Definition
Projection is the attribution of one's own feelings, wishes, or qualities onto another person — perceiving in someone else what actually originates in oneself. A person in love often loves an image partly of their own making, assembled from their own hopes and unmet needs.
Greene treats projection as a force seducers harness rather than create. By staying vague, ambiguous, and lightly mysterious, a seducer leaves blank space — and the target fills that space with material drawn from inside themselves.
Why it matters
How it works
Projection fills informational gaps with self-generated content. Faced with an ambiguous or partly unknown person, the mind does not leave the blanks blank; it completes them, and it tends to complete them with whatever it most wants to find. A seducer who reveals little and contradicts nothing becomes maximally projectable — the target experiences a powerful sense of connection that is, in part, a connection to their own reflection. The corrective is concrete information: the more genuinely a person is known — their actual opinions, history, flaws — the less room remains for projection, and the more the relationship rests on the real person rather than the imagined one.