Brief history of the Inner Child

Brief history of the Inner Child

Brief chronology of the inner child, habit body,basic self

Corrections invited!

Like many other useful revelations, for instance, the theory of Relativity, visualizing the DNA molecule, astral and soul travel, many parallel events, mostly unknown to each other, gradually were woven together by smart, excited minds wishing to benefit humanity.  The history of the Inner Child is like this.

Pre-history to 1700s: The only “other self” we have is God and maybe the Church.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) and John Locke (1632-1704) Started philosophers thinking about child-centered education;  However, believe it or not, nothing of a practical nature in whole-child education was begun until about 1850 with Froebel’s kindergartens, what we would call proto-Montessori today.  The next practical development was not until 1919 with the first of Rudolf Steiner’s Waldorf schools.   All these developments occurred very much in the avante garde, that is, on the periphery of the Industrial Revolution and Corporate Revolution that was  mainstream culture.

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Then nothing much happens that resonates with the modern idea of the “inner child” until the Human Potential “explosion” and innovations of the mid-1960s to early 1970s. This flowering also probably saved Waldorf schools from virtual extinction.  

Going back a bit, in 1903, in corpse dissection research, many nerve tissues are found in the belly and begin to be considered as a whole apart from the cerebral brain.  A “mesenteric brain” is posited. The quantity of nervous tissue in the belly is highly suggestive of a second brain.  Research on this was shared online by The Meridian Research Center, a defunct Edgar Cayce clinic. I have a copy. Unfortunately this medical discovery is ignored by the AMA of 1903, continues to be ignored, and never makes it into generations of medical textbooks to this day.  

Consequently medical schools and media continue promoting the limited 19th century view of the “unitary executive,” each person an isolated island unto themselves.

In reality, the “enteric nervous sytem” is hugely significant and is the physiological basis for the inner child.

In 1948 humanistic psychology begins quietly and in tiny pockets with Carl Rogers and “client-centered therapy.” Many hopeful and promising experiments in group therapy are begun during and just after WW II to address the large number of GIs with mental problems; hence, the birth of “group therapy” and the early study of “group process” in modern counseling terms.

In 1963 Hugh Missildine, M.D. publishes Your Inner Child of the Past, describing a list of distinct, understandable personality patterns traceable back to unresolved, childhood experiences. This book has dated little and remains a classic today. If a better book has been written on the patterns of the inner child, I am unaware of it.

In the 1960s Eric Berne develops and expands Transactional Analysis. He coins the concept of a “Child state” of mind, sub-ordinate to our conscious rational mind, possessed by all adults. The yellow smiley face symbol arises out of his ideas on a San Francisco billboard in the late 1960s, I believe. Berne details the unhealthy “games” this child state plays in Games People Play.

Around 1972 John Thie makes Applied Kinesiology accessible to the masses, publishing a simplified version called Touch for health. This gives tens of thousands of individuals the direct experience of communicating with their own inner child-immune system-enteric nervous system DIRECTLY on health and other concerns.

Unfortunately this breakthru Tool That Heals wastes decades trying to prove itself to a skeptical and uncaring corporate medical establishment.  Despite mountains of convincing scientific evidence–visible at the Applied Kinesiology website, evidence generated mostly by M.D.s who practice AK, establishing the reality and value of communicating with the inner child. The effort to make Touch for Health respectable came virtually to nothing and by 1995 was abandoned.

Somewhere in this oncoming convergence, around 1995, the Quantum discussion forges into the mainstream and many muscle testers evolve to accessing and testing beliefs, unconscious behaviors and other states spiritual in nature.

The Inner child breaks into the mainstream, in the 1980s, thru John Bradshaw.  He encourages people to acknowledge and process their wounded inner child. This turns into a national fad of support groups and 12-step groups, all taking advantage of therapeutic directions afforded by the topic of the “inner child” and Bradshaw’s many additions to this rhetoric; especially, to topics around the “wounded inner child.”

Back on the fringes, by 1990, a trained acupuncturist, Bertrand Babinet converges several holistic modes into a fruitful synthesis called Babinetics. Building on Bradshaw’s inner child work and his deep level of truth-telling, Bertrand converges:

- the four-quadrant family systems work of Virginia Satir

- the rudimentary psychology of the organs found in TCM (not viewed as a quadrant system in the gut until Bertrand)

He comes up with the Inner Family: Mother, Child, Grandparent, Father. The Inner Family models a four-fold close-up of the basic self in the gut. Desire has its home in the gut brain, in two quadrants, above the belly button. Willingness has its home, in two quadrants, below the belly button.

Following Rumi’s idea that you can’t go at love, or peace or growth directly; rather it pays to reduce the obstacles to these as you find them, Bertrand provides clear therapeutic direction in his ideas about reactivity in the four quadrants of our gut being the biggest stumbling block to personal-spiritual growth.

In 2000 Bruce adapts Bertrand’s Inner Family to the archetypes of Arthurian Legend, Guinever, Lancelot, Merlin & King Arthur. This augments the metaphoric and mythological dimensions, providing even richer therapeutic metaphors for growth. Bruce also connects Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and William Glasser’s Choice Therapy and Glasser’s “five needs” system into the Inner Court, showing how these all articulate very naturally.

Bruce references the work of Katherine Benziger, Ned Herrmann and Bertrand on the four brain quadrants showing how all these ideas fit together and take their natural place in the larger topic of the Inner Court in the head.

To Learn More ~ this brief historical page from the Voice Dialogue folks: http://www.voice-dialogue-inner-self-awareness.com/ShortHistory86.html