ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a common stance that clients take, which looks like introjection, but which actually involves a quite different process: deflection. Attempts to work with this process in ways appropriate for introjection meet with resistance and anxiety. In terms of the DSM-III-R classification, this process would manifest as obsessive compulsive personality disorder, and possibly in the proposed category of self-defeating personality disorder. It is important to distinguish two very different situations. In the first, a father, ambitious for his daughter, insists on her working hard academically, giving acceptance conditionally on her achieving a certain, well-defined standard which is within her capability. In this situation, the daughter is very likely to introject 'I must do well', probably in some sort of balance with 'underdog' attitudes. The second situation is where the concept 'doing well' is either undefined or defined in such a way as to be obviously unattainable.
