Imago Therapy
Imago: Connect with each other like never before.
Imago therapy is a highly effective form of relationship and couples therapy that has transformed the relationships of thousands of couples around the world. Imago was created by Dr. Harville Hendrix, author of the best-selling book Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples (1988).
Imago is a more effective way to communicate.
You’ll learn a new way to talk to each other, so what you say to each other is mirrored back to you, validated, and empathized with. You’ll learn how to communicate your frustrations and desires more effectively and how to ask for exactly what you need in order to be whole.
The Principles of Imago Therapy:
- 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 selection process that connects us with the right partner for our eventual healing and growth.
- We move into the Power Struggle as soon as we make a commitment to this person. The Power Struggle is necessary, for embedded 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 chooses 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 goals of Imago therapy:
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 Imago therapy is to assist clients in developing conscious, intimate, and committed relationships.
How Imago therapy works:
The core practice of Imago therapy is the “Couple’s Dialogue,” in which a couple engages in a structured conversation, with or without an Imago Therapist.
The Couple’s Dialogue consists of Mirroring (repeating) each statement, Summarization, Validation (“That makes sense because …”) and Empathy (“I imagine that makes you feel …”). This enables each partner to extend themselves to understand the experience of the other as different from their own. If you can work with an Imago therapist, he or she will help to deepen that dialogue.
The process of trying to help our partner heal their childhood wounds ends up growing the parts of our own personality that need the most growth. This is largely due to the unconscious process of finding a partner than matches our Imago. As partners help each other to heal, they are also helping themselves to grow, moving them both closer to becoming whole and complete again.
Imago lets you heal your relationships and transform your lives.
Imago is Greek for the word image. It is based on the idea that people end up imaging in their relationships the very thing that they need to heal from in their relationships with their parents or primary influences growing up. So if an issue keeps arising in a relationship, it’s not always about what is happening in the present but a reaction to what happened in the past. Most of us only face a few of these issues, but they come up again and again—often overshadowing the positive aspects of our relationships. Just imagine if you could heal yourself of these childhood wounds and move towards a more positive relationship.
Your partner can help you heal.
In fact, it’s not a coincidence that you’ve attracted your partner; that person is there to help you do the work of recovering from old wounds. A relationship can become a spiritual partnership that can help heal the past and change how you see yourself and the world.
Imago Therapy on Oprah
Watch this video for an introduction to Imago.
Oprah listed her show with Imago creator Harville Hendrix and this way of working with couples as one of her Top 20 Shows throughout her 20 years of having her own show.
She also included an article, the Marriage Repair Kit, using the Imago model in her 2005 book, .