The Dark Side of The Inner Child: The Next Step

by Stephen H. Wolinsky, John Bradshaw (Designed by)

Stephen Wolinsky brings us full circle in understanding the reality of our inner child. Rather than being always "precious", Dr. Wolinsky shows us the dysfunctional shadow side of our inner child and puts us in touch with those frozen, inner-child memories or trance states that keep creating problems by filtering reality through outmoded, limited, and distorted lenses. The Next Step is to, finally, own and acknowledge this dark side and step out of our inner-child trance into the present time and uninterrupted awareness.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Self Help, Health

188 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Stephen H. Wolinsky is a founder of Quantum Psychology, integrating Western Psychology, Advaita-Vedanta’s Non-duality, Quantum Physics, Neuro-Science, and Buddhism. He is the author of fourteen books, audio tapes and a DVD series, I Am That I Am.
Wolinsky has a PhD in Clinical Psychology and began his psychotherapy practice in 1974. From 1975 to 1985 he met over thirty different Gurus, Teachers, Rinpoches, and Meditation Masters.
Wolinsky presently resides in Aptos, California.

Reviews

[Andrei Iacoban · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's like doing therapy on one's self... If that person is conscious enough, and willing to admit the truths of his behavior and where it stems from. It also provides a great approach to understanding pain bodies, and where certain emotions that keep our frozen child alive reside in, which in turn puts our brain into unconscious trances that we have to associate as an observer of ourselves in order to prevent trance states and for real change to occur.

[Oliver · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is good for the more experienced therapy client with a history of trauma. It goes beyond the basic CBT and DBT models typically presented as a sort of "cure all" in the past decade. While these modalities are helpful, they fail to address the intricacies of identity and mental health in those with traumatic experiences/PTSD. This book does struggle to support itself. The author seems to use a lot of ill-defined "pop psychology" language (and not even in a way that makes sense). He also lacks any backing for his work beyond his own research. It having been decades since publishing, it's concerning to see no significant work from the author or research by others regarding the practices from his book. It seems like he was the only one on the boat for what he terms "quantum psychology." Frankly, his methodology closely resembles the modern "internal family systems" therapeutic approach. If you've stumbled upon this book, I'd recommend moving past it and looking into IFS, which offers a much wider field of research and literature. I didn't hate this book. Some of his analogies gave me some new perspective, the author had an evident passion for his work, but I recommend caution using this well-out-of-date psychology literature, especially when doing personal trauma work.

[Marliyanti Yanti · Rating 4 out of 5]

A trigger is button that gets pushed and that begins the uncomfortable emergence of a problem state.

Well, quite hard for me to finish this book, but I learn that when you get your buttons pushed and find you are going into fear, anger, trauma, etc, is that it is the inner child "the creator and observer" not the adult.

[Yerlis Ferrari · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book

[Ana · Rating 5 out of 5]

It took me a while to finish this book. And next time I will read it even slower and do more exercises.

For now, I was reading it as a horror book, doing/writing what I could.

[Pearl Liang · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of the ideas in this book are quite dubious due to the lack of scientific proof. It seems to be entirely based on the author’s interpretation of his personal experience and the stories of his clients. That said, a lot of ideas mentioned in the book make intuitive sense, and it’s worth doing the mental exercise (recommended in the book) to see what we might uncover.
The author believes everything relates back to our childhood and our interactions with our caretakers. His views are clearly heteronormative and he even briefly cited Roman Polanski, a child abuser and rapist.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

ILL