It is who we were at various stages of our childhood. As we grew into adulthood, this part of the psyche remained unchanged. The inner child is still the same person that we were.

It is the assortment of elements that have remained in our designs since childhood. In all of our experiences, at any age, we leave a deposit of the elements, thoughts, images, energy tones, and habits that we created during our encounters with designs. The inner child is not a design itself, instead, it is an accumulation of related elements that linger within various designs. If we had a fear of water when we were a child, that fear lingers within the corresponding design. We have more than one inner child because at different ages, we had different attributes and experiences, and so we have different thoughts, images, energy tones, and habits. Each of these inner children has different qualities and needs, reflecting the changes and development that we were undergoing at that time. It is a subpersonality. A subpersonality is merely a personification of a design or group of design elements that is somewhat analogous to a complex. It can be viewed as a part of a family in the psyche. Eric Berne described three parts of the psyche, the parent, adult, and child. These identities can be in conflict. The parent may insist that we work more hours in order to perfect a project, but the child wants us to go home to relax. The child is the part of us that remains, from our real childhood, the childlike qualities of creativity, playfulness, and spontaneous feelings. The parent is the part of us that dictates rules by which it wants us to live. Many of these rules are the same ones that our actual parents imposed on us during childhood. The adult is the part of us that is the decision maker, the problem solver, and the mediator between the parent and child. The adult is similar to the ego.

This is the same dynamic by which all design elements influence us. When we encounter a design, we generate thoughts, images, energy tones, and actions, to respond to that design. If we are guided by intuition, those elements are appropriate in dealing with the dynamics, and so they discharge all of their charge and all that remains are a record of the elements, as a reference for our next encounter with that design. If we are not guided by intuition, the elements are not appropriate, and so they do not discharge all of their charge and, thus, we have not only a record but also an unresolved charge that is the force that compels us to recreate the design situation for the specific purpose of releasing that charge. By this process, the inner child strives to re-create our childhood environment, but it cannot re-create that literal environment with our parents and siblings, so it projects those roles onto the people in our adult life . We may try to resolve an issue with our father by projecting father onto our boss, or we may try to resolve an issue with our mother by projecting mother onto our wife. The inner child's re-creations are not always for the purpose of resolving childhood issues. In some cases, it re-creates our childhood world simply because the re-creations grant familiarity, security, predictability, and hominess even though the predictability, could mean that we re-create the unpleasant aspects of our childhood such as a cruel woman who is our wife, instead of our mother.

	The inner child influences our thoughts and perceptions and imagery. The inner child interprets our present world through the understanding that it had then, an understanding that, was circumscribed by the limitations of its experience, power, and ego development. The inner child adds its childhood viewpoints into our adult outlook particularly our ideas regarding relationships, love, and self esteem.
	The inner child influences our emotions and other energy tones. If we were hurt by excessive criticism by our parents, the inner child still fears the same type of criticism in adulthood. This fear can be regenerated when we are confronted by an employer who is belittling, and so we overreact to the employer's actions. When we resolve our childhood issues, we tend to acquire the naturally child like qualities of the inner child such as playfulness, enthusiasm, creativity, spontaneity, physical and emotional resilience, imagination, love of life, curiosity, innocence, humor, physical vitality, optimism, youthfulness and freshness, and the free expression of feelings and emotions.
	The inner child influences our actions. The discharged elements remain merely as habits and references. The charged elements remain as active forces that compel us to regenerate design situations so that we can resolve the charge.

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