Lost Inner Child Test – Inner Child Connection Scale (ICCS)

Psychodynamics and certain psychological theories emphasize the understanding and addressing of early childhood experiences, leading to emotional healing and personal development. Carl Jung talked about something called the “personal unconscious,” which means there’s a hidden part of our mind beyond what we’re aware of. This hidden part holds our personal experiences, memories, and emotions that affect how we behave and see things. Pia Mellody did important work in codependency and trauma recovery. She highlighted how early-life trauma can shape codependent behaviors as we grow up.

The concept of the "inner child" refers to the childlike aspects of personality that continue throughout adulthood, including curiosity, imagination, playfulness, emotional openness, creativity, and the ability to experience joy and wonder. Although the term originated within psychotherapy and humanistic psychology, modern psychological research suggests that maintaining playfulness, curiosity, positive emotional expression, and psychological flexibility contributes to resilience, creativity, well-being, and healthy interpersonal functioning.

Inner Child Connection Scale (ICCS) has been developed with a multidimensional framework to measure an individual's connection with these childlike characteristics rather than childhood experiences themselves. The scale tries to measures six key dimensions of childhood experiences including Playfulness, Curiosity, Emotional Openness, Creativity & Imagination, Adult Burden, and Inner Child Connection.

Measuring childhood experiences can be difficult and it depends on whether the participant remember the experiences, so rather than determining whether someone has "lost" their inner child, the scale tries to evaluates the extent to which the participants adult responsibilities, emotional habits, and lifestyle have influenced, ability to experience joy, curiosity, creativity, and emotional authenticity.