Introjection in the therapy process

On July 30th, 2010 I wrote a post about Carl Rogers and his therapy. He proposed that a therapist needs to display 3 qualities when working with a client. These are:

Genuiness - Therapist is aware of his own feelings, thoughts and attitudes and these are not concealed from the client.

Empathy - Understanding the client’s experience from the client’s point of view.

Unconditional positive regard - Conveying to the client that they are worthwhile humans no matter what they do.



If these happen then over time this positive relationship is seen to bring alive the person’s natural desire to grow towards health. The Free Child aspect of the personality ‘sparks’ up and the person naturally grows towards psychological health. A reasonable hypothesis that has been widely accepted by the therapeutic community one could say.

However there is another aspect to this. Another feature of the therapeutic process and that is the mechanism of introjection. Any two people who form any sort of relationship then introjection will occur between them. It will happen unconsciously and relentlessly. It will happen to everyone but the extent and rate of introjection can vary between people and circumstances.

The therapeutic environment is a prime breeding ground for introjection of the therapist by the client. It is well designed for this to happen at least in some ways.

Introjection can be explained theoretically as the incorporation of the therapist into the client’s Parent ego state. Over time the client will incorporate the therapist’s personality into their own via this mechanism. The therapist’s personality becomes part of the client’s personality. It will happen back the other way but to a lesser degree.



I recall a number of years ago I used to run a respite programme for an organisation called ARAFMI (Association for Relatives and Friends of the Mentally Ill.) We took away on a holiday 7 people with chronic mental illness so their carers at home (usually their parents) could have one week respite from caring for them. So myself and an assistant lived in close contact with 7 people for a week who usually were diagnosed with either chronic schizophrenia, bipolar or psychotic depression. I tell you what, it was one of the best learning experiences I ever had about these types of mental illness. I learnt more about how they think, feel and function that I ever could with a 5 year degree.

However my point is I lived in close contact with a group who were heavily medicated, had been for a long time and were probably going to be for a long time. Because of the medication many were quite over weight or obese and they generally had this slow moving sort of swaying way of walking. By the end of the week I would be walking like them! Without even knowing it I began to walk like them. The introjection process on display.

In the counselling setting introjection will occur more, the longer the client has been seeing the therapist, the more frequent the client sees the therapist and the stronger the transference the client has for the therapist. The more these three conditions are met the more the client will introject the therapist as part of their personality.


Will these children wear helmets when they ride a bike in the future?

If the therapist is being genuine, empathetic and giving positive unconditional regard then the client will introject that. If the client starts to take this in as part of their own personality then they are going to treat their own Child ego state in these ways as well. If that happens then the person will start to feel better about self and thus grow in a more psychologically healthy way. Another explanation why the Rogers therapeutic approach may be successful.

However unfortunately it works both ways. If a therapist uses painful therapeutic techniques then that attitude or ‘permission’ will be introjected as well. Many therapeutic techniques are painful to some degree and involve the client regressing and experiencing painful emotions and confronting old painful memories. If the therapist allows this to happen and indeed promotes it as most do then the client will introject that into their Parent ego state as shown in the diagram. I use such techniques at times and thus one needs to be cautious of such therapeutic techniques and the introjection that occurs.



Then there are the pharmacotherapies like methadone for heroin addiction. There is an inherent contradiction in these approaches. The therapist says “Take these drugs, so you don’t take drugs”. The permission to take drugs is introjected by the client by the very actions of the therapist. Again, I am not anti methadone and have seen it be useful for some opiate users. However in any over all treatment plan one must be at least aware of this contradiction and introjection occurring in the client.

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