Welcome to Part 3 of this interview with Dr Harville Hendrix, co-founder of Imago Relationship Therapy and internationally renowned bestselling author of “Getting the Love You Want.”

Here, Dr Hendrix starts out by talking about how neuroscience might impact who you are in relationships, too:

For the past two or three years I’ve been reading a lot on brain research, and the brain people seem to agree … that an integrated brain is the function of an integrated context, and that that is the neurophysiological basis for a sense of psychological wellbeing.

And no matter what you do to try to shape-up your psychological life, if you don’t have brain integration [and relationships] in the balance, you’re not going to feel good; you’re going to feel anxious.

Welcome to Part 2 of this interview with Dr Harville Hendrix, co-founder of Imago Relationship Therapy and internationally renowned bestselling author of “Getting the Love You Want.”

See if you can find any parts of yourself in what he’s talking about here…

Dr Hendrix, you’ve said that people in love are masters of projection. So do you think it’s possible for us to ever really see the other person? Or, even in relationship, are we kind of only engaging with ourselves?

I think we do see the other. It certainly doesn’t start there, though.

It starts with a projection onto the other, of both the idealised and the unacknowledged, disowned, de-idealised aspects of yourself, so that romantic love appears to be pretty much an illusion, in terms of knowing who it is that you’re relating to.

I thought I’d offer you something a little different this week, something else for your inner therapist to ponder.

Not so long ago, I had the privilege of interviewing Dr Harville Hendrix, co-founder of Imago Relationship Therapy and internationally renowned bestselling author of “Getting the Love You Want.” In that book, Dr Hendrix writes “We are born in relationship, we are wounded in relationship, and we can be healed in relationship.”

According to Imago Relationship Therapy, each of us subconsciously builds an internal ‘imago’ or image of all the most positive and negative traits of our childhood caregivers. This image then forms a kind of template for the type of person we’re romantically drawn to, and who we can potentially find healing with in relationship.

Does that ring any bells for you?

What are your relationships like?

Who have you chosen as your partner/s and why?

And are there any ideas here in this interview extract that could help you bring more richness or healing into your relationship – and maybe help you ‘get the love you want’?