is no more satisfactory than a complete lack of awareness of these processes.

If you find yourself involved in a negative situation and you examine yourself from the point of view under discussion here, then the mere fact that you acknowledge your needs for better or for worse -- even though you may not as yet be able to distinguish between distorted needs and healthy needs and between healthy emotional attitudes and distorted emotional attitudes -- is bound to relieve the painful situation that you are involved in of surplus intensity and of painfully twisted and conflicted emotions. You may try with all your might to understand a painful situation you are involved in by analyzing both yourself and the other person, but as long as you do not find peace, then you may be sure that something has been displaced.

Seeing this again and again with all of my friends -- with some to a greater degree and with others to a lesser degree -- makes this lecture of special importance. Regardless of how good your will is and of how sincerely you try, often you still fail to look in the right direction. Much of what I tell you at the time is constantly forgotten.

I recently discussed the topic of transference. Of course, transference is also a form of displacement or substitution. But often this term is not recognized in its full significance and in its various details. Displaced needs are also a sort of transference of them -- just as one may displace, or transfer, to another person the feelings that one originally had for a parent. In the lecture dealing with transference (No 118) I discussed that it is necessary to determine a negative feeling toward a person which is persistent and which cannot be resolved by finding that you originally felt in a similar way toward a parent, but that you did not dare to acknowledge this. The moment you now feel the original feeling toward the parent in connection with the new person, then the negatively involved situation must clear up -- while you will have grown considerably by this process of facing the truth within yourself. This is the identical mechanism with displaced feelings and with displaced needs.

Are there any questions now?

QUESTION: I have the feeling that, due to my childhood, there exists in me a childish greed which now manifests in a need for special consideration. Do I displace or do I superimpose this original need?

ANSWER: Yes, you are quite right. You so completely denied this childhood greed until recently that you go way overboard by denying yourself every gratification and every fulfillment. You feel extremely guilty, not only due to this still undeveloped part in yourself in which the childish greed exists, but also due to the legitimate, rightful desire to receive. You feel just as guilty about the one as you do about the other. Therefore you go overboard by denying yourself any gratification.

The fact that you can even ask this question indicates a tremendous step forward for you and a vast new opening of insight into yourself, one that will lead to clarification. This will prove of more crucial importance than you may possibly realize at this moment.

QUESTION: In an involvement with a new person, how can one be sure that it is not a question of transference of the parent?

ANSWER: One can be sure only by deeply examining one's feelings and then ascertaining the parallels, the similarities of reactions. But a relationship need not be shied away from because it may also contain elements of transferred emotions. Not only can one grow in such a relationship -- particularly when being alert to oneself -- but it is seldom the case that spontaneous, direct feelings toward the real person in question do not also exist, which might then make the relationship rewarding for both. To the degree that one recognizes oneself, to that degree the relationship will grow more real and less a repetition of old patterns.

I would also like to advise that you examine your unconscious motivations for this question, in that you might have hoped to hear that it is indeed merely a transference, and therefore no good. This might appear to imply certain disturbing questions.

Although not entirely new, this topic may open more new doors for many of my friends than a completely new topic at this time. It is essential for all of you to work through.

Let me go from you with loving, warm blessings for each one of you in your own way -- also for those who read this lecture. May all of you receive and feel this love, even if some of my friends -- due to their current problems, to their misunderstandings, and to their temporary involvements which are making them blind -- may not realize how much I am with them and how much I am for them. Be blessed, be in peace, be in God.

January 10, 1964