Overview
The “inner child” is a metaphor that refers to some collection of schemas and emotions rooted in childhood experiences or perspectives.
Commentary
The “inner child” is not a rigid scientific or clinical concept. It has origins in analytical psychology dating back to Carl Jung’s archetypes of a “Divine Child” and “wounded child”, but the concept isn’t defined in ways we can measure for empirical testing. That doesn’t mean the concept is necessarily pseudoscience or therapeutically useless, but it does mean that we should be cautious about making claims around it. Some therapeutic approaches like Internal Family Systems (IFS) rely on the concept of an inner child to guide healing while addressing the formative traumas someone may have undergone in their childhood.