How strongly do childhood events influence us? Is there really an inner child hidden in everyone? Is it true that we have to repeat some scenarios ad infinitum? And is it possible to revise the experience and go on a new, own path? Gestalt therapist Elena Petrova reflects.
Psychologies: Is it true that “we all come from childhood”?
Elena Petrova: The answer to this question depends quite a lot on the culture to which we belong. Throughout the 1970th century, psychology, starting with Freud, has been talking about how childhood affects our lives. For example, in the XNUMXs, psychohistory was popular in the United States: the community of psychologists made predictions about how this or that politician would behave, based on the reconstruction of his childhood experience.
But when creating his theory, Freud relied on an already existing cultural tradition. And the phrase “We all come from childhood” does not belong to a psychologist at all, but to a writer: Laurence Sterne said this in the XNUMXth century in the novel Sentimental Journey. This is a familiar idea for a resident of Europe that what childhood was like, this is how we will live in adulthood. In the East, the view is different: they believe that life is determined not by childhood, but by our past lives. And we, Europeans, are sometimes cunning, attributing some of our problems to childhood …
Do we consider our childhood more unhappy than it was?
Rather more unambiguous, less diverse. We look at it from a certain angle. A few years ago, I taught a seminar on children’s scripts. Three times I started it with the question “What scripts do you have, what do you remember from childhood?”. The members shared dark stories each time.
For the fourth time, I reformulated the task, asking the participants: please remember an idea or value that was openly recognized as good in your parental family and positively influenced your life, an idea that you share now as adults and that you transmit to your children.
The first reaction of my interlocutors was a stupor, and even psychologists suggested talking about destructive families instead. But I held firm: we will not make the Karpman triangle and find out who is the victim, who is the persecutor, we will not talk about toxic parents. Find at least one value, at least «walking in beautiful clothes down the street.»
Sometimes negative childhood experiences are real, and sometimes, at least in part, they are just a metaphor for current life.
And after half an hour, a wonderful atmosphere reigned in small groups, the participants discovered wonderful ideas, warm feelings and thoughts that gave them support, connection with their parents, and which, as it turned out, give stamina in life. The experiment showed that much depends on the position of the observer.
We don’t see what we don’t look at…
Yes, and in the same experiment it turned out that often, when we experience difficulties, for example in a career, we do not dare to admit to ourselves: I do not want a career, but I want a quiet life, we are ashamed to say so, and without noticing it ourselves, we refer to childhood and say: it was my mother who told me to make a career, but I don’t want to!
During the XNUMXth century, the habit of artistically describing the negative aspects of childhood has developed, this practice has become a cultural norm for Europeans, and this influences the position of the therapist. These considerations motivate us to work with childhood experiences. Sometimes negative childhood experiences are real, and sometimes, at least in part, they are just a metaphor for current life.
Does therapy affect how real our memories are?
No, because in both cases we are reworking this experience so that life becomes freer. For example, a client has some kind of current conflict situation. «I want to ask for a raise, but for some reason I can’t.» We then ask a direct question about association with childhood: When did you feel this way as a child? And a scene appears.
For work, we do not need to find out whether it really was, or it contains several real memories, or even it was invented entirely. We work through the old situation, and in a surprising way, the emotions in the current “adult” situation change.
Freud wrote that when we find our first traumatic memory, we are freed…
Yes, and after him, some psychologists believed that it was enough to see the scene to get rid of the obsession: we were shy in childhood and could not ask dad for something important, so today we are embarrassed to ask the boss. But practice shows that such insight is not enough for our contemporaries.
Most of my interlocutors get a strange result with this strategy: it’s bad now, and it was bad in childhood, which means I’m a loser. They sum up the troubles. Therefore, we take the next step: we take a scene and carefully, relying on the client’s sensory experience, on the possibility of calmly studying the situation, we find out — what did he want to do then? And what did dad want? Or others who are involved in the scene. What resources did each require to achieve what they wanted? That is, it is not just a reaction of feelings, but the restoration of a resource state.
We first reconstruct the non-resource state, and then we create the resource state. Childhood was long ago, we can experiment with it. And then, relying on this more complete, holistic experience of oneself and the situation in the past, one can already move on to the next step, returning to the present. The experience gained in this game — and after all, this action in a therapy session is by its very nature a game — is transferred to the current situation. We are changing the past and at the same time we are changing the present and the future, creating new opportunities.
But there are painful memories where it is not so easy to find a resource!
In dealing with shock events, with childhood trauma, I use a model based on the concept of unfinished action. Actions that were stopped are restored: fighting, seeking support, expressing feelings. The main condition for such work is acceptance by the therapist. Thanks to him, the client gets the opportunity to express in a fantasy form what was curtailed and conserved. If this action is completed, the client is released from the blockage and can create a new emotional experience in the future against this background.
They say that after therapy, clients often quarrel with their parents …
We are not looking for someone to blame, but we are trying to bring into childhood memories from adult life what we did not have: freedom, support, respect, and thereby reduce the toxic effect of these memories, regardless of whether these are real consequences of shock trauma or a little a false reference to childhood, with which the client tries to escape the current tension. Then the client tries how he can build contact with the world in a new way, so that he feels complete, conscious, has more choice.
We are treating the inner child…
Here you need to understand the terms. For the first time, the idea of internal parts appears in Eric Berne in his transactional analysis, he speaks of subpersonalities: Child, Parent, Adult. During group therapy, you can really see that the behavior of the participants changes: they take an adult, childish or parental position.
But as a Gestalt therapist, I would consider this phenomenon more as processes. Of course, we don’t really have these little people inside of us. There is a funny picture — a nesting doll at a psychoanalyst’s appointment says: I have an inner child who has an inner child, who has an inner child … It seems to me that the concept of an inner child in practical psychology is a product of the American mentality …
Why American?
This is a philosophical question! Perhaps because social success is central to American popular culture. And an adult who goes to the office, drives a car, can think of himself like this: it’s like there is a child inside me, and he has his own feelings and desires, which have no place in my adult life.
It seems to me more correct to say that inside the seasoned secular adult there are impulses that make him look like a child. And the question is not to suppress it, but to recognize these impulses and look for ways to express them that are suitable for our present. And, using the techniques of dramatization, add more freshness, respect, and common sense to your experiences both in the past and in the present.
But when we were kids, we didn’t have that choice…
Of course, we can easily find in an adult the habits created in childhood. Of the millions of opportunities that we had, some were supported by the environment, parents, some of them we then support ourselves. We get used to repeating. And childhood gives us its priorities and limitations: we go here, we don’t go here.
When we are free, we rely on ourselves and create a unique act that changes both ourselves and our environment.
One of my acquaintances, originally from Uzbekistan, is trying to acclimatize peaches in the Leningrad region. He associates peaches with home, warmth, care, so out of stubbornness he plants them again and again, but they don’t grow very much … These two prerequisites, habits and blockages, in different combinations, affect our behavior. Working with them, we can change our behavior.
Where should we direct our changes?
Different types of psychotherapy answer this question in different ways. They have a different understanding of what a person is mature, free, and in general, whether there is a conditionally healthy functioning. For example, if I read works on psychoanalysis, I will get a large number of descriptions of how life develops under the influence of childhood traumas. But I will not find a description of how a person would live if he were free. And in Gestalt, there is the concept of creative adjustment and the concept of new experience.
What is the difference between creative and uncreative?
Uncreative behavior is when we see little, feel little, poorly understand our needs and poorly orient ourselves in changing circumstances. And as a result, we act stereotypically: we repeat, not create. And we suffer because we don’t get what we need. And what can we do if we are equal to ourselves and conditionally free? Conditionally, because we cannot be absolutely free: reality imposes restrictions.
I will outline to you the four phases that make up the creative act. The first phase — we experience the accumulation of energy. On the second, we navigate in the outside world, connect events, resources, memories. Third, we decide to take one of the possible paths and act. We take risks, because it always turns out not quite what we plan, because the world is making its own amendments. The fourth phase is assimilation: we appropriate the results of the action.
When we are free, we rely on ourselves and create a unique act that changes both ourselves and our environment. In this we are free from the past and direct life into the future, creating our own world. That is, we perform an act of creativity.