Recovery of Your Inner Child: The Highly Acclaimed Method for Liberating Your Inner Self - Softcover

Capacchione, Lucia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0671701355 ISBN 13: 9780671701352

Verlag: Touchstone, 1991

Inhaltsangabe

The Inner Child lives within all of us, it's the part of us that feels emotions and is playful, intuitive, and creative. Usually hidden under our grown-up personas, the Inner Child holds the key to intimacy in relationships, physical and emotional well-being, recovery from addictions, and the creativity and wisdom of our inner selves.

Recovery of Your Inner Child is the only book that shows you how to have a firsthand experience of your Inner Child—actually feeling its emotions and recapturing its sense of wonder—by writing and drawing with your non-dominant hand. Expanding on the highly acclaimed technique introduced in The Power of Your Other Hand, here Dr. Capacchione shares scores of hands-on activities that will help you to embrace your Vulnerable Child and your Angry Child, find the Nurturing Parent within, and finally discover the Creative and Magical Child that can heal your life.

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Known for her discovery of the healing power of writing and drawing with the non-dominant hand, Lucia Capacchione is an art therapist with a PhD in psychology, serves as a consultant to Walt Disney Imagineering, and is nationally recognized for her workshops in recovery and codependence. Her work has been highly praised by such leaders in the healthcare field as Dr. Bernie Siegel, Norman Cousins, Joan Borysenko and Dr. Gerald Jampolsky. She has written six other books including The Power of Your Other Hand, The Picture of Health, and The Creative Journal.

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CHAPTER ONE

"A Little Child Shall Lead Them"

Inside every adult, there is a child crying, "Let me out."

Who is this child living within? Why is it trapped inside? What does it have to offer? How can it be liberated? You will answer these questions for yourself as you do this book. I say do rather than read because this is a hands-on approach. Through a combination of words, pictures, and activities you will be guided in discovering, nurturing, and protecting your own Inner Child. My goal is to help you love your Inner Child and invite it to be a part of your life.

The concept of the Inner Child is not new. It actually has roots in ancient mythology and fairy tales. Virtually all religions have told stories of the child who becomes a savior or leader. The child is usually orphaned, abandoned, or its life is threatened. Moses was found abandoned in the bull rushes. Jesus was born in the humblest setting because "there was no room at the inn." His life was threatened by King Herod's slaughter of the infants. Similarly, Krishna's birth was accompanied by great danger. King Kansa had been told that the man who would eventually kill him was about to be born, so he consequently decreed that all newborn males be slain.

In Greek mythology the child Zeus was in danger of being devoured by his father Chronos. And as the father of Dionysius, Zeus was absent when his son was being torn to pieces by the Titans. The twins in Roman mythological lore, Romulus and Remus, were abandoned and set adrift on the river Tiber. European fairy tales also abound with child heroes who are threatened by ogres and demons: Hansel and Gretel had their witch, Cinderella had her wicked step-mother and nasty step-sisters, Jack had his giant, and Little Red Riding Hood had the wolf.

In this century, psychologist C. G. Jung and mythologist Joseph Campbell have shown us that these myths and legends have widespread appeal because they illustrate universal human experiences. For instance, all human beings have one thing in common: we all start out as vulnerable, dependent infants. Therefore, we can all resonate with the helpless, misunderstood, and abused children in these stories. Who has not experienced some kind of physical or emotional mistreatment in childhood?

The very nature of childhood leaves the infant or youngster open to harm. Insensitive or violent adults can certainly appear as giants, witches, and ogres in the eyes of a child. That is why the classic fairy tales hold our rapt attention time and time again, whether they are told from memory, read from a picture book, or portrayed on the screen. Walt Disney was well aware of this when he chose the story of Snow White for his first feature-length animated film. Even though he was scoffed at by financiers, he would not be deterred. He knew that the public would respond to this classic story in a new medium. His success rested on his ability to speak to the child in us all.

In many cultures we find this theme: the endangered child who must remain in obscurity and undergo trials until his true heroic nature is revealed. Jung saw the child as an archetype, a universal symbol existing within the collective unconscious. In his essay "The Psychology of the Child Archetype," he wrote:

It is...not surprising that so many of the mythological saviours are child gods. This agrees exactly with our experience of the psychology of the individual, which shows that the "child" paves the way for a future change of personality. In the individuation process, it anticipates the figure that comes from the synthesis of conscious and unconscious elements in the personality. It is therefore a symbol which unites the opposites; a mediator, bringer of healing, that is, one who makes whole. Because it has this meaning, the child motif is capable of numerous transformations....I have called this wholeness that transcends consciousness the "self." The goal of the individuation process is the synthesis of the self.

Jung's words "the child paves the way for a future change of personality," and his reference to the child as "bringer of healing...one who makes whole" echos the biblical prophecy, "And a little child shall lead them."

Since the 1960s the Inner Child has become a popular theme in psychology. The Inner Child is that part of us who feels like a child and may cause us to behave in a childlike or childish way. Hugh Missildine wrote about it in his groundbreaking book, Your Inner Child of the Past. The Child state is also an important aspect of Transactional Analysis, which was developed by Eric Berne in the sixties and popularized in the seventies. Berne presented us with a picture of the inner world made up of a parent self, a child self, and an adult self. The parent self sets out the rules and regulations (the shoulds and the oughts). The child self feels and reacts. The adult thinks, makes decisions, and solves problems.

The 1980s saw the development of still another model in which the Inner Child plays an important role: Voice Dialogue. Developed by psychologists Hal Stone and Sidra Winkelman, Voice Dialogue demonstrates that the psyche is peopled by countless sub-personalities such as the Child, Critic, Pusher or Taskmaster, Protector, Beach Bum, Artist, Playboy or Playgirl, etc. The goal is to develop an aware ego at the center whose job is to be conscious of the sub-personalities. Like the director of a play, the aware ago decides which sub-personality will be allowed on stage at any given time. It must also be aware of which "actors" are lurking around backstage (the disowned or shadow selves, as Jung called them). In Voice Dialogue the goal is to be conscious of and accept all of our sub-personalities, allowing them appropriate expression. The Inner Child is often one of the disowned selves, one that we left behind as we grew to adulthood. As a trained Voice Dialogue facilitator, I have integrated this method into my work in art therapy and journal process. It provides an excellent framework for re-parenting the Inner Child.

The Inner Child also received recognition in the 1980s as part of the rapidly growing recovery movement. Treatment for addictive behavior is being addressed more and more in hospitals and rehabilitation centers. Much of this treatment includes work with the roots of addiction in childhood. Twelve-step programs applying the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous and Alanon (for co-dependents affected by alcoholism) have now been extended to include the Adult Children of Alcoholics. This program has now been broadened to support Adult Children from any type of dysfunctional family. Experts have estimated that ninety-five percent of the population received inadequate parenting. This may explain why programs for Adult Children have gained such great popularity. Almost all of us have some Inner Child healing to do.

In recent years, one of the most articulate writers on the Inner Child has been Charles Whitfield, M.D. In his best-selling book, Healing the Child Within, Whitfield led the way toward acknowledging the role of the Inner Child in recovery from co-dependence and being an adult child of a dysfunctional family. At the same time, through media coverage, there has been a growing recognition of the rampant child abuse in our culture. For instance, it has been estimated that one out of every four adults suffered some kind of sexual abuse in childhood. Clinician Alice Miller has shed light on the childhood roots of dysfunctional adult behavior. Her deeply moving book For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence, lays bare the shocking truth of widespread violence against children and how this affects them in later life.

Based on my experience as an early-childhood educator and art therapist, I have concluded that we...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Touchstone
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1991
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0671701355
• ISBN 13: 9780671701352
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 288
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Robitussin; https://www.robitussin.com/; ; Westarpstr. 2; Berlin; Berlin; 10779; Deutschland