ABSTRACT
Most of the writing on shame in the Gestalt literature emphasises the activity of the person who 'shames' the other. Gestalt therapy is distinguished by not having a normative theory of how people should be or act, rather saying that such introjects in themselves take away from the contactfulness of relationships. An energetic, emotional expression of a vital boundary function does not merely disappear, however: it is retroflected. To be more precise, the boundary identifications and alienations of the ego are altered, so that the child identifies with the force-feeder and alienates her/his disgust response as an 'other', whose disgust is then aimed at the 'self' that is the source of the poisoned food. In the retroflection, disgust becomes self-disgust; annihilation becomes self-annihilation; physically, the posture would be one which inhibits vomiting: head down, shallow breathing, taut abdomen. The person would experience nausea. Little energy is available for contacting the real-life other.
