Doing Imago Relationship Therapy in the Space-Between: A Clinician's Guide by Harville Hendrix & Helen LaKelly Hunt

Author:Harville Hendrix & Helen LaKelly Hunt [Hendrix, Harville & Hunt, Helen LaKelly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2021-04-20T00:00:00+00:00

THE IMAGO DIALOGUE AS A TRANSFORMATIONAL PROCESS

Having looked at the Imago Dialogue at its first two levels—as a communication technique and as a connecting process—we’re ready to extend our perspective to include the deepest level of Imago Dialogue—where it has the impact of transforming the very structure of partnership. Imago Dialogue accomplishes this transformation by making the following shifts:

•from monologue to dialogue;

•from the past to the present;

•from the lower brain to the higher brain; and

•from the vertical to the horizontal.

Imago Dialogue, along with every other process in Imago therapy, throws off the vertical model’s confines and turns the conversation away from the hierarchical structure toward the horizontal direction. Horizontal conversations mean that the two members of a couple are essentially equal. With this equality—and only with this equality—safe and empathic connecting, and thus a relationship between equal partners, becomes possible. This empathy fosters hope, and this hope is a gift that you, the therapist, have helped to facilitate.

What once seemed impossible now becomes possible for the romantic partners, including, first and foremost, the relaxation of the defensive structures that keep the other’s messages out. Now that the conversation feels safe, those defenses are no longer needed; no defenses are necessary when we are not feeling threatened. In turn, speaking from a non-defended position brings each partner into a state of “presence” with each other, the state that is equated with true intimacy and original connecting. Simultaneously, this mutual experience of presence in the Space-Between restores the connectional rupture inflicted by emotionally or physically absent caretaking, thereby changing the past by restructuring the conversation in the present.

Once people shift out of the vertical into the horizontal position, they begin to approach each other from a different position, one of curiosity and of “power with,” rather than judgment and “power over.” This results in the dissipation of any danger in the Space-Between, which becomes permeated, instead, with safety. Once safety is established, what seemed impossible during the power struggle becomes possible. Most astonishing for couples is the promise of the restoration of their disrupted connection. Only when two partners encounter each other from a dialogical position—defenses down, hearts open—can they risk expressing their most vulnerable feelings to each other. Along with those feelings come long-forgotten thoughts and memories, denied impulses, and unmet yearnings, all of them remaining below the surface of our consciousness, until now. When the connectional rupture between partners is restored, the connectional rupture of each partner during childhood is also repaired.

This is precisely what the Imago Dialogue does: it becomes a container, a safe but powerful cauldron in which both the surface and depth of felt experience are symbolized and thus become integrated into our sense of self. In Imago Dialogue, we reach deep down into our storehouse of childhood pain and process it, and its meaning for us, with our partner in the role of a safe and nurturing substitute for the caretakers who, in one way or another, failed us. When the past takes on new meaning, so does the narrative of the present romantic partnership.

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