The Inner Child

We've probably all heard someone refer to his or her "inner child."  It's another one of those psychology terms that somehow made its way into popular culture.  Carl Jung, a disciple of Freud and one of psychiatry's founding fathers, called it the "wonder child."  According to Jung, the "wonder child" is the part of the psyche with the capacity for awe and a sense of natural wonder; it is curious, creative, and loves to explore. 

The website desert-alchemy.com gives the best definition of inner child I have found so far.  It defines "inner child" as that part of the psyche that retains feelings the way they were experienced in childhood.  When it is healthy, the inner child is naturally innocent, playful, and uninhibited; it has an approach to life that is simple and straightforward.

Today, you might hear clinicians talk about the "wounded inner child."  John Bradshaw (http://www.johnbradshaw.com/) is one of the best known proponents of "inner child work."  He has authored several books on the subject and apparently appeared on several nationally televised PBS series.  Among other things, he now travels the country conducting "inner child workshops."  According to Bradshaw, an inner child becomes wounded when normal childhood dependency needs are not met during childhood.  Normal development is arrested and dysfunctional childish behavior persists into adulthood.

While some of Bradshaw's work is a little too "touchy feely" for my taste, he does get a lot of things right. 

From birth to adulthood, a child's parents are responsible for meeting all of his or her needs.  This includes physical needs like food and shelter as well as psychological needs like security, intimacy, structure, and - later on - autonomy.  Even the very best parents don't do this perfectly.  Parents are human - they make mistakes.  To further complicate things, very young children cannot speak.  This makes it hard for them to communicate their wants and needs.  Even after they start speaking they may be unable to communicate their wants and needs because children often do not know what they want or need.  So for parents, there is a lot of guesswork.  Sometimes parents guess correctly; sometimes they don't.  Fortunately, a child doesn't need perfect parents to turn out okay.  For healthy development, a child simply needs parents to be "good enough."  (I am not making this up.  If you don't believe me, see Winnicott's ideas on the "good enough mother"). 

Sadly, there are parents who are absolutely nowhere near "good enough."  There are lots of reasons for this.  Some parents fall short due to circumstances beyond their control.  Some parents are neglectful or abusive.  Whatever the reason, if a parent doesn't meet a child's needs during childhood then that child enters adulthood with significant emotional and psychological deficits. 

So in normal psychological development, other people (i.e., parents) fulfill one's psychological and emotional needs.  It is natural, then, for those whose needs have not been met by the time they reach adulthood to look for other people to fulfill them.  To this end, they enter into relationships expecting others to fill the emptiness inside them.  They are uncertain of themselves and look to others for validation and affirmation.  They do not know how to love and appreciate themselves so they rely on others to give them love and appreciatiation.  Inevitably there comes a time when they feel empty, unloved, unworthy, or unappreciated.  They blame those people they'd expected to complete them and are left feeling disappointed or even betrayed.

They may continue their search for someone to meet their emotional needs.  They will never find such a person; no such person exists.  During childhood, our emotional and psychological needs are met by other people (i.e., parents); once adulthood arrives, the time for others to meet these needs has passed.  The window of opportunity closes.  A person must learn to provide for himself whatever needs have not been met by adulthood.

It's definitely harder this way.  It is so much easier to get what we need while we're children.  As adults, it is difficult to give ourselves what we did not get from our parents.  It is difficult, but it's not impossible.  In fact, this is often the work of therapy: learning to meet your own needs, to be your own person, and to love and accept yourself. 

Childhood

Whenever I spend time with my nieces or my stepdaughter, I am awed and intrigued to observe the process of child development in real time, as it unfolds.  As a psychotherapist, I am acutely aware of the wounds that are inflicted when something goes wrong during childhood and disrupts the normal process of development.  While it is true that we do not have to be defined by our pasts, events that happen in childhood influence the development of our very personalities and therefore affect how we perceive ourselves and the world.  If our basic physical, emotional, and psychological needs are not met during this critical time period, we are left with empty spaces that we long to fill but do not know how.

These are the people I see in therapy.  Popular culture pokes fun at psychotherapy for seeming to believe that every adult problem has its origins in a troubled childhood.  I sometimes joke about this myself when I inquire about a patient's childhood experiences.  Still, most stereotypes contain some kernel of truth and this one is no exception.  Children with parents who are controlling and extremely critical sometimes grow into adults who expect too much of themselves, whose self worth is tied to their achievements, and who beat themselves up when they make a mistake.  Children who grow up in chaotic and unstable households sometimes become adults who are obsessed with order, who become extremely upset when things do not go as planned, and who attempt to exert control over everything and everyone around them.  Children who are discouraged from or even punished when they express their thoughts and feelings sometimes become "people pleasers" as adults.  The have learned from their experiences that their needs do not matter.  As a result, they lack assertiveness, have trouble setting limits, and are often taken advantage of (partly because they never say 'no'). 

So I am profoundly impressed when I see evidence of these psychological and emotional needs in children.  About six months after my husband and I got married my stepdaughter came to stay with us for the summer.  One night she got upset about something trivial.  She started crying.  Her tears quickly escalated into sobs and loud wails.  I assumed she was throwing a tantrum and figured she would eventually stop crying if we simply ignored her.  She was still wailing after thirty or forty minutes, at which point my husband insisted on going to comfort her.  It wasn't until later that I realized my mistake; my stepdaughter did not know how to self-soothe!  In other words, she really had no way to calm herself down when she was distressed.  She was still at a stage developmentally where she needed help from an adult.  I'm sure no harm came from the incident but it made me think.  What if this happened often?  What if no one ever came to comfort her or to help her calm down?  That's the kind of thing that happened to my patients in childhood.

I observed an interaction between my eight year old niece and her parents last week that made me smile.  We were all at my parents' house getting ready to go for a walk.  My niece had to go to the bathroom before we left.  In the meantime, the rest of us went outside to wait for her.  "Watch," my sister said to her husband. "When she [my niece] comes out of the bathroom and sees no one in the house she's going to come running out here in a panic."  Sure enough, a few minutes later my niece came running out the door.  "I thought you left me!" she exclaimed.  Of course my sister and brother-in-law have never and would never leave her by herself at her age.  Still, the fear my niece felt was real.  And what happens to those kids who come running outside to find that all the adults have, in fact, left them home by themselves?  What happens to them when they become adults?

These are just some thoughts and observations...