Living with an Unruly Mind: Ventriloquism of the Mind, Part 2

Watching Arthur Worsley’s ventriloquism stage act from the 1950’s on YouTube made me think about a psychological trick that my unruly mind can often act out in my day-to-day life.

This is how it seems to work: Sometimes, when I observe another person, I can experience thoughts and feelings that I don’t want to have or haven’t purposefully thought myself. It might just be someone in a café, on a train or at a work event but it can be someone I don’t even know or have no intimate knowledge of, but I find my unruly mind making up stories about them. Why is this?

In psychology this mechanism is called projection. I’m performing an act like a fantasy ventriloquist by projecting my thoughts and concepts and life preferences onto another person, making up stories in my mind about them, unwittingly making them into a dummy to my act of subliminal ventriloquism.

But there’s worse to come because by observing the other person as a dummy they unwittingly project back to me my own thoughts (and they can’t see my lips moving) and my unruly mind will then start automatically reacting to my own projection like a mirror reflecting an image.

My unruly mind will also often start giving me an internal commentary about the other person and before I know it, I’ve succeeded in effectively throwing my “voice” (my ideas and concepts and values) onto that other person like some evil manipulating ventriloquist.

Now that I’ve discovered this trick of my unruly mind I can notice when it’s doing it, do my best to stop it and this allows the other people to be themselves, who they really are rather than my projected dummies, however scary they might look, and for me not be so judgmental.

It also makes sitting in the coffee shop a whole different kind of experience. If you’ve ever seen the movie “Being John Malkovich” you will understand what I mean.