
Happy 2015 everyone! I feel ok today! What about you?
Actually, I was very angry a few hours ago because two young boys tried to steal my mobile phone whilst I was walking. Thus, to relieve my anger, I had a long walk – after shouting “F*ck off!” to the hooded guys – and a phone call with my partner. Perhaps that is why I feel ok now. If I was not capable of giving voice to my angry feelings, I was probably going to hold them back (“retroflection” in Gestalt Therapy) and/or to project them towards someone else, and I was still feeling not ok, my experience (or “Gestalt”) was not completed.
If I need to use the defensive mechanisms of retroflection and projection whenever I experience anger, then I very probably learned during my early childhood that it was not so convenient for me to show my angry feelings and I didn’t have the opportunity to learn good functional ways of expressing them: therefore, it was more accepted to hold back the anger and/or to project it.
Only in these ways was I “saving” the relationship with my most important parental figures (our parents are always the best in the world and we do everything possible to have their love).
This is a very important aspect in Gestalt Therapy as it is in Transactional Analysis (TA), but it is viewed in another way: the Parent and Child ego states, in many cases, correspond to particular forms of projection and retroflection.
I am very glad I have found a good article about this interesting topic, so I would like to share it with you. Also, if you are intrigued by the article and would like to discover more about the TA approach, I suggest you read “Born To Win” (see links below).
Finally, if you are a professional, take a look at the online events website where you will find videos and interesting “free to attend” webinars on TA and more.
https://www.coreintegral.com/blog/perls-wisdom-introflection-retroflection-and-games-people-play
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Born-Win-Transactional-Analysis-Experiments/dp/0201590441