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Page 2 THE
BASIC ELEMENTS Of
VOICE DIALOGUE, RELATIONSHIP AND
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SELVES
THEIR ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT ©
By
HAL STONE, Ph.D. AND SIDRA STONE, Ph.D.
THE FIRST ELEMENT
VOICE DIALOGUE AS A METHODOLOGY:
THE BEGINNING OF THE JOINT ADVENTURE It was early in 1972 that Sidra read an article by Assagioli on
Guided Imagery. She was fascinated and decided to try it out
in her practice of psychotherapy. People had such wonderful experiences
that she wanted to learn more about this and - most important
- wanted to go on one of those "trips" herself. She
asked a friend, Dr. Jean Holroyd, the head of the psychology
intern program at UCLA, where she might learn more about this
technique.
Hal had been teaching this work which was central to his training
in Jungian Psychology. He had recently given a very powerful demonstration
of this work at UCLA that Jean had attended. She recommended that
Sidra contact Hal and see him for a few training sessions. So it
was that in February, 1972, Sidra came to see Hal making it very
clear that she was not interested in personal therapy, not interested
in anything that might change her life, but that she just wanted
a few training sessions so she could become more effective in facilitating
this process.
In the first few sessions Sidra went very deeply into the realm
of the creative imagination. Her initial experience was of initiation
into the ancient goddess mysteries. It was in these depths one
might say that the two of us met. It became clear almost immediately
that the exploration that was happening was a joint exploration
- not a mentor/student relationship - and that Hal could only continue
on this basis. In the depths of this kind of work there could be
only equality between us. We began to share our dream process in
addition to the visualizations and in the course of one of these
sessions we started talking about how vulnerable they were both
feeling and how unfamiliar this was for both of us.
It was during this discussion that Hal suggested that Sidra move
over and become the vulnerability instead of just talking about
it. It was the moment of the resurrection of this technique of
talking to the selves. The term Voice Dialogue did not yet exist.
That came later. In this moment, the game that Hal had played with
before became something quite different and the birthing process
of the Voice Dialogue method began.
This is how Sidra remembers that very first experience:
Hal asked me to move over and to become the vulnerability. I knew
it was the right thing to do. I trusted him. I trusted him so deeply
that I moved from the couch where I'd been sitting, sat down on
the floor and put my head down on the coffee table. In total silence,
I allowed myself to move into my vulnerability, I literally became
someone else. I became a very small child who experienced the world
in a new way. There was total stillness. I had the sense that the "I" that
was sitting there had been hiding in a deep cave for my entire
life and that this was the first time she felt safe enough to come
out. The world around me changed, my perceptions became more acute,
colors and sounds were different, and I could feel Hal's energy
holding a space for me (although it would be years before we were
to know more about the energetics of relationship). This was totally
foreign to me; I was accustomed to experiencing the world in a
rational, sensible, and controlled way. I felt that I had finally
entered Herman Hesse's Magic Theater!
Hal was himself stunned by this experience. He could feel that
he was in the presence of a child and he knew that it was best
to say nothing. He was with a pre-verbal child - the child was
real, and the selves were real. When Sidra left her place on the
floor and returned to her seat on the sofa - returning to what
we later called the Aware Ego - we both sat in silence. We both
realized that something momentous had happened.
Hal had to wait a week before Sidra facilitated his child. His
own experience was most profound. It was the beginning of Little
Harry, a totally unknown quantity in his life up until then, and
so it was that instead of Sidra and Hal exploring together, there
were now four of us at work. There were Sidra and Lisa and there
were Hal and Little Harry. Everyone's stories and ideas were different.
So the work began with what we named the Inner Child - as far
as we know, we were the first to use that term. It began out of
a relationship in which a deep love was evolving. It had no context
so far as therapy was concerned. These children of ours were real
and the continuing work we did with them gave us a way of widening
and deepening our co-exploration. We were not just stunned by what
was happening. We were extremely excited. If these inner children
were real, who else was there? After all, there were many doors
to open in the long hallway of the Magic Theater. We were off and
running, meeting the myriad selves that began to emerge into consciousness.
In the next few years we did a great deal of this kind of exploration.
At this early stage there was basically no theory, no Aware Ego.
We were simply two explorers who were very much in love and who
had no idea where our lives were heading. We only knew that what
was happening was rich, creative, and original and that it deepened
our connection to each other at each step along the way. We still
used the visualization process and shared dreams but in this early
stage the excitement of the dialogue process quite possessed us.
The theory was to come later.
Our work with relationship began with a very powerful experience
very early in these explorations. One of Sidra's early visualizations
was that of an ancient Minoan ship sailing on mythic seas. We were
both on that ship. Emblazoned upon its sail, watching over us and
protecting our journey, was a golden eye - the eye of God. As part
of that visualization, we were told that we were on a journey that
would not end. This meant that there was to be no real security
or predictability for us. We were not permitted to set up a permanent
home; we were not even permitted to spend more than one night at
a time on land. It was truly the beginning of our journey of relationship
- a journey in which in which the relationship became our teacher.
THE SECOND ELEMENT
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SELVES
The Beginnings of Theory
Silje Alberthe Kamille Friis |
It is difficult to remember how and when our theoretical considerations
began to intermix with our deeply personal work. We were both psychologists
(practicing psychotherapists). Things were happening and changes
were taking place with remarkable speed and, quite naturally, we
began to organize our thinking about the events that were occurring.
The first realization to come to us was that these selves inside
of us behaved like real people and that they had to be treated
with the greatest respect. If they sensed that they were being
judged in any way or manipulated in any way, they withdrew. It
also became clear very early that for a self to remain with the
facilitator, the facilitator had to remain totally present - the
self required a strong energetic connection to hold it. This was
long before our more sophisticated development of the energetics
of Voice Dialogue. It was, however, a beginning.
PRIMARY AND DISOWNED SELVES
Very early in our explorations we began to see that we are made
up of primary selves - a group of selves that define our personality.
(We had some question as to whether we should call them primary
or dominant selves and we settled on primary.) It seemed to us
like a very simple idea. Why hadn’t we ever been able to
see this before? Who we think we are is really a group of selves
that we have identified with and these selves become the persona
or how we present ourselves to the world.
The next step seemed quite natural and obvious as we continued
our work with each other. Whenever we identify with a primary self
then on the other side, equal and opposite, is its opposite. We
called this the disowned self. Nathaniel Branden had first coined
the term: the disowned self. When he talked of the disowned self,
he was referring, however, to the disowned self as the emotions
that are disowned by people who identify with the mind and have
a basically rational approach to life. We spoke with Nathaniel
about all of this and he was comfortable with our using this term.
We are grateful to him for his largesse in this matter because
the terms disowned and primary selves fit together so perfectly.
Within the first few years, these ideas were getting pretty well
set. In the earliest years, we used the idea of a Protector-Controller
as the main primary self, the self that set up the basic rules
and was the guardian of the gates of entry to our inner world.
We saw the Protector/Controller as a self that gathered and organized
information about the world around us so that we could understand
it, a self that protected us, and controlled both our behavior
and our environment.
It took time before we realized that this was a generic term and
that every primary self was a protector and a controller in its
own way, that each had its own way of figuring out the world around
us, and that each primary self lived by its own set of rules. The
Protector-Controller is still used by many teachers and is still
a very good self to use at the beginning of Voice Dialogue. It
provides us with a picture of what clinicians often refer to as
the basic defense structure of the personality.
We, however, don't think in terms of defenses; instead we think
of the primary selves in terms of their adaptability and creativity
- we honor their attempts to contribute to a person's wellbeing.
We saw them as selves that were central to survival, accomplishment,
and the ability (however limited) to relate to others and, therefore,
always to be regarded with the greatest degree of respect.
WORKING WITH OPPOSITES
After the first excitement of exploring individual selves, and
after the ideas of primary and disowned selves began to emerge,
we began to work more and more with opposites in our work together.
This happened gradually because in the earliest phase of our work
we enjoyed concentrating on a single self. We spent a great deal
of time working with the Inner Child, the Inner Critic, the Responsible
Parent, the Observing Mind, and the Protector/Controller. And we
had a great time talking with the disowned selves. Those selves
were a lot more adventurous and rambunctious - often quite intense
- and usually irreverent.
We began to see, however, that the real gift of the work was not
simply talking to selves. Instead, we began to get the sense that
the real point of the work was working directly with opposites.
It seemed important to learn how to separate from the primary selves,
to talk with the disowned selves, and then learn to stand between
the opposites (of the primary and disowned selves) clearly feeling
both at the same time. It was the opposites that were important.
It took time for this shift in emphasis to occur because talking
to many voices, and especially to the disowned selves, was so much
fun. As time passed, we increasingly put our emphasis on working
between the opposites. But something was missing - we needed to
address the issue of a model of consciousness that could encompass
all of this.
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