Prince Harry’s revelations of his grievances against the royal family are counterproductive to their reconciliation and to healing his own childhood traumas, relationship experts have said.
In TV interviews, Harry has defended publishing his autobiography, Spare, as a measure of last resort, driven by the royal family’s failure to address his “incredibly hurtful” experiences, and that none of his revelations were intended to harm them.
But psychologists and psychotherapists said that his tell-all approach risked him re-enacting his trauma rather than helping him come to terms with it.
They also expressed concern that in detailing salacious incidents about his sex life and his frostbitten penis, alongside distressing events such as the loss of his mother, Harry was unwittingly undermining the serious issues he wanted to raise.
While Harry has said his experience of therapy has driven his public outpouring, the behavioural psychologist Jo Hemmings expressed concern that the prince did not appear to have really processed and come to terms with his trauma.
She said: “Therapy should be a healing process which gives you some closure or some calm so that you can move forward with the rest of your life. That doesn’t seem to have happened with him. He’s still angry, [and has the] utterly unrealistic expectation that after all these allegations [his family] will reach out, apologise and reconcile with him.”
Hemmings also said Harry had mixed up trivial and petty “nonsense about losing his virginity or smoking a spliff” with serious allegations about his stepmother, Camilla, and the royal family in general.
“He’s throwing in these rather salacious, provocative comments that aren’t necessary to a serious self analysis of where he is and how he got to be there,” she added. “They’re irrelevant, and they are just the sort of thing the tabloids would pick up on.”
Cate Campbell, a relationship and trauma therapist accredited with the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, said Harry appeared to believe that by telling his story “he can make everything better, when what he’s actually doing is re-enacting his trauma. He is putting himself right in harm’s way.”
She explained that people could become psychologically arrested at the age when they suffered trauma. For Harry this was not only his mother’s death but also his parents’ extramarital affairs and separation, all of which were made public.
“Given that he’s had that amount of trauma, it’s going to be much more difficult for him to see other people’s point of view,” said Campbell. “It’s not uncommon for somebody in that situation to say, if I tell my story, if I put it all out there, everything will be OK.”
Peter Saddington, a family counsellor for Relate, said Harry appeared to be trying to deal with his grievances in the same way that a small child would, by airing them to a more powerful ally. Only in the prince’s case he was going to the media rather than a parent.
The therapist said it seemed that as a result of his childhood trauma that Harry could be triggered into a “fight or flight” response to perceived threats, and not understand the impact of his actions.
“I think once he starts talking about [his trauma], he can be triggered into getting angry,” Saddington added. “When you’re in fight and flight, then essentially … the part of your brain that is sane, rational, able to see things from other perspectives goes offline [and] you’re just responding defensively. I think that there are times when he’s saying things without thinking of the consequences. And those might be moments when he’s been triggered into revisiting some of the trauma.”
Although most experts agreed that Harry’s revelations had damaged the prospects for a reconciliation with his family, they agreed that a positive outcome was still possible.
Campbell said the most pressing issue for Harry and the royal family was agreeing a plan for his father’s coronation.
“If Harry’s not going to be there, then I think both he and his dad need [to put out] a really good statement for the world to say, ‘In the interests of our future relationship, which we really care about, we’re not going to do this. But we are hoping to be together again in the future.’ That would be the nice, kind, grown up thing to do.”
