Primary Personality Without Able-Bodied Idealisation
THE RISK: “core” quietly pictured as a healthier, more able-bodied version of the person.
THE CORRECTION: core does not mean less disabled.
Where the risk comes from
Boyesen’s Primary Personality is meant to describe a spontaneous, alive core — not a specific body type. But imagery in this tradition, and in body psychotherapy generally, often pictures vitality as visible energy, easy movement, an upright posture, a certain kind of physical aliveness. Without a deliberate correction, it’s easy for “core self” to quietly become a fantasy of the same person, just without the disability.
The correction
A disabled person’s Primary Personality includes their disability, not despite it and not as something the “real” core has already transcended. Their spontaneous vitality, their anger, their pleasure, their humour, their sexuality, and their dignity all exist inside the body they actually have — not in an imagined alternative one.
A useful test
If a “core self” visualisation or exercise implicitly requires imagining different physical capacities to feel fully alive in it, that’s worth naming and adjusting directly — the exercise has drifted from its actual psychological aim into an able-bodied default it never needed to assume.
A question worth carrying
When I picture my own most alive, unguarded self, does that picture include my actual body — and if not, why not?
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Primary Personality · Individuation · Biodynamic Psychotherapy & Disability