They recently asked me to write about Introjects, and I thought that if I write about introjection, it is impossible not to mention identification - these are two very close processes. This is something that you have to work with often and a lot in order to separate your own from someone else’s) Because introjection is not always bad, and this is what we learn in the process of growing up in our family system and in society, because we do not live apart from him. A child is born too vulnerable and unadapted to life, and in the process of upbringing and socialization, the child learns many messages. Metaphorically, this could be compared to eating porridge. Mom gives him some kind of porridge: - Decent girls don’t behave like that, for example) Baby, he swallows the porridge, and it becomes part of his introjective base. Now when she looks at herself or at other decently indecent girls in certain situations, she looks “through her mother’s eyes” and thinks, this must be so indecent!) Or this: - Was it even possible? :-) Introjection is a mechanism through which a person lets certain ideas, attitudes, beliefs, etc. inside. from another person without digesting the information. F. Perls The problem of introjection is not only that we internalize certain attitudes and use them unconsciously, without “chewing” them properly, without analysis, doubt and reflection, but also that it is applied to different contexts without analysis. In the family they broadcast that weakness is a bad quality, a person grows up with a complex of Omnipotence and shame for any of his mistakes or inability to cope with something, which makes his life very difficult, and any undertakings because they are fraught with mistakes. Or they broadcast that We lived our whole lives, baby, because of you. The baby believes that she is the cause of all the torment that happened in her family, and it is she who is to blame for her birth, otherwise everyone would be happy. He is terribly afraid of children in his life. Or, for example, that divorce is very bad, you need to live together at any cost, etc. And then you have to take out these “introjects” and chew them. Whose shame, who needs it, why not? Etc. The question is not to throw it away or spit it out, as teenagers do with the same porridge that they swallowed with such pleasure) And then they spit it out at the parent and say, everything doesn’t suit me, it’s outdated :-) But the question is to relate it with the context of the current reality and situation and give it your own meaning, carefully “chew” it, in other words, or if it doesn’t fit at all, leave it to the ancestors, the system, the guru, etc. and develop your own. The most unpleasant phenomenon is introjective locks, when one introject contradicts the meaning of another and a person in a difficult situation is literally jammed due to the inconsistency of attitudes. He cannot understand whether this is his desire or not? Does he need it for something or does society need it? This is where he is pulled in opposite directions, and in the clinch he usually cannot budge. Identification is a process somewhat different from introjection, but in some ways similar. This is an unconscious copying, remember how your mother frowned and pursed her lips, raised her eyebrows and what did she say? Now try to remember when you do the same thing with the same facial expression? A person is identified with the behavior of someone close to him, even if he suffered enough from this behavior at one time. So, if the father was an explosive person and quite unrestrained and aggressive, then the child, against his will, over time becomes identified with the internal Aggressor. He habitually attacks himself inside, and cannot even resist this voice. The topic of identification was practically not developed in Gestalt therapy; it was once developed by Anna Freud. And this topic is worthy of attention, because the voices of our loved ones, whatever they may be, then become our inner ones. And they sometimes sound shaming, accusing, frightening, where there are not even prerequisites for this, thereby stopping our some