A child deprived of her parents draws a picture of her mother on the floor with chalk, then lies down inside the drawing and falls asleep. A photographer captures the touching scene; it\u2019s as if the child carries her mother\u2019s form within her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the same way, we carry a child within us whom we need just as much as the little child does her parents. Forty years ago, the concept of the \u201cinner child\u201d was developed in psychotherapy, and it proved fruitful in trauma therapy. In their 1990 book Healing Your Aloneness<\/em>,<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> psychotherapists Erika Chopich and Margaret Paul focused on the need to bring this inner child into contact with the loving inner adult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is the inner child? Chopich and Paul describe it as arising from a person\u2019s spontaneous feelings, which are often thwarted early on in life. It experiences the full range of emotions\u2014joy and pain, happiness and sorrow\u2014without inhibition. It is connected with feeling, experiencing, and being, while adults are associated with thinking, acting, and doing and are dominated by inhibited feelings. The inner child is the source of a person\u2019s genius. If it is let down, it withdraws into itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n