Hal and Sidra Stone pioneered a kind of therapy they called Voice Dialogue from the 1980’s on. It was an elaboration of a Jungian technique called Active Imagination and works with different aspects of our personality and identity. For example, we may have a soft side and a hard side to our personality. Perhaps our soft side is more obvious with our children or family members while we may show our harder more pragmatic side at work. The fact is that we may play many different roles in our life. Perhaps some roles seem easier and others harder to connect with? Have you ever struggled with confidence or assertiveness in certain situations? Our early family experiences may have biased our personality development in a certain direction, not to mention the unspoken expectations of our community and society. Voice Dialogue provides a way to connect to parts of our personality that we may have unconsciously suppressed for various reasons and I will sometimes use this technique as a warm-up prior to hypnotherapy. I have personally found it to be a fascinating and empowering process and it provides further confirmation of the idea that our personailties and identities as we experience them are but the tip of a much larger iceberg concealed by our subconcious minds.
