The Microfracture frame is a reference to Wilkinson’s work here. Here I want to walk us through the usefulness of Edward Edinger’s writings on the exteriorization of an inner antagonist. The link takes you to a post titled: A Consciousness Challenge: Recognizing the Inner Antagonist in the Outer World. (I will track down the quote and add to my source quote collection lower left)
In my world, this is a very real problem which needs some special language to help us recognize when it is in play. Once you can see it, you also may find it hidden in plain sight…with a surprising frequency.
Edward Edinger suggests we consider the possibility conflict in the outer world is psyche propelling us into a situation specifically for the purposes of learning something essential. The timing reflects our readiness in the moment to consider the next piece in working through a complex. From this perspective, what we are in conflict with is an exteriorized, embodied, Inner Antagonist. This is a radical notion. What is the teaching?
For this to be a real thing, we need to understand psyche’s powers to project. And that we understand this will be unconscious to the ego. Recall, we only project what is truly unconscious (to the ego), and that projection is how psyche gets a split off piece of our depth work back out into the world, as an assist in beginning a sorting process where in at some point we can recognize it is our own shadow driving this. Because the true meaning is unbearable to ego consciousness, if you notice you are being asked to carry someone’s exteriorized inner antagonist, and try to talk about it with the person who is relying on this defense, they will not be able to consciously see what you are trying to point out. That is the special challenge. If you understand the dynamic and can feel the pull to carry the emotional tone associated with the antagonist, but do not get pulled into the force field created by this level of projection, you can be chill enough to experience the blur and even offer some help. My plate Representation of Persona Submitting to Emotion offers a map to support trying this on. The bad news is when someone gets strongly complexed, imaged by shall we say – Hansel and Gretal and the Witch in the gingerbread forest setting – in the moment one can become identified with either the Witch or the vulnerable child state; which ever one gets control of the steering wheel, the other gets projected onto the environment. AND it can switch in a nano second. The GOOD news is when you can see this, you can help by containing the Witch and supporting the vulnerable child state in being powerful enough to send the Witch back into the dream time. This requires a capacity to stay conscious within a blur state. Both the here and now and the dream time are activated in this altered and altering state of consciousness.
Before going into some theory which helps us think about how complex and yet often utilized these defense are, I want to make a case for a very useful try on with stuff that erupts into the environment like a bad dream. And that is, simple put: imagine this is a dream, your dream. When both parties can aspire to take 100% responsibility for where each goes within an outer world encounter – with or without video coverage – we have our best chance to get to the deeper layers of work which drive our repetition compulsions – or – episodes of enactment which fit our re-enactment of the wounding dynamics. The Edinger teaching after all works in both directions: how is what I’m getting from you an encounter with my Inner Antagonist, while at the very same time, what you are getting from me is an encounter with your Inner Antagonist? This is a truly awesome complexity!
When you wake up with a start from this dream, grab your journal and start writing as fast as you can to capture everything that just happened, as if it was your dream. Treat it as a communication from your Guiding Self. Include as much detail as you can. Keep adding to your depiction of the setting(s), scenes, speech, feelings, sensations, all of it. Note your spontaneous associations, call for memories. Try to get busy with all of that in an effort to get inside with your own process.
Remember, if you have just encountered conflict in the world, in what way are you being shown an inner antagonist? This helps us find our way into the co-created, dissociation enabled enactment which will show us, like an out-picturing of our soul wound via the dream time, what our core resonance or reactivity is about. Why now, why in this way has this come up?
And while we want to give serious consideration to the actual others in our relational world who will populate our dreams, intense feeling toned episodes always point back to our earliest challenges. It is the deeper level of personal developmental history and ancestral complexes at play in the dream at hand. In short, what can I hope to learn about my cast of inner antagonists?
Back to a depth psychological view: How is this impossibly complex defense even possible? From the psychoanalytic side, Christopher Bolus has described the defense mechanism employed here: “Kleinian psychoanalysts, in particular, have focused on one way in which a person may rid himself of a particular element of psychic life. He does so by putting it into someone else.” See the linked post for an interesting case illustration. I have a more lengthy comment on his observations in my post Projective Identification: Informing the Experiential State.
I am wanting to restate that assertion: One way in which a person may rid himself of a particular element of psychic life is by putting it into someone else. If like most, you have not heard about this power, try to think about if this could be true. The implication being that until we are ready to embrace parts of ourselves which through our known histories likely could not have survived our childhood conditions intact, we/psyche can just rid ourselves of them by just putting it/them into someone else? Mind blowing really. And try on what it might be like to have someone make such a deposit of emotionally charged experience into your core, and not notice it came from outside one’s self? Another big wow. It is also true that if/when we share similar core conflicts – core shame – we are more vulnerable to taking in these projected antagonists and becoming identified with them as if they were only our own self. Meaning we don’t see that the sometimes dramatic shift in our mood reflects something was put into us by another.
Suffice to say now, whenever we get triggered, get our buttons pushed, or simply are on the receiving end of an emotionally charged offering, with or without getting activated, it is important to consider, how might this be something deeper trying to come into consciousness?
For more on the subsymbolic and symbolic worlds and the role of enactments, see my Bromberg review post: Enactments: Setting the table…together.
*If you saw this offering before 2:30 PM on 9/18/25, you would be reading: A Different Kind of Homewrecker: When Inner Antagonists Get Exteriorized. Sitting with the post today, it has become obvious the use of label Homewrecker, whatever I was thinking, and I do have thoughts, was to jump into the deep end of the name-calling which has been such a toxic part of our political discourse/discord. Name calling reduces our world to othering; from complexity devolving into either/or, in contrast to both and more. It reflects an activation of splitting and scapegoating defenses. These primitive defenses are hardwired. Dante’s Divine Comedy describes a special place in Hell for Sowers of Discord (written between 1308 and 1321). It does not recognize the shared complexity. Seeing this I was able to connect more consciously with my own sadness and deep discouragement about the seriousness of the impact on family and friends when we can’t choose to be with our own contributions to the disharmony. When name calling seems to be again tolerated… My sincere apologies.
Let’s leave it there for now….
goodby for now,
chuck
Healing Within the Blur 
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