What is Imago Therapy?

Imago Relationship Therapy, originating in the partnership of Harville who wrote the very popular books, "Getting The Love You Want: A Guide For Couples," "Keeping The Love You Find: A Guide For Singles," and "Giving The Love That Heals: A Guide For Parents." and Helen, integrates the seminal interpersonal insights of major Western psychological systems, behavioral sciences, and spiritual disciplines into a uniquely comprehensive theory of primary love relationships. Developed from the exclusive study of couples, it presents an approach that builds on and extends previous efforts.

Its basic premises are as follows:

* We were born whole and complete.

* We became wounded during the early nurturing and socialization stages of development by our primary caretakers (usually inadvertently.)

* We have a composite image of all the positive and negative traits of our primary caretakers deep in our unconscious mind. This is called the Imago. It is like a blueprint of the one we need to marry someday.

* We marry someone who is an Imago match, that is, someone who matches up with the composite image of our primary caretakers. This is important because we marry for the purpose of healing and finishing the unfinished business of childhood. Since our parents are the ones who wounded us, it is only they who can heal us. Not them literally, but a primary love partner who matches their traits.

* Romantic Love is the door to marriage and is nature's way of connecting us with the perfect partner for our eventual healing.

* We move into the Power Struggle as soon as we make a commitment to this person. The Power Struggle is necessary, for imbedded in a couple's frustrations lie the information for healing and growth.

* The first two stages of marriage, "Romantic Love" and the "Power Struggle," are engaged in at an unconscious level. Our unconscious mind choses our partner for the purpose of healing childhood wounds.

* Inevitably our love partner is incompatible with us and least able to meet our needs and most able to wound us all over again.

* The goal of Imago Relationship Therapy is to align our conscious mind (which usually wants happiness and good feelings) with the agenda of the unconscious mind (which wants healing and growth). Thus, the goal of therapy is to assist clients develop conscious, intimate, committed relationships.

* This transition can not take place through insight alone. Specific skills and processes are necesary that need to be practiced daily to shift us from having an unconscious relationship to a conscious relationship.

*It takes two to five years of regular work (not necessarily therapy) to develop a conscious relationship which will bring you the "Relationship of your Dreams," that is, one of safety and passion.

*The two-day couples workshop called, "Getting The Love You Want Couples Workshop" is the best and most powerful way to start this journey toward developing a conscious relationship.

Imago Relationship Therapy utilizes a variety of clinical procedures to teach couples, and singles desiring an intimate relationship, to identify their defenses against intimacy and to understand the unconscious forces that influence partner selection and contribute toward flawed relationships. Goals of the therapy include: identifying frustrations rooted in primitive and illusory ideation of one's love partner; recognizing the failure of archaic behavior to gratify needs and achieve self-completion; and perceiving one's partner realistically without the encumbrance of one's own unconscious projections. Other aspects of the Imago process involve learning new skills and changing hurtful behavior, in the course of which partners consciously aim to meet one another's needs and thereby restore the lost and denied parts of themselves. A core skill is a three-part dialogue that breaks couples out of defensive and symbiotic relating and promotes differentiation and compassion for the other. Therapy is ultimately made obsolete as each partner becomes a skilled advocate and "container" for the other's growth process.

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