A distinguishing feature of the humanistic approach to psychotherapy is the primary importance allocated to the real relationship between client and therapist. During my training in psychosynthesis it was stressed as axiomatic that 'the relationship between client and counsellor is paramount' (Whitmore, 1991: 22). Though I would never query this emphasis on the reality of two equals meeting together to work in an enterprise that, though centred on the issues of one, will operate to change both, yet still for me this relationship is not the dominant factor. Deprived of genuine relationship in infancy the internal interactions between my multitude of ego-fragments or part selves always outweighed external reality. As these internal relationships healed and I became progressively more free to develop my own way of being of service to my clients their dysfunctional internal relationships as revealed in their life stories and ongoing vicissitudes became the focus of my work.

Transferring from a managerial career where facilitating the resolution of devisive issues between staff was a major activity, it came naturally to fall into the same role in relation to the part selves in conflict within my clients. Just as it would not have been helpful in the office situation to assume that a member of staff was ill and required to be cured, or was in some way inherently inferior, so too the humanistic attitude to the person in need as essentially healthy, responsible, trustworthy and uniquely valuable (Dryden, 1990) is the one I have found most appropriate for all the part selves of that person. Both my internal and external experiences have taught me that the only effective medium for reconciliation is truth. Assertion training, in origin a behavioural therapy, provided the technical skills required for truthful communication but this was not enough. My internal experiences demonstrated that only the whole truth and nothing but the truth, however painful, would do. And therefore I differ from much mainstream humanistic practice in the emphasis I place in my work on the pervading influence of infancy and childhood experiences and the need to fully understand and work through all such issues.

This latter factor has inclined me towards psychodynamic theory. Psychoanalitic practice however is predicated on a hierarchical basis which is fundamentally antithetical to the goal of internal reconciliation. This basic assumption is revealed in the language of the published corpus. Just one example will demonstrate the difference:-

Even more significant from my point of view, is the requirement that the internal dynamics of the therapist follow the same rule. 'One of the most important qualities of the competent [Freudian] practitioner is the ability to subordinate his or her personality to the "analytic attitude".' (Dryden, 1990: 28).

The structural theory of Freud (Guntrip, 1961) which sees conflict as in-built and the necessary triumph of ego over id as the desired outcome, makes this therapeutic style inevitable. For analysts the primary tool for resolving internal conflicts is the transference relationship between client and therapist, in which the client re-experiences in sessions in exact detail childhood or infantile scenarios with the analyst usually perceived as if they were the original parental figure involved (Sandler, 1979). The analytic setting is designed to evoke the several varieties of transference re-enactments but the resolution aimed for is a more appropriate balance of power within the psyche as modelled by the analyst. My preference is to reconcile and thus eliminate these embedded early conflicts in situ, that is within the client's psyche by means of imagery, as my own were resolved, and I use a variety of means to evoke the internal re-enactments, such as dreams, memories, current events in the client's life and spontaneous images. Nevertheless the analytic technique of interpretation, that is clarifying for clients the meaning in what they are saying of which they are unaware (Sandler, 1979) is as necessary with internal enactments as with external. The difference is in the language and the paradigm that it embodies.

This can be illustrated by reference to the work of Joyce McDougall (1986) whose book Theatres of the Mind has been regularly recommended by the analytically orientated as relevant to image work. The author does at times use the language of part selves and the inner child and seems to follow the ethos of the object relations theorists I favour in her understanding of how parental influence moulds the child. But within the same paragraph she will advert again to the orthodox paradigm which to the humanistic sensibilities, judges and diminishes the child within and it is clear that in sessions her style falls within the orthodox analytic range. So of a client she can say:-

but it is clear that she is speaking metaphorically. My own reaction from my humanistic paradigm would be to share my perceptions not withhold them in controlling fashion, and to arrange for a literal internal dialogue at the earliest opportunity in the hope of releasing the suffering child, here judged as an assassin, from the inner condemnation with which, in my view, the author colludes by so labelling her. But this author believes in the death instinct and of another client says:-

One of the clearest ways in which humanistic therapy demonstrates its ethos of equality between therapist and client is that it does not theorise about the inner reality of human beings in such alienating language as that above, which can seem to have been created for the purpose of ring-fencing the 'knowledge' possessed by the analyst. And knowledge, of course, is power. Raised to be solely English speaking in a family when, during my infancy, the common language of daily use was quite other, this issue of exclusion from understanding is one of passionate concern for me. Though Transactional Analysis makes no literal use of imagery, its acknowledgement of the central reality of part selves in a user-friendly language that makes it 'an effective tool anyone can use to gain practical insight into one's own behaviour and how to change' (Harris, 1986: xii) has ensured it a place in my working. I have recounted in the first essay just how effective a tool I found it to be for my own process and I have recommended it often to clients who wish to enhance their therapeutic gains through reading.

Carl Jung can be called the first humanistic practitioner perhaps especially because of his recognition that people can take responsibility for enhancing their own process of change, and may come to, or continue with, therapy for this very reason, the development of their personality (Fordham, 1966). During his struggle to avoid psychotic breakdown in his own, definitive, mid-life crisis, Jung initiated most of the techniques characteristic of humanistic practice (Jung, 1995). He used journalling, his black book, he invented play therapy for himself, returning to childhood games, he used body work, he drew and he painted the images that arose in his mind so that today we also can see Philemon, the part self with whom he conversed walking in the garden. For my purpose this last technique is of primary importance. Jung gave the name active imagination (Stevens, 1990) to the process of first passively allowing an image or fantasy to develop spontaneously before the mind's eye but then for the conscious ego which observes the fantasy to become actively involved and engage in interactions with the imaginal characters. Stevens makes clear the spirit of acceptance and commitment with which such part selves need to be approached. 'Treat the inner figures as living characters... They are as real as you are so treat them with respect'. (Stevens, 1996: 244).

I have described in the companion essay how two of my own sub-personalities first manifested in a dream, just as Jung's internal mentor Philemon came to him. Though many British Jungians give much less attention to imaginal work than Jung prescribed (Samuels, 1985) there are still those who value it.

However, I feel that the element missing from this form of imaginal work is genuine dialogue. Stevens (1996) uses the word but in fact stresses the questioning of imaginal figures and listening to their answers together with careful critical consideration of any advice so received but does not suggest responding directly to the figures. Hobson (1985) devotes much consideration in relation to the therapeutic relationship to the issue of genuine dialogue which takes place between two experiencing subjects. 'A meeting is a simultaneous acting and being acted upon. It is a sharing, a dialogue which cannot be reduced to 'I say this' and 'Thou sayest that' (p19). However, he does not supply any evidence that this is what happened directly between Mr. Chips and the Flame-thrower.

Perls and Gestalt psychotherapy have done much to remedy this lack. Although this therapy has no theory of part selves it has built a magnificent edifice of practice on the foundations laid by Jung. Though Stevens (1996) is somewhat dismissive of Perls' claim to originality it is heand his followers who have allowed genuine self-expression to the unacknowledged split-off suffering children locked away inside so many clients. The 'top dog' 'under dog' conflict (Clarkson, 1989) and its resolution by means of the two chair, or empty chair, technique, is almost the trade mark of Gestalt therapy. The client is encouraged to recognise within themself the voices of the victimised part self who is never allowed to meet its needs, perhaps for play and relaxation, and the persecuting part self that makes impossible demands, and to speak aloud the words of each, addressing the empty chair which they will then move to occupy as the opposing voice. Full expression of emotions is a prime feature of this work, yet powerful as it is this is still not the full 'I - thou' meeting that Hobson, following Buber, advocates. The part selves do not see each other as they speak. Gestalt practice also developed the experiment of treating every object, as well as person, in a dream image as a part self. Clarkson (1989) described a client enacting the part of a dream kitten about to be run over, 'lying on the floor ... looking upwards, mewed in terror ... "Stop! Please stop - you'll kill me!"' (p109). Again she talks of a dialogue but as she gives no words or reaction from the dream vehicle it is not at all clear that this fulfils the criteria for it to be true dialogue. In the work with this client his various road accidents come up for re-experiencing as one result of this dream work and eventually his self-destructive part is linked in with rage at his abusive father but for me this is not sufficient elucidation of the origin and actuality of all the part selves who speak out from this client's unconscious. Although he felt the 'painful terror', the 'fragile vulnerable part' that was the kitten, was not, it seems, named and so fully acknowledged.

Psychosynthesis has adopted these Gestalt experiments into its deliberately eclectic practice, believing that many therapeutic tools should be available for use so that the client may have choices about the way they work, and also that 'Every method or technique should be subordinate to the client's needs ... and ... basic temperament' (Whitmore, 1991: 43). Where psychosynthesis stands apart is in the paramount position it gives to its expanded theory of the unconscious, the Self, the I, and therefore by association to part selves, or sub-personalities. Whitmore (1991) acknowledges the use of Gestalt identification and dialogue techniques but the specifically psychosynthesis dis-identification exercise is the essential 'other side of the coin' in this matter. Assagioli (1975) describes this in terms of recognising that 'I' am other than my anger, depression or whatever affect may be threatening to overwhelm me and the practice of objectifying the mood as an image, either internally, or externally on paper, is the one that Jung employed to save his reason (Jung, 1995). But the practice of dis-identifying from a sub-personality and then relating to it takes this issue beyond the enactment and elucidation of an inner conflict that the Gestalt two-chair technique achieves. During my training I was taught to feel proud of the psychosynthesis addition of the third chair (Whitmore, 1991) from which a more objective 'I', dis-identified from both, can perceive, understand and begin to empathise with the two embattled part selves. I have described in the companion essay how, in my Athens II world, the figure of a second Commander from a subordinate city-state, increased in significance until he could act to alert my two part selves, the Old Commander and the General, to their true relationship and so heal my most intractable split. While I was absorbing the theory consciously my unconscious acted on it to grow a part self to occupy a 'third chair'.

Psychosynthesis practice is characterised by much recourse to the imaginal world and draws inspiration not only directly from Jung but also from other users of imagery like Robert Desoille and Hansscarl Leuner, adapting their methods while by-passing their theory. Desoille (1966) does not advert to the idea of part selves, in fact he is very dismissive of Jung's concept of the Self. In his description of his use of the directed daydream he does spell out as a basic law of the mind that imaginal movement in a vertical direction predictably produces luminous images following ascent and darker more disturbing images following descent, in Assagioli's terms movement towards the higher or the lower unconscious. The directions that Desoille gives his clients are action based, so that, for example, he will suggest that the dangerous octopus that a client has met on the ocean bed and, as directed, pulled up to the surface, be tapped with a magic wand that will appear as needed, in order to induce transformation. The monster may become a significant person from the client's outer reality. No dialogue is encouraged. Similarly a client may be instructed to imagine a sword or a vessel and describe it in detail and the forms imagined will provide much diagnostic information. In my experience all such images are likely to be representative of part selves if treated as such. So, for example, the image of a missile on its launch pad used by a client of mine to represent her anger, when engaged with I - thou dialogue, giggled and wriggled, clearly revealing the toddler ego-fragment animating it.

Leuner (1969) uses Freudian theory in his diagnostic interpretation of his client's images and his Guided Affective Imagery in its technique is also directed more to action than to dialogue. Where a Jungian might expect to hear words of wisdom and council from an imaginal figure, in Leuner's guided fantasies it is anxiety issues and psychological blocks that are to be encountered and he has very specific and firmly directed methods for dealing with these. Problematic symbolic figures or creatures are to be subdued by confrontation, feeding, or exhausting and killing. Only in one avenue, reconciliation, is verbalising given a small part to play. I find it hard to understand how, from a Freudian theoretical base, acting out (Sandler, 1979) can be given such overwhelming precedence, as if because it happens internally it ceases to be what it is. For me this is a fundamental failure to respect the reality of the imaginal world. So for a client faced with a terrifying giant Leuner, like Desoille with his magic wand, intrudes his own solution and instructs his client to imagine truckloads of food arriving with which he can feed the giant until, gorged, he falls harmlessly asleep. But it is wholly inappropriate for the child to feed, that is meet the needs, of the parent or parentally identified part self. Leuner colludes with the neurotic defence and strengthens it, as Desoille, I feel, colludes with infantile magical thinking. Leuner recognises how dangerous his 'exhausting and killing' technique might be 'there is the risk that it may be experienced by the patient as an attack against himself' (Leuner, 1969: 19). This is not surprising if, as I believe, a figure such as that of Death envisaged by one of his clients and forced to run without rest until it fell into a stream and dissolved, is also a container for a part self.

Psychosynthesis in its use of mental imagery placed much emphasis on dialogue. Whitmore (1991) describes how a client, asked to visualise her problem with assertiveness, saw a caged bear which she recognised as her fear of her own power. Conversation with the bear allowed it to communicate its needs for nourishment and some freedom. This image work led to exploration of childhood experiences and much insight. The bear however was not named as a part self. When explicitly working with sub-personalities identification and dis-identification with images are routinely used so that three-way communication develops between therapist and part selves.

I will quote extracts from a published example for comparative purposes.

In this long session of imaginal work Sharon recognises and gives voice to other sub-personalities and is eventually encouraged to lead them all up a mountain towards the light and the Higher Sharon who encourages all of them to lean together so that they flow into one. In this the client received an experience of being an integrated self with qualities from all her sub-personalities and the session ended with this client having a transpersonal experience of merger with the sun and oneness with the Universe. Work following a psychosynthesis session of this type is about grounding the meaning the client has found in the work into her daily life by making the changes that will express the insights gained.

In its use of images like the ascent to the sun, or sudden beams of light falling into imagined temples, psychosynthesis I feel often falls into the same trap as Desoille and Leuner, whose work also produced apparently excellent results, the trap that lies in wait, in the end, for all therapists, not just the humanistic. Desoille, from his paralogian theoretical foundation of conditional response and deconditioning practice unknowingly actually states the problem. The goal of establishing 'new and appropriate dynamic patterns ... is made possible by the tremendous capacity of the brain for establishing new "temporary linkages"' (Desoille, 1966: 16). Just as a person who has lost a limb can acquire compensatory strength and facility with those remaining so a psyche can acquire new linkages without having healed old wounds or splits between ego-fragments. So the growth of my housewife sub-personality detailed in the first essay allowed a healthier less neurotic life-style, but for the General/abandoned baby ego fragment inside Athens II this wife for the Captain merely represented another threat and had virtually no part to play in healing my last major split.

I have observed image work conducted in training groups in which the protagonists have experienced powerful emotions and gained significant insight and yet it becomes clear months or years later that no real personal change has resulted. I have understood this to be because images have not been recognised, named and affirmed as the ego-fragments they are. An image of a baby was perhaps seen transpersonally as an indication of the birth of new potential and not also as the real needy inner baby contained within the participant. It was not accorded that respect that the humanistic ethos demands.

The Object Relations Theory of Guntrip and Fairbairn (Guntrip, 1968) has, I believe, allowed me to avoid the trap. Although expressed in the analytic language I have criticised above, this theory does not alienate because it is non-judgmental. Guntrip came to recognise that in the end the essential factor is the real relationship with a caring therapist and in his working technique often seems very humanistic. For example, to a patient who had a fantasy of crushing a girl child and then began punching herself he said, 'You must feel terrified being hit like that' (Guntrip, 1968: 191) and to another client who saw an image of a little boy shut up in a room crying, he pointed out that his 'fantasy is that you as a grown up person are working in one room and wanting to forget a crying little boy shut up in another room' (P192). He suggests to the client that a part of him hates the child and, hidden and repressed so that it did not appear in the image nevertheless 'guarded the door to the unconscious and tried not to let the child out'. Here he is talking of the anti-libidinal ego and the first extract I shall use from my own image work with clients illustrates my finding that the anti-libidinal ego is not to be regarded as truly a part ego. Client Jane had seen an image of a woman 'old before her time' as representing the burden of responsibility she carried and a six year old child who was the frightened voice inside expecting the worst. When I asked her to see them both:-

Jane: I can't see the little girl very well but I'm most aware of a kind of black line dividing them ... like a black wall. And I think that the older figure's sort of got her back to the child.

Th: How does that feel to you as you see it?

J: Sad.

Th: ... say 'I feel sad when I see this black line dividing you'.

J: I feel sad when I see this black line dividing you.

Th: Does anything happen?

J: I think I can see it shrinking.

Th: How does that feel to you as you see it?

J: Sad.

Th: ... say 'I feel sad when I see this black line dividing you'.

J: I feel sad when I see this black line dividing you.

Th: Does anything happen?

J: I think I can see it shrinking.

This session of Jane's happened only days after I had recognised my own split around age seven in the General and Old Commander as I have outlined in the first essay. In Jane's image I saw the result of her known trauma at age six, the seven year old's central ego with her back to the split off six year old libidinal ego and divided by the black anti-libidinal barrier. Guntrip avers that the anti-libidinal ego must be drained of energy. Speaking the emotion assertively in the image is the way I have found to achieve this. So, for example, in a two figure dream like Guntrip's examples, when addressed assertively the anti-libidinal figure will lose animation, becoming a statue or shop dummy. Or, when a client assertively expressed her anger to the image of the teacher whose long ago critical comment to the effect that she was nothing still wounded her, the anti-libidinally invested human figure dissolved leaving an empty suit hanging in the air.

Expressing the anger that exists between part selves however is a powerfully effective reconnection move. A client who labelled herself paranoid and found it hard to experience her feelings came to a session 'feeling like Quasimodo'. Her image was of a hunched, ugly, warty old crone.

This is the beginning of dialogue as Hobson (1985) uses the word. She speaks to her part self and experiences a reaction. She perceives the responsive emotion in the old woman's face and is affected by it. She could not at that point speak the compassion that developed in her though she could see herself comforting the weeping crone. When she identified with the crone:-

But she could not see the person who was being kind to her and although as the crone she could speak her need for love and wept copiously in front of me, she knew the comforter would leave her soon and in the image so it happened. As herself again she could not at first see the crone, but reminded of the figure's need for love she expressed herself willing to see her again and after sorting through the jumble of emotions the frightened old woman roused in her, and acknowledging her fear of the risk involved in helping her, she was finally able to say to her:-

This piece of work I interpreted to Sue as revealing the emotional condition of the baby inside her, needing mother's comfort but knowing that it only comes fleetingly, angry, and desperate. The crone image expresses the prematurely developed coping mechanisms that result from a deprivation of mothering and the ugliness the lack of self worth that results. As herself in the interaction she was re-enacting the guilty hostility sometimes felt by her real, harassed over worked mother towards the baby she found it hard to cope with. The difference between my method and the extract from Vargiu's work will be seen to lie in the direct expression of emotion to the imaginal object, the minimum of explanation, following good assertion practice (Dickson, 1982) and immediate affirmation of the needy baby ego fragment engaged in the process. The physical contact in the imaginal world, first the spontaneous blow with the stick which led to the first positive emotion, pity, and then the embrace, produced a physical  BOOKMARK  sensation as the handclasp of General and Commander, that I recounted in my first essay, did for me and I believe this reflects a physical change in the neural networks in the brain. Such reconnection produces immediate confident action in the external world without need for grounding.

This precis of one session gives a false impression of the difficulties and depth of this work. Resistance (Sandler, 1973) can be strong, but if visualised can be engaged in dialogue. Clients often strive to substitute action for words, as Sue did, but though such acting out can bring relief it does not facilitate connection. Often clients cannot access their true emotions, or cannot dare to speak, or modify the assertive phrase offered so that it becomes oblique and ineffective. Hate and anger can be so strong that part selves will not even look at each other. When this happens I allow the image work to end at that point so that the client can experience and recognise the depth of their inner alienation in line with Gestalt belief in fully experiencing what is (Clarkson, 1989). Images can be re-invoked in succeeding sessions or after a time lapse, or a client may experience a series of dreams extending over months or years which re-present their splits in various guises that develop as progress is made. I have found that as ego fragments are reunited and neurotic content reduced or eliminated then images become architypal. Assertive communication can then become an avenue for realising transpersonal qualities or for peak experiences. Valuable as I find this type of image work to be it cannot, of course, stand alone. Most of my therapeutic time with clients is spent in attentive, regardful listening to all they need to express, in the spirit of Rogers (1980) person-centred approach, to making sense of the patterns that they reveal, and facilitating their recognition of their total reality. So Sue had to let her adult perception that her mother was always there for her, since she worked from home, and struggled to do her best under great pressures, let in full acceptance of her infant self's equally valid experience of endlessly repeated desertions as mother attended to customers, which had left her with so much unexpressed despairing anger.

The scientist in me notes the predictable universality of some images. The frequency with which aged figures appear to contain the deprived infant ego-fragment helped me to recognise before my internal work was concluded, that the aged General in his relations with the Captain/Young Commander who represented my developing more integrated persona, had come to contain the abandoned baby, though earlier in the storyline the General had contained my 8-14 year ego fragment relating to the Old Commander/3-6 year old. This sudden change of part self contained within an image occurs within client's working sometimes as a response to an emotive communication and needs to be recognised and acknowledged. The connecting link in my process is clear. The child who matures precociously to survive, unsupported by family, the rigours of school life or puberty, re-enacts its infantile experience of forced self-reliance.

In this second essay I have shown how my inner experience has moulded my own way of working with images to resolve the conflicts within fragmented psyches based on the understanding it gave me that the deepest issues are often those between part selves such as a three year old ego fragment and a needy baby, or a five year old and teenager within a client, and that working with not-self structures such as Parent, Super-ego, or Parental Image, though valuable and necessary, can by pass these. As many theoretical models assisted my self-understanding so many humanistic techniques have contributed to my working style. Perhaps it can best be summed up by para phrasing the name of what is in many ways the paradymatic humanistic school, person centred therapy, and calling it ego-fragment centred working. But always in the interests of achieving what St. Ireneous claimed as the glory of God, a human being fully alive.