ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the reader to the meaning of the intrapersonal goal-corrected aspect of the self, known as ‘the personally created external environment’. This aspect of the self refers to the need to create a supportive home base that can support the person when other more personal forms of help are not available. It is also the aspect of the self that can connect us with our past, our family history or lack of it, our culture and heritage, our future aspirations and values, aesthetic or otherwise, and gives an account of what can happen to a person when they lose that environment for one reason or another. We explore intergenerational transmission of lack of resolution of this system though the process of affect attunement. This aspect of the self is often overlooked within the field of psychotherapy. We have found it to be one of the most powerful influences on a person’s sense of identity, culture, satisfaction/dissatisfaction, and well-being, holding many different layers of meaning.
