about introjects

Hi, Dr. Inobe,

I cut and pasted my favorite "introject" posts by you from the past year. I may be missing some. They don't all address the precise concerns of the other poster, but they are all about introjects. :)

Hope you don't mind this little "anthology". I included the dates of each post so that anyone interested can find the original threads.

8/07/03

Introjects are often worried about 1) being done away with, or 2) losing their power. I always tell them that a) I am not in the business of getting rid of important parts of self, b) I couldn't if I wanted to and c) they can become internal heroes, eventually, once others understand how important their jobs were for survival.

Perp introjects assumed their role, at an early age, for several reasons. 1) having the perp inside served to prevent some harm from happening--- like having a warden inside. 2) it was a better feeling to identify with the powerful perp than with the victim, so the self did get to have the pleasure of a feeling of power, though at the cost of feeling as malignant as the perp, 3) blaming the child for the trauma serves to maintain the attachment to the perp, and remember a child will do ANYTHING for love, and 4) I always forget one.....oh yes, keeping the child silent may have kept the child alive.

Introjects need to be appreciated for the difficult job they did, and how misunderstood they are by other parts of the self. They need to be reminded, with mirrors and a current newspaper, of their person, place and date (oriented x 3) because they can be WAY WAY off. They need to be reminded that they are not the external perp, so they are off the hook for the perps crimes. At that point, they often get very tired, and I take their hand, and I may add some bilateral stimulation right here - limited.

At that point they often take off their perp introject costume, and are revealed (in the client's minds eye, as well as mine) as the young child part of self they were before they donned the robes. Exhausted, they'll curl up and sleep a healing sleep, and I tuck them in in their minds eye with a blankie and a bear, and a bowl of applesauce, or whatever they need.

And the therapy proceeds without as much interference going forward.

02/18/03

There are many possible ways a self system can develop - usually the "front" part of the self is the "face that meets the faces", and is more like a store-front or porch, with the inner dynamics being like the internal rooms. Yes indeed, the front part can distract, but we don't call it an introject. An introject is when an external person is sort of swallowed whole in the mind's eye, or rather, that a part of the child's self adopts the persona or "costume" of an external person.

Introjection is normal. We all have introjects of key people in our lives and those introjects "speak" to us even though they may be long gone. They live on in our heads. The problem introjects are the internal clones of external people who were malignant forces inthe child's life. Then, it is as if the child gets a toxic injection of the external person. There are many reasons this occurs, psychodynamically, including but not limited to: keeping the child in line by internal reprimands, which may decrease the external ones; maintaining some level of attachment, even if it is only a crouton of love the child got from that person; wish fulfillment, if the child manages to idealize the person, as in, "my Mommy is a great lady," and more which escape me right now.

So a front part of self is only an introject when the kaleidoscope is turned that way, that is, when the part of the self system that is the introject is facing forward. Said another way, it is when the environment pulls for the state dependent learning that is associated with that introjected role. Or, you could say, when the environment pulls for the person to act the way their Mom would (for example).

2/18/03

I have found that when the front part of the person is willing to tolerate the discussion with the child in the introject costume, all goes well. The trickiest ones are when they won't even tolerate the discussion...

I love a drawing by a client in which her monster part of self (anger) takes off her monster costume and its hanging on a tree, reptilian head upside down from a knot, costume unzipped and hanging on a hanger. Child (about 7) is sitting sweetly at the feet of a loving internal resource (in this case, Jesus) providing infinite compassion and love to the formerly horrific and rejected part of self.

11/21/02

...in answer to your question, yes, introject work is parts work. Introjects are one type of part of the self, and very important ones indeed.

9/22/02

Most of the books on dissociative disorders discuss perpetrator introjects if only briefly. Watkins and Watins in their 1997 book Ego States Theory and Therapy, Frank Putnam in his 1986 book, Colin Ross, in his 2nd edition of his book Dissociative Identity Disorder:Diagnosis, Clinical features and Treatment of Multiple Personality, and others. Also, books on psychodynamic theory such as Mardi Horowitz Theory of Psychodynamics discuss parental introjects though not necessarily perpetrator introjects. It is the toughest concept for most clients to get -- that the dreaded perpetrator lives on in their head and is therefore an aspect of self -- that's the bad news. The good news -- unlike the external perpetrator, the internal one is modifiable.

Replies:

Re:about introjects, by Sandra Paulsen Inobe PhD, 09/01/03

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