Dealing with Introjects
One of the most powerful learning processes of the psyche is that which is described in psychology as “Identification with the aggressor”. This describes the possibility of utilising personal responsibility in such a way that one declares something foreign as one’s own. At some point the little child becomes capable of saying this sentence to himself: “Watch out! You are not allowed to go into the drawer where the jelly babies are!” It has identified with the (foreign) parental prohibition. Freud called this the super-ego. This process can be dysfunctional, whereby very hostile, very nasty and very rejecting messages become internal introjects. From a technical consultancy point of view, these must be recognised as something which one has adopted and that one can (now) decide whether one wishes to distance oneself from them (again) and whether one wishes to find one’s own (new) views about oneself and about that, which is important and right in life. For this it is necessary to experience the corresponding inner impulses as foreign representations (see here). It is only through the resulting inner conflict that the possibility arises, in the next step, to process this and to solve it.