Beyond Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: Richard Malter, Ph.D. American Psychological Association Mid-winter Convention OVERVIEW The Judge is that part of our personality that judges and criticizes whatever we do. The Judge exercises psychological power and control by terrorizing our inner child causing us much pain, anguish, low self-esteem, anxiety and depression. One of the main functions of the Judge is to block us in growth and development towards realizing our true potential. We all have an inner Judge component in our personality. The development of the Judge is inherent to our human nature and the manner in which our minds and body are connected by means of the stress response. Even though we all have a Judge, we can learn to become aware of its presence and reduce its power and control over our lives. It gains control by terrorizing our inner child outside our awareness. We can also learn to become aware of the many ploys of the Judge to take control of our lives and to thwart us in our attempts to live our lives to the fullest. The Judge is often found to be active in the development of physical dis-ease and physical pain as well as emotional pain. It is important for therapists to recognize the Judge in their clients and to learn how to reduce its psychological power as a vital part of the therapy process. It is also important for us as therapists to recognize our own Judge and how it may affect us in our therapy role as well as in other aspects of our lives. Our Judge may be blocking us from developing our own potential to its fullest or leading us to judge our clients, thus interfering with the therapy process. The concept of the Judge and how it is related to the Jungian archetypes of the vulnerable inner child and the strong mature Warrior are highly relevant to therapeutic work with addiction recovery, psychotherapy clients, and clients with stress-related illnesses. The concept of the Judge is easier to explain to clients and to work with than the related concepts of the Critical Parent or Freudian Superego. This is because the presence of the Judge and its impact in peopleâs lives is so commonly experienced. Because the Judge is phenomenological in the way it is experienced by people, the use of art and gestalt techniques to image it in a very concrete form allows clients to confront their own unique Judge image or symbol, to feel its psycho-physiological impact, and then to shrink its psychological power over them. When people are guided through this process, there is a dramatic reduction in the intensity of the stress response triggered by their own unique Judge image. It is the psychological power of the Judge image or symbol, experienced in a phenomenological way that offers us therapeutic access to this powerful destructive personality part. This process involving imagery can have a much more profound life changing effect than can other more traditional cognitive and verbal therapy processes alone. Shrinking the person’s Judge is very empowering and results in greatly reducing the inner psychological source of stress.
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