Individual Voice Therapy Vancouver

Theory of Defenses and the Negative Voice As mentioned earlier, Firestone theorizes that to some extent all children form psychological defenses that originally help children survive emotional deprivation, but which later underlie emotional problems in adult life.

According to Firestone, the primary defense is the fantasy bond. This is an imagined connection the infant or child forms with the primary care giver in the first years of life. When the young child is feeling alone, frightened, or emotionally deprived, the child imagines that the care giver is present, attending to its needs. This fantasy bond functions as a defense against separation anxiety,
interpersonal pain, and existential dread. It is highly effective as a defense because a human being's capacity for imagination provides partial gratification of needs and reduces tension. Without the fantasy bond, Firestone contends that the young child would be overwhelmed with anxiety and fears of annihilation.

Once children are hurt and form the primary defense, the fantasy bond, they progressively give up reaching out to their caregivers for nurture and love, and develop a defense called inwardness. Inwardness refers to a retreat into oneself, in which children learn to parent or feed themselves, to take care of their own feelings and emotional needs. Initially, children do this by thumb sucking. Later, children learn other ways to gratify themselves: a favourite blanket or stuffy, masturbation, fantasy, solitary play, excessive eating, reading, TV and computer play.

As children become inward, learning to feed and gratify themselves internally, they develop a pseudo independent attitude, an illusion of self-sufficiency. The core attitude is "I can take care of myself." The defense of inwardness protects children against the pain of reaching out for love-food that may not be forthcoming, but leaves children emotionally impoverished and alone.

Inward children have a negative conception of themselves as bad, flawed, and deficient. This negative conception is also a defense against anxiety. It is only possible for small, dependent children to maintain the fantasy bond, the illusion that their parents are more loving and attentive than they really are, by seeing themselves in a negative light. When parents are at their worst behavior, children say to themselves, "Mommy and daddy are right to be angry. I'm the problem. I'm just, a bad kid!"

Children incorporate this negative view of themselves in the form of a negative thought process. By the time children are four or five, they have an identifiable negative thought process about themselves. A child will think, "I'm not smart. I'm not good enough. I suck. This negative thought process is internalized when parents are at their worst behavior, and express harsh, critical attitudes toward their children.

To recap, Firestone theorizes that when children are hurt, to some extent they pull away from a close attachment to their primary caregivers. In place of a close attachment, they form the fantasy bond, an imagined connection to their caregivers. This defense allays anxiety and provides an illusion of security. The child then goes into an inward state, characterized by self-feeding behavior and a pseudo independent attitude. In order to maintain the fantasy bond, the child develops a negative conception of self, characterized by a negative thought process, "I'm bad etc."

According to Firestone, our defenses are regulated by a negative thought process, called the negative inner voice or 'voice'. The voice is internalized at a young age. It refers to a well-integrated pattern of hostile thoughts and attitudes that generates negative emotional states and self-destructive behavior, and causes people to reject positive experiences. The voice has a dual focus: it is critical and hostile toward the self, predisposing alienation from the self. It is also hostile and critical toward others, predisposing mistrust and alienation from others. The voice may be construed along a continuum of self-destructive thoughts, ranging from thoughts that are mildly critical of the self ("You should have worked harder"), to thoughts that are punitive toward the self ("You're worthless"), to thoughts of self-annihilation ("You're not fit to live. Just get rid of yourself").

Firestone postulates that the voice and the defenses constitute an anti self-system, a destructive part of the personality, an enemy within. In his view, we have a divided self: on the one hand, the anti self-system; on the other hand, the healthy self-system. The anti self-system comprises our defenses and the voice which regulates the defenses. The healthy self-system comprises our rational thinking, our goals, wants, preferences, and our values. Although people are conflicted internally between these two systems, the more they operate from the healthy self system, the more they are able to pursue their goals and tolerate love.

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