Blame Others
Psychological projection is one of the many types of defense mechanism. People use this type if defense to cope with their own emotions and feelings. Rather than dealing and admitting how you feeling you, instead, project it out onto others. Towards the end of the short story, Brown has a vision, or some may argue a dream, about his wife and peers basically worshiping the devil in a local forest. Young Goodman Brown received that illusion, or dream if you will, because of his own psychological projection problem. Young Goodman Brown doesn’t live up to his name, he felt ashamed to have been associating with the devil in the woods, and he was looking for something blasphemic in the woods anyway. There’s an old saying that validates…show more content… For example, one would say that the common qualities of a ‘good man’ can for the most part include loyalty, respect, or honesty, but in this case Brown isn’t any of these things. For instance, he purposely explored the wicked forest leaving his (fairly new) wife at home after she bagged him to stay. It is implied at the beginning Brown knew that the forest was wicked and so did his wife, “Brown felt himself justified in making more haste on his present evil purpose (620)”, but yet he still goes anyway. Then after that, he, as far as we know, witnesses some outrageous activities occurring in the forest. Soon after witnessing this event, Brown would not only change his perspective on his wife but it changed his entire perspective on everything and everyone around him. Switching up on your own wife is far from loyalty and that’s certainly not a good man quality.
Being that the subject of names are talked about, it is important to add that Brown mentions that not only is his father and grandfather good christians but that he and his entire family are supposedly good christians as well, ”We have been a race of honest men and good Christians, since the days of the martyrs (621)”. If this statement is true, why would he deliberately go into the forest with immoral intentions, and most importantly, why would he go against his wife's wishes for him to just stay