Lifespan Integration: Connecting Ego States through Time

This book describes the method which Peggy Pace developed for healing adults and adolescents who experienced trauma or neglect in childhood. Lifespan Integration therapy differs from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in that LI heals and integrates the body-minds of clients in multifaceted ways. LI therapy clears trauma memory and the defenses against early trauma throughout the body-mind. This is true even for cases when the trauma was pre-verbal and is not explicitly remembered. LI therapy can also be used to increase positive self-regard, to improve affect regulation, and to strengthen the core self.

In her book, Pace describes how her Lifespan Integration method can be used to treat Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, anxiety and panic disorders, mood disorders, and eating disorders. In the chapter which discusses using LI to heal Dissociative Identity Disorder, Pace describes how Lifespan Integration therapy brings more coherence to the fragmented self systems of dissociated clients, eventually resulting in a unified self.

The Lifespan Integration book includes a summary of recent discoveries in the field of neuroscience. Pace overviews what is known about how separated selves and self states become integrated within the developing child. Pace proposes in her book that neural integration continues throughout the lifespan, and can be expedited during therapy when the conditions required for neural integration are re-created within the therapeutic setting. Pace cites recent discoveries in the field of neuroscience to support her hypothesis about how and why her Lifespan Integration technique is so effective in the psychological healing of adult survivors of childhood trauma.