Some observations about the Imago Dialogue

I’ve never asked any Marriage and Family Therapists if they use the Imago Dialogue to teach partner communications. The crown of Harville Hendrix’s approach, the Dialogue is part of the common self-help literature* and may not seem sophisticated enough for licensed clinicians. I, a generalist Counselor, use it and have seen it sometimes heal a mutually wounding relationship. The script has the two parties apply, and maybe learn for the first time, reflective listening or “mirroring,” validation of the partner’s grievance, and empathy for her pain. Once the “receiver” of the complaint has gone through this eye-opening and caring process, he is now in a place to want to help solve the partner’s problem. Or as I’ll sometimes say to clients – After hearing clearly without self-exoneration or agenda; after validating the plaint as substantial and not-crazy from the griever’s autonomous frame of reference; after feeling in oneself empathy for her, “you’d have to be a psychopath not to want to help against her pain. ‘Gosh, honey, if only I gave a damn.’”

As humane and valid as the Dialogue is, I don’t recall ever seeing in Hendrix or in the google-able literature any warnings of fatal flaws that might sabotage it. Over the years I have noticed a few. These are:

One – Dialogue over a spouse’s message, grievance or need will fail if a deeper and more critical problem hasn’t yet been addressed. I often teach the process with this example: Wife, using the famous I-statement, says: “I’m really hurt that you practically never call me when you’re going to be late from work.” Husband would reflect this (“Let me make sure I get you. It really makes you feel bad that I usually don’t call when I’m going to be late. Did I get it?”). As his unadorned reflecting showed that he listened and heard her clearly, his wife would feel “heard” and have a feeling of satisfaction. But what if he suspected she has been cheating on him? Could he bring himself to mirror her statement without spin, contempt, or at all? “That’s right, dear. I don’t call you in advance. How else can I sneak home to see who you’re sleeping with?”

Two – The receiver of the grievance (both parties, of course, not just one) has to actually like the character of the other person. Marriages talk love all the time, but there may be no “like” or respect. People who when young got together in partying, alcohol and sex would be my best-known example of bonds that were destined to fail. In my first marriage, I said “love” from a place of lifelong depersonalization. Had a therapist asked me if I liked that poisonous Borderline, I would have jabbered, tread water in Great Blue Beyond silence for a minute, then had I any courage said “no.” Without basic like and respect for the Self of the other, the Dialogue must be specious: The words may be there, but the heart won’t be.

Three – Personality disorder itself. A partner may be as brilliant and benign as Socrates, but if he or she is thinking, feeling and speaking through a core emotionalized attitude** – a global defensive warp of reality – there will be no harmony of the minds. Again: My first wife would have known no other conviction but that it is right to denigrate men to her daughters; it is appropriate to lie to friends about her academic credentials***; it is right to be shaming and abusive to me. Imagining a Narcissist attempting the Dialogue, I think of Daily Beast’s Rick Wilson’s editorial line: “For Trump, there are two types of people: Donald Trump, and losers. . . .”**** Were Melania to complain: “I’m upset that you always seem to dismiss my feelings as less important than yours,” Trump’s surface id would be forced to say: “That’s because they are.”

I am about to see a married couple that will present the following challenge: She has a feminized Narcissism of pampering, entitlement and certainty that she is always right; he shut down long ago in response to it. Mostly, in Hendrix world, we see both parties as lost soul adult lava fields of unmet childhood needs where each can learn to help and nurture the other. Personality disorder can make this impossible, whatever the appearance may be. Does Hendrix think his Dialogue is applicable to that fundamental flaw? I believe it isn’t.

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* Harville Hendrix, Getting the Love You Want.

** Not the first time I’ve used Virginia Axline’s (Play Therapy) term.

*** See post – https://pessimisticshrink.blogspot.com/2017/08/a-bit-of-rough-draft-el-jobean.html.

**** https://www.thedailybeast.com/this-was-the-week-that-finally-broke-trumps-spell.