Imago

You have relied on yourself to find your mates and partners.  The days of arranged marriages etc are over.  We take what we get or so we think.  There is a place deep inside each of us that wants to guide you in your search for the ideal mate, someone who will both resemble your caretakers and compensate for the repressed parts of yourself.  You … like every one else has relied on self and the thought of freedom of choice to handle this aspect or better said relied on an unconscious image of the ... opposite sex or the ideal work mate or ... something you had been forming since birth.  This is called the Imago ... Latin term for 'image.'

The Concept of the Imago: It is for all practical purposes, a composite picture of the people who influenced you most strongly at an early age.  This may have been your mother and father, siblings, or maybe a babysitter or close relative. But whoever they were, they were, a part of your experience and your brain recorded everything about them … the sound of their voices, the amount of time they took to answer your cries, the colour of their skin when they got angry, the way they smiled when they were happy, the set of their shoulders, the way they moved their bodies, their characteristic moods, their talents and interests.  Along with these impressions your brain recorded all your significant interactions with them.  Here is the important part … your brain didn't interpret this data; it simply etched them onto a template.

It may seem improbable that you have such a detailed record of your caretakers somewhere inside your head when you have only a dim recollection of those early years.  In fact, many people have a hard time remembering anything that happened to them before the age of five or six … even dramatic events that should have made a deep impression. 

At this point in our discussion of partnering, we have a more complete understanding of the mystery of attraction.  To the biological theory and the exchange theory and the persona theory and family systems dynamics I have added the idea of the unconscious search for a person who matches our imago. 

Our motivation for seeking an Imago Match is our urgent desire to heal childhood wounds.

 We also have new insight into conflict: if the primary reason we select our mates is that they resemble our caretakers, it is inevitable that they are going to reinjure some very sensitive wounds.  When we sink into this quag­mire of pain and confusion called "the power struggle."