A Review of Healing the Child Within and A Gift to Myself
by Charles L. Whitfield, M.D.

Reviewed by Erin O’Shaughnessy
Licensed marriage, family, and child therapist with a transpersonal private practice in Santa Cruz, California 

Healing the Child Within and its companion book, A Gift to Myself, provide two of the most comprehensive and detailed descriptions of the recovery process ever formulated in layman’s terms.  The author, Charles Whitfield, is a physician who has had sixteen years of experience treating people with alcohol, drug, and family problems. In addition to his private practice in Baltimore, Maryland, which is focused on working with adult children of dysfunctional families and co-dependants, Whitfield serves on the faculty of Rutgers Summer School of Alcohol Studies and the University of Maryland School of Medicine. He also makes himself available for lectures and workshops nationally.

In Healing the Child Within, Whitfield points out the concept of the “inner child,” which represents our essence, true self, or that part of us that is ultimately alive, energetic, creative, and capable of fulfillment, is actually a very ancient idea. However, in recent years, the idea of the inner child has been popularized, both in conjunction with the techniques of transactional analysis, and with the philosophy of the whole Twelve-Step movement, which originally evolved out of Alcoholics Anonymous. Judging from the ever-increasing amount of people who are openly identifying with the desire to embrace and nurture this inner child, the need for such a healing has reached epidemic proportions in our culture. It has been estimated by Whitfield that we show our true self to others for an average of only fifteen minutes per day!

Whitfield explains why it is that living from our false or “co-dependent” self we do not feel real, complete, whole, or sane. He also shows how co-dependence is rooted in the repression in our early childhood observations, feelings, and reactions. He then clearly illustrates the methods we can use today to uncover the things that were repressed. He addresses other essential issues, including self esteem, assertiveness, boundaries, overcoming rigid rules and messages, the role of fun and play, and our healthy need for “altered states of consciousness.” Although I found Healing the Child Within to be an excellent source for helping the reader understand the dynamics of emotional/spiritual wounding and recovery, A Gift to Myself struck me as a much more powerful instrument for deep change.

A Gift to Myself, because of its very structure as a workbook, systematically reinforces the process of  “looking inside” and reporting what’s “coming up” in a safe and constructive way. The book is almost completely experiential. The author leads the reader step by step through these inner observations, at the same time encouraging the reader to adopt other support systems such as trusted friends, therapists, and recovery groups. The book includes many specific techniques, reality tests, and types of immediate feedback that the person who is working on healing the inner self can use. A Gift to Myself shows the reader why, as we heal, we learn that it is useful to go into painful feelings and to experience them as we fully can. Whitfield makes important distinctions between necessary and unnecessary suffering. In particular, he skillfully makes a case the crucial significance of grieving, warns against the quick fixes and “premature transcendence,” and gives a lucid delineation of  “core issues” and how to identify them.

In my own work on myself, as well as my own work as a therapist, I have found that one of the most central and poignant tools has been what Whitfield calls “Telling Your Story.” Outlining how an individual’s story can be a vehicle for making the journey from a victim/martyr stance to a hero/heroine position, Whitfield compares this process to Joseph Campbell’s description in mythological terms of “separation, initiation, and return.” Whitifeld’s emphasis on the power of “naming” what happened can also be found in Starhawk’s book, Dreaming the Dark, and in many other folk-based traditions that similarly recognize a “younger” self or “inner child.”

Finally, Whitfield extends the techniques of inner healing beyond those of conventional psychotherapeutic contexts into the realm of the transpersonal. He presents his own spiritual orientation and relationship to a higher power, an orientation that seems at least in part adapted from A Course in Miracles, and one that is also reminiscent of some of the Seth material. Like Seth, Whitfield talks about choosing new beliefs and about our ability to become the “co-creators” of our reality, but he does so only after having meticulously revealed the deeper emotional work necessary beforehand.

I think Whitfield deserves to be commended for some of the fine distinctions he makes, for instance, in regard to the dynamics, meaning, and importance of the “observer self,” and his recognition of the continuing difficulty Western psychology has had in grasping that concept at its highest level. He manages to avoid the pitfalls of over-simplification that arise so often in self-help literature while remaining exquisitely simple in his language and presentation. Shining through the pop jargon and buzz words that so familiar from the current recovery movement is an impeccable and ageless warmth and wisdom.