End of year summary, part 2

I never know how much effort to spend addressing and integrating the Goa’uld larva symbiote (Stargate, SG-1*) and how much to deal with the human host. That is, how much work to help the client “process” her inner child – the source of her dysfunction, the seat of her feelings, the name of her failed development – and how much to treat the adult persona as if she’s most real.

Obviously this is not a question contemporary therapists wrestle with, as they don’t know other than to assume the adult is the “new primary,” an entity-in-itself. And the depth therapists I know of – Primal and Primal-related – believe therapy is principally about the damaged child.

So I see this woman and this man (and many others) and am solidly clueless about what will really help. The adult persona will generally be trying to make life work. So she’ll get a new career, focus on some inner ray of serenity, he’ll latch on to his little daughter as his savior. I collude with this person, appreciating the positives even though the underlying disease remains in place. There are nightmares, breakdowns, relationship storms, the anxiety that comes from lowest self-esteem.

Other times, we’ll pay homage to the sex-abused girl or boy. Unlike Primal therapy, though, the child never fully emerges. This is frustrating, but I can’t say if it is bad or good.

There should be a formula, a principle of healing that answers my question: What helps? Maybe it’s this: No one substantially improves atop their disease, so we go to it where and when we can, until the client stops. Either she quits therapy, having touched this partially healed wound to her limit, or now remains week to week on her surface self. This is what I’ve seen for twenty years.

2019 – let’s see if there will be new ideas.

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* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goa%27uld.