We all come from this 4.5 billion year old home called earth. And we are, as the astronomers say, star stuff…and as the singers chant, stardust! The possibility of our existence relies on atoms formed forever ago in colossal stars. We floated our first nine months in amniotic fluid that bears a salinity resemblance to the oceans (2% and 3%, respectively). There is divinity in an infant’s eyes!


We are matter become conscious.


This brief two-part essay will focus on what happens next invoking principles of Transactional Analysis and a little Buddhism (I claim no special expertise in either and these interpretations are my own).


So from floating, we go to birthing into families and societies that demand a certain degree of conformity and therein resides our challenge. After that physical birth comes a kind of psychological gestation and birth of the ego or “me”. Under ideal conditions, the child develops qualities of spontaneity, curiosity and self-appreciation. Alternatively and under less auspicious circumstances, the child may become overly conforming, rebellious or suppressive, and lacking in self-confidence. In Transactional Analysis terms, these represent the natural and the adapted child ego states, respectively.


Auspicious or not, upbringing matters. We may tend to do to ourselves what was done to us, a karmic repetition of the past. We parent ourselves much like we were parented. Intra-psychically, we may nurture and guide those childlike energies within. Or we may reject, abandon or abuse that child inside as our parents/caregivers once did.


This binary model does not quite capture the nature of the natural/adapted dynamic. Circumstance blends these qualities with a fluidity that sometimes shifts from day to day from more natural to more adapted and back. Still, those shifts veer mostly one way or the other. With adolescence these characteristics inform identity development and the transition to adulthood. But within, the child remains.


The concept of the “inner child” is well known in popular culture and makes for some pretty humorous comedic skits. Long before that, Carl Jung identified a divine child archetype. And in the latter decades of the twentieth century, some psychologists began to use this concept in psychotherapy and hypnotherapy- premised on the existence of an inner child that is quite alive in the adult psyche. And, some Buddhist teachers have embraced a meditation practice for showing loving kindness toward the child within.

So how does all this fit together?