Self-Love: Finding Light in the Dark

Abstract

This paper was presented as a keynote speech at the Third International Conference of the International Integrative Psychotherapy Association in Rome on April 19, 2009. The speech is the author’s view of what is behind a client’s desire for self-love and the importance of facilitating the emergence of positive experiences of the self, drawing from ideas in positive psychology and EMDR. Helping new positive neural networks arise in clients is as important as the dissolving and working through of defenses arising from childhood wounds, hence finding light in the dark.