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Connecting With Your Inner Child
There is much psychiatry does not understand about how our psyche works. Indeed, because psychiatric symptoms are mostly self-reported, there is little evidence that mental disorders exist. However, all humans recognize in themselves the urges and responses they seem to have that echo past experiences.
This piece will target the inner child and how it can both negatively and positively affect everyday life.
The Discovery of the Inner Child
The concept of the inner child began with Carl Jung, who became interested in the ‘child inside’ after he broke with Sigmund Freud to form his own practice. Jung became aware that he had lost his interest in creativity and his childhood love of building things.
Jung also became aware of the emotions that arose when he remembered his childhood love of building and began to form a relationship with the ‘small boy inside him.
By the 1970s, the concept of the inner child was being used widely. It helped to form the basis of many 12-step and codependency movements.
Today, inner child work is at the base of most work therapists do with their clients who were traumatized as children.
