Spielberg’s 1985 film Back to the Future is a masterpiece.

In the sequel, Doc Brown accidentally sends himself to 1885, and with the Delorean broken, he is stuck in the Wild West. He gets stuck there because the parts required to fix the machine not only aren’t available, but haven’t been invented yet.

Back in 1955, Marty McFly suddenly receives an oversized envelope from a confused Western Union employee who, after identifying Marty, informs him “this is addressed to you Sir, but, I should tell you… we’ve been in possession of that envelope for the past seventy years.”

The envelope was from Doc Brown who, stuck back in 1885, had written a letter to Marty and to his own future self, in order to give himself instructions on how to rescue him.

This storyline—  being trapped in the past, and calling out to the present for help — is psychologically appealing.

Why?

Because although your childhood is past and gone, it is equally and psychologically true that it is still alive and present.

After all, are you not haunted by your past? Does your past not speak? Do those moments when you were bullied on a playground, or gossiped about, still bother you? Why— if it’s past? The moment your father walked out… does it affect you? Why do children who were yelled at grow into adults who still feel they’re being yelled at?

Memories seem to continue to exist in their own present tense. The past is still alive. The memory of every age is frozen in its own present tense.

We can still feel like children, because on some level, we are still children. This is why adults are always surprised at how old they are. In memory they are still a child. Memories are time-stamped, encoded by that particular time of your life.

That’s why smells are so nostalgic, e.g. the smell of a specific cologne whisks a woman back to her first kiss at high school prom.

The Unconscious— where all memories live in the present tense— does not believe in past or future. It is a collection of moments that is unaware of Time itself, and unaware of Death. (Freud once remarked that the Unconscious seems blithely unconcerned by death, or at least in denial of it.)

Along these lines, you can think of your ‘self’ as a family of selves, each a different age, living together as a family.

Your toddler self is living somewhere in your memory banks alongside your thirteen and forty year old selves. What is their relationship like? How does your forty year old self talk to your toddler?

An interesting question.

But can they really communicate with one another?

On some level they must. If they did not, you would not be you. Otherwise how would you know yourself?

And yet many people neglect their inner child. They speak of their childhood as if it were lived by someone else. Where that person is now, they haven’t the foggiest.  G.K. Chesterton once explained that a disconnection to childhood is a great hindrance to happiness:  “Happy is he who still loves something he loved in the nursery: He has not been broken in two by time; he is not two men, but one, and he has saved not only his soul but his life.”

Neglectful parents speak to their children little, if at all.

But there are people who give the same treatment to their own inner child.

For others, they do speak. But it’s all yelling, and harsh. It’s all “be afraid to follow your heart…” or “haha, life doesn’t work that way…” or “you’ll screw it up!”

The way parents talk to their own children, is the same way they talk to their own inner child. This also explains why abused children so often become child abusers themselves. They’ve dissociated from themselves, so of course when they have a child of their own, a pattern repeats.

Again— we are a collection of selves. Each of our selves is frozen in time at a different age and developmental level. These selves can talk to one another. That is what ‘self talk’ really is. Self talk is a form of time travel.

But many of us are quite cruel to our child self.  Are you?

Has your inner child stopped trying to reach out? Is he like Doc Brown, trapped in 1885, stuck… feebly calling out for help? Mailing a letter to his future self, waiting seventy years for anyone to look at it?

Many of us are children that have never been heard.

Especially those that suffer from depression. One of the unique characteristics of the depressed is the inability to see themselves in the 3rd person (he/she). And as a recipient of kindness. Depressed people lose a capacity for self-compassion, because they are trapped in the 1st person (I/myself). If you are trapped in the 1st person, you’re a subject, but not an object. A subject cannot be the recipient of anything. But learning to be kind to yourself again is one of the foundations of healing from depression.

You can be kind to your inner child, and ask her, how is she feeling? Is she alright? What does she do for fun? Has she had any fun lately?

Perhaps she hasn’t.

Perhaps you haven’t ever asked.

Many people feel unable to talk to that child. They feel closed off. Time travel is threatening. What happens if I brought together all of my selves into one room? Could I handle it? It’s easier just to shut them out.

But as Jesus said “let the little children come to me.”

And “unless you become like one of these children, you will not inherit the kingdom of heaven.”

The poet Wordsworth said “the child is Father to the man.” In other words, your inner child is— strangely— older than you. He’s been a child frozen in time, for much longer than you’ve been an adult. Perhaps that child is wiser on some level than you?

Perhaps you have something to learn from him? Perhaps you could unfreeze him, listen to him, and spend time with him?

Or— perhaps it is a back and forth relationship. Perhaps he needs you just as much as you need him. Perhaps he needs an adult, too. Your parents failed him, and he may need you to be kind to him, and help him in a way your parents didn’t.

He may be looking to you like an orphan looking for a parent.

The mystic and desert monk St. Gregory of Nyssa said: “We are in a sense our own parents, and we give birth to ourselves by our own free choice of what is good.”

This quote by St. Gregory of Nyssa is incredibly profound. To become your own parent means to be a truly unified person. It means to be able to live with yourself. It means providing yourself with guidance, kindness, as well as correction.

It has helped many of my patients, and it is worth pondering.