During the course of my own therapy it has become apparent to me that I believed I had certain attributes or character traits which I believed held me back from getting what I wanted from life. I also realised that I believed there were certain qualities, which I felt I was destined never to possess. After further exploration I found that the belief system originated from the way I was related to as a child by my parents, and how in rum I experienced myself. What emerged for me from this exploration was the many ways in which my parents had projected into me aspects of themselves they did not have the courage or integrity to own. Alongside this they further denied me the right to express my true self with all my innate creativity, curiosity and spontaneity in a way being taken from me. I have spent much of my therapy taking back what is mine and returning what isn't.
Christopher Bollas in his book The Shadow of the Object (1987) identifies those two process as 'projective identification' and 'extractive introjection'.
What I intend to do in this article is to explore these two concepts and examine them within the framework of family dynamics. Christopher Bollas (1987) describes how the two processes can go hand in hand. I cannot do justice to the complexity of those two concepts in this article but I will outline the ways in which I believe these processes occur within families, in particular between parents and children. I will also link these processes to Transactional Analysis in a variety of ways, and most importantly will explore how these damaging psychological processes can be reversed.
Bollas describes how in projective identification, people on a psychological level put into others some aspects of their own psyche that they don't want. An example might be, if a person has been shamed for displays of spontaneity in his or her childhood they may disconnect from their own feelings of shame by criticising their own children when they are spontaneous. In this way they unconsciously rid themselves of their own shame by passing it onto their child. The child may rebel against the criticism or may repress their natural spontaneity but they will in one way or another identify with the Criticism.
Bollas puts forward another concept which he explains as 'extractive introjection'. This is a destructive process which Bollas defines as occurring "when one person steals for a certain period of time (from a few seconds or minutes to a lifetime) an element of another individuals psychic life" (Bollas 1987 p158). He suggests that when this occurs between a parent and a child or within the family system as whole that it may take a considerable amount of therapy before the stolen part of the self is reclaimed. An example of this process is what Bollas calls "theft of mental structure" (Bollas 1987 p 1 65). An example of this is when a parent belittles a child's capacity to think issues through for him/herself and appropriates for themselves the function of thinking, then over time the child's abilities to rationalise and problem solve will be dismantled and they may feel incapable of solving problems. He/she may also lack in confidence and come to perceive their own reality and thinking processes as unreliable and untrustworthy. They may come to identify who they are in terms of confusion rather than a clear thinker and thus their capacity to think and clearly articulate their thoughts and their capacity to 'know what they know' has been stolen from them. They instead acquire a mistaken self concept which in TA terms can be seen as the beginning of a 'racket feeling' of confusion.
As we grow into adults we may respond to a requirement to think and articulate by experiencing confusion, anxiety and or blankness, a belief that we are 'stupid and can't think' and then go into an internal shaming process. Beneath this adaptive or learned set of thoughts and feelings will be the original clarity of thought, creativity and the ability to validate our own reality and thought processes. Even further into the real self of the violated person is likely to be the original rage at having been used in such a way by their parents. Some useful permissions for people to reclaim around these issues are 'you can learn to think for yourself and I will think for myself' or 'I am glad you are starting to think for yourself'. There are many other permissions, around these issues which can be used as part of the therapeutic reversal of the process and it is important to note that any encouragement of script change needs to be accompanied by sufficient protection of the client, and an awareness of any potential backlash.
The connection between projective identification and extractive introjection occurs when a parent for example, steals' an element of their child's psychic life and then deposits an unwanted element of their own psychic life. This can happen in a myriad of ways. In TA terms this process can be related to the injunctions (negative script messages) we may receive from our parents. For example, a parent who conveys to a child the injunction 'don't feel' may convey to that child that their distress in any given situation is a sign of emotional instability. What the parent is doing here is unconsciously appropriating the affective processes of that child and depositing in the child's psyche their own shame about their own distress. The child may grow up believing that emotional distress is a sign of 'weakness' and may force themselves to 'cope' or 'be strong' even under great duress. This learned response protects them from feeling the shame projected into them by the parent should they go against the original message and feel all their feelings.
In this way the original healthy emotional responses are taken from the child and the parent replaces them with their own shame or guilt or whatever they may be projecting. It is partly through this process that children can carry their parent's emotional instability, their parent's shame and guilt, their unresolved feelings within a family. Parents may carry out this process differently with each child so that each child carries a different unwanted aspect of their parent's inner psychological life. In families such as this children may acquire different roles such as the rebel, the failure or the star to provide reflected glory for the parent.
The good news, however is that we can reclaim what is our own and give back what does not belong to us. We can change the old messages and give ourselves new ones. We can own our own shadow parts without carrying the shadow parts of our parents. We can become who we really are, feel what we feel, know what we know. We can think, be creative, make mistakes, get things wrong and get things right. We can symbolically give our parents back their shame; their critical voices and we can keep hold of those parts of them that were loving and healthy.
We can recover what was stolen, grieve our losses and live our lives with Joy and freedom as we were meant to. We can reclaim our self love, self importance and ultimately our true self and we can let of the old processes that hold us back and we can quite simply be whatever we are.
Within the supportive environment of the therapeutic relationship we can slowly but surely experience the tide of change. We can take in new information about others the world and ourselves. We can take in new messages, experience healthy, authentic contact; we can resolve our inner conflicts with safety and support. We can experience and recover lost aspects of our psyche and ]cam to care of ourselves in the way we deserve which is with love, gentleness, recognition and acceptance.