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IntrojectionHere is how I described introjection in Interruptions to Contact: Introjection refers to the process of swallowing something whole – or hook, line and sinker. It is not, however, simply a matter of showing naïve gullibility. It may involve being force-fed. If I habitually introject, it means that I unquestioningly accept all that is given to me and take in these ideas immediately as authoritative “shoulds” - to the extent that they shape the very core of my personality. Explicit examples might be cultural rules such as “Children should be seen and not heard”, “Big boys don’t cry” or “Girls should always be ladylike”. Other examples are taken in more implicitly, such as “I should never disagree with those in authority”, “I will be ostracised if I show all my strengths” or “I am boring and nobody is interested in what I have to say”. Many introjects are acquired during childhood. It’s not what is swallowed that is significant here, but that the process of swallowing-whole in itself is a pervasive personality pattern that prevents me from forming my own beliefs, and so from forming the figure of my true self. A few years ago I was on a station in the evening, having missed my train home. I bought a take-out coffee and sat on one of the benches in front of the bar on the platform. Someone in a hood was at the other end of the bench and turned to ask me for a light, which I didn’t have. I caught a quick glance of their face – not much, but enough to see it was red-eyed and tear stained. I had an hour to wait. I asked what the matter was. She told me she was 17 and that she was leaving home because she was gay. Her elderly parents had been telling her this was disgusting and sinful and she didn’t want to stay there anymore. She had a friend she could go to. I was touched by her story. We spent some time together, talking, until our trains came. I’ll try to use some of this to highlight the introjections that were in the background of our conversation. She said that one of the worst experiences of living at home was her parents telling her they were praying for her. She felt they were praying for a different daughter. Also that each time they told her this, they were letting her know she was “faulty” and that they were ashamed of her. The girl said she felt proud to be gay. So, the first possible introject that I became aware of here was one of the parents having swallowed their religion whole – requiring that they also swallow smaller mouthfuls without question (in that they may have swallowed it without question from their own parents, who swallowed it from theirs etc). If they had questioned/spat out one mouthful, then they would not have been accepting the truth of their faith – here, what they believed to be the word of their god. I say “possible” because it’s equally possible they had fully assimilated their religious beliefs. That their religion has become like “ A theory which you have mastered – digested in detail so that you have made it yours – (and one that) can be used flexibly and efficiently because it has become ‘second nature’ to you.” (PHG, 1951, 190) I remember my experience of religion at school, where we seemed to cope quite well with completely contradictory introjects. We went to our science lessons and took notes on evolution and attended R.E. and did the same with regard to the implications of creation. We learned to regurgitate both quite happily according to whichever O’level we were being examined in. That sort of parallel swallowing wasn’t a problem for the authorities who were feeding us their ideas – nor, indeed, for us. We saw it as a way of making the grade – getting the O’level – and, (certainly in R.E) were willing to suspend our disbeliefs in order to get another one. So we were able to discriminate between bits of the religion we were willing to swallow, and bits we were willing to pretend we believed in order to satisfy the matriculation board. However, back then we weren’t offered other religions to meaningfully assimilate alongside the Christian model. Additionally, we weren’t invited to disprove any scientific theories. So, for the parents in this story, their religion was so integral to their being in the world that they felt it preferable to reject their daughter in lieu of questioning its teachings. The girl was also raised in the same faith and so had to break through her own introjects around what “goodness” was to her. The parents (I suggest) were unable to cope with the question, “Can I love my god as well as my daughter?”. The girl was fierce in her assertions that she was entirely comfortable with her sexuality. Yet when she described her parents’ insults and their reports of prayer, she described them as constantly needling her and sticking the knife in - persistently, slowly and over time. As she shared the insults poured upon her I sensed her pain at them – somewhere in her blushed cheek and tightness of jaw I sensed a gap where the pain may have seeped in. As she had been brought up with the same beliefs as her parents, then it would be likely that she may have some old shame around her choices, despite also being proud of her ability to make them – her freedom to travel beyond the boundaries of the “divorced parent” (Clarkson, 95, 1989). I would imagine that it would have worked something like this… The parents have introjected that same sex relationships are wrong – in this case, that they are “sinful”. Because of this, they projected their disgust onto their daughter – perhaps not being able to feel a shame in themselves for disowning her or to reject the pieces of their religion that dictate that they do. The girl feels their disgust, absorbs it into her skin (here through the needling and knife going in) and feels shame. The girl, as she compares what feels good and right for her with the offered “shoulds” from the outside, makes her own discriminations. She is no longer confluent with her parents, feels disgust at their shame and leaves their needling environment for one of her own choosing. It’s hard for her to completely escape this and, even as she tells me how wrong she thinks they are, she feels the needles going in a little still – her introjection of their introjection, not fully worked through yet. “Forced feeding, forced education, forced morality, forced identifications with parents and siblings, result in literally thousands of odds and ends lodged in the psychosomatic organism as introjects. They are both undigested and, as they stand, indigestible. And men and women, long accustomed to being resigned to “the way things are”, continue to hold their noses, desensitise their palates, and swallow down still more.” (PHG, 1951, 202) A gestalt therapist would work on, among other things, remobilising the repressed disgust reflex (Ibid, 207) by psychologically chewing and digesting what we find nourishing and tasteful, and by spitting/vomiting out that which we don’t. Of chewing what we hold on to into a pulp. Of course, this is often easier said than done. I remember when we were kids there was a lot of hype about which was best – Pepsi or Coca-Cola. We would favour one of the two brands and identify with it fully, defending it in all matters against its adversary. The big marketing campaign at the time was that of conducting The Pepsi Challenge. There was a time when my friends and I couldn’t walk through any shopping centre without being invited to take it. For those of you who didn’t, it involved tasting two samples of cola, each in a plain, white, plastic, vending-machine-type cup. You had to say which tasted nicer. Easy. (Except that it was always Pepsi.) The challenge for us wasn’t so much in having our favourite brand failing our preference test. It was in our actually having to taste and savour the two brands in quick succession – struggling to find a way of discriminating between them, trying to sense something of a substantial superiority in at least one – and, hopefully, the one we had been siding with all along. The most challenging aspect of the challenge was in our admitting to ourselves that we couldn’t distinguish our own brand. We were faced with the awareness that our loyalties were precisely about the colour of the cans and, aside from that, pretty meaningless, other than as a way of enabling us to express differences from each other. We didn’t attach to these the fervour of football fans, but they did represent a simple, casual, throwaway means of stating whose side we were on. The Pepsi Challenge got in the way of all that. So, rather than assimilate its implications we decided to simply stop taking it. We happily went back to our comfort zone of holding rigidly onto our fixed beliefs and identifications, regardless. But with more awareness, perhaps, of why…… References: Clarkson, P. (1989) Gestalt Counselling in Action, London, Sage Publications. Perls, Hefferline, Goodman. (1951) Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human copyright Sarah Fallon 2006 |
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