Marriage Counsellor: The Imago
By: Michael Russell
Psychologists use the term “imago”, Latin for “image”, to refer to the unconscious image that people develop from birth of their ideal mate or significant other. A dictionary definition of “imago” includes the following meanings: the representation of a person or a thing, a copy, a likeness and a mental picture. Essentially, it is a composite picture of the individuals who influenced a person the most during childhood.
People rely on their imago in their search for an ideal mate, someone who both resembles their primary caretakers and compensates for the repressed parts of themselves. This can be ones’ parents, one or two siblings, a close relative, or a babysitter. The important thing is that a persons’ brain records everything about them - the way they responded to ones’ cries, the sound of their voice, their emotions, their moods, the way they moved, the way they laughed or got angry, everything. In addition to these impressions, the brain also recorded every significant interaction with them. This data was merely stored in the brain and not interpreted, very much like downloading files onto a hard drive.
Many people have difficulty believing that their brain has recorded so much information, especially from such as early age. Most individuals have little or no memory of anything that happened to them before the age of five or six, even very traumatic events. However, studies have shown that we have vast amounts of data stored and hidden in our brains. Neurosurgeons discovered this while performing brain surgery on patients under local anesthesia. When parts of their brain were stimulated with weak electrical currents, the patients were suddenly able to recall hundreds of long-forgotten episodes from childhood in vivid detail.
Not all of these episodes are recorded with the same intensity though. The most vivid impressions seem to be the ones we formed of our caretakers early in life. And of all the interactions we had with these people, the ones that were most deeply etched in our subconscious were the ones that were the most wounding because these encounters seemed to threaten our very existence. Over time the pieces of information about our caretakers merged to form a single image and were stored under one heading: the person responsible our survival.
People have strong tendencies to be romantically attracted to another person based on how well that person matches the imago. The brain analyzes a persons’ traits and compares that with the rich data bank of information and if there is a strong correlation, there is a resultant attraction. We unconsciously compare everyone we meet to our imago and when there is a close match, we feel a sudden surge of interest.
As is typical with the unconscious mind, we have no real awareness of this imago matching process. The only way we can usually catch a glimpse of our imago is in dreams. In dreams, we have a tendency to merge people together. Thus, you may have a dream in which your spouse suddenly metamorphosed into one of your parents or during a dream your spouse and a parent played such similar roles that they became virtually indistinguishable.
However, performing certain exercises under the guidance of a qualified therapist can help to reveal the characteristics of a persons’ imago. By comparing the dominant character traits of ones’ spouse with those of ones’ primary caretakers, a person can readily observe the correlation that the unconscious mind draws between them. The imago is very much like a silhouette with few distinguishing physical characteristics but with the combined character traits of all of ones’ primary caretakers.
Michael Russell
Your Independent guide to Marriage Councelor