Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor LCPC Practice Exam 2026 – Complete All-in-One Guide to Exam Success!

Projection is a defense mechanism where a person attributes their own unacceptable thoughts, feelings, or impulses to someone else. The scenario described—taking unacceptable thoughts that belong to oneself and placing them onto another person—fits projection exactly, because the thoughts are still originating from the self, just presented as belonging to someone else.

Introjection, by contrast, involves internalizing others’ attributes, values, or beliefs and making them part of oneself, not attributing one's own thoughts to another. Denial is a refusal to acknowledge reality or facts, rather than transferring internal thoughts onto another person.

So, the best fit for this description is projection: it captures the act of externalizing internal, unacceptable thoughts by projecting them onto another person.