obyvatel
The Living Force
I recently came across the IFS (Internal Family System) therapy model while looking for some material for working with the inner child. The IFS system has a model which is quite in line with the 4th Way view of the human psyche. It deals with concepts like little I's, buffers, identification, divided attention while using different terminology. IFS is a therapeutic model whose goal is to heal the psyche - so it is practical and I found it helpful to see some Work related concepts from that practical therapeutic perspective. IFS can perhaps build on the psychological framework laid down by books like "Myth Of Sanity", "Narcissistic Family"and "Drama Of the Gifted Child". While trying to review the system, I have used two sources - _http://www.selfleadership.org - the official website of IFS - and the book " Self-Therapy: A Step-By-Step Guide to Creating Wholeness and Healing Your Inner Child Using IFS, A New, Cutting-Edge Psychotherapy " by Jay Earley.
Origin of IFS
The founder of IFS is Dr Richard Schwartz, a family therapist. According to Dr Schwartz, he combined concepts and methods of existing schools of family therapy with the hands-on knowledge of sub-personalities which emerged from his long experience working with clients. The IFS model has evolved over the past 20 years. Dr Schwartz says that one of the key features of IFS is that it studies the often complicated interrelationships between the various sub-personalities within the psyche which is often ignored in other psychotherapeutic techniques. Sustained behavioral changes are difficult to obtain without looking at such inter-relationships within the components of the psyche. The IFS model basically views the psyche of being composed of relatively discrete parts which have their own qualities and own individual roles to play in life. Due to traumatic life experiences - specially in childhood - many parts are forced out of their normal roles and the whole system is reorganized in an unhealthy way which persists into adult life. Readers familiar with the recommended reading material in this forum know this dynamic quite well. IFS aims to identify individual parts and their inter-relationships with other strongly connected parts and work with them to restore the ecological balance in the inner world.
Parts of the Psyche
IFS model identifies a Self which is regarded as the spiritual core of the psyche having qualities like perspective, compassion and creativity. It broadly categorizes other different parts of the psyche into managers/protectors, fire-fighters and exiles. Like the name Internal Family System suggests, different components of the psyche are treated like people with whom it is possible to enter into communication.
Self
The Self is the center of compassion and nonjudgmental perspective in the psyche. Healing of the psyche happens through this state of Self. And after healing is effected, the goal of the IFS process is to have this Self as the master of the psyche where it properly organizes the work of the different parts. The Gurdjieff analogy of a house of servants comes to mind in this context. The Self in IFS terminology possibly plays the role of the steward in the house of servants after psychological healing. Jay Earley writes about the following characteristics of the Self from a psychological healing standpoint in the book "Self Therapy"
[quote author=Self Therapy with some paraphrasing for clarity]
The Self is the agent of psychological healing in IFS. It is, by nature, compassionate and curious about our parts. The Self wants to connect with each part and get to know it and heal it.
Let's look at four qualities of the Self that are particularly important for psychological healing. When you are in the Self, you will naturally embody these qualities.
1) The Self is connected. When you are in the Self, you naturally feel close to other people [or parts of the psyche] and want to relate in harmonious, supportive ways.
2) The Self is curious. When you are in the Self, you are curious about other people [or parts of the psyche] in an open, accepting way..........This curiosity comes from an accepting place, not a critical or judgemental one. When parts sense this genuine interest, they know they are entering a welcome environment, and they are not afraid to reveal themselves to you.
3) The Self is compassionate. Compassion is a form of kindness and love that arises when people [or parts of the psyche] are in pain. When you are in the Self, you naturally feel compassion for others as well as yourself.
4) The Self is calm, centered and grounded. This is especially helpful when you are relating to a part that has intense emotions. Intense grief or shame, for example, can be overwhelming if you are not grounded in the Self.
[/quote]
Protectors/managers
Protectors/managers are the parts of the psyche which are largely responsible for running our lives. They try to maintain functionality and keep the psyche safe. Due to traumatic life experiences (in childhood or later), these parts often take on extreme roles where they try to keep the psyche from feeling intense emotions and maintain the status quo. In this sense, they act like Buffers as described by Gurdjieff. Protectors/managers can block off pain that arises from deep inside the psyche so that it is not felt consciously. They also work towards arranging external circumstances so that this deep internal pain is not triggered by outside events. These are the parts which are accessed at first when doing inner work on the psyche.
Most protectors come to play extreme roles as a mechanism to cope with traumatic events - especially encountered in childhood. The dissociations described in "Myth Of Sanity" is attributed to the work of protectors in the IFS model. Protectors could use a variety of strategies - like closing off emotions by being overly intellectual, going into denial, compulsively meeting others' needs, projecting feelings on other people etc as defence mechanisms to protect the psyche. The strategies used are based on the level of knowledge and experience that the psyche had at the time when the traumatic events were experienced. So older the trauma, more primitive the coping strategy. These protectors fail to realize that the psyche is no longer a child and has more resources at its disposal to deal with adult life situations and is no longer as endangered by similar situations. Some protectors take on the role of the inner critic (or negative introject) mimicking a parent or authority figure.
Exiles
Exiles are young parts that suffered the original trauma in the past. These are the parts that hold the pain which the protectors are trying to keep from surfacing. Exiles are often stuck at a particular time in childhood at a specific age when it encountered some trauma. Sometimes, the trauma plays out over the years and the exile holding the trauma is not frozen at a single time point. In general, exiles exhibit a wide variety of painful memories - feeling lonely, abandoned, abused, betrayed, ashamed, angry,terrified, powerless etc. In addition, they have negative views about the world and themselves.
Because exiles hold the pain from past events, they are exiled by protectors into the dark recesses of the psyche, away from the light of consciousness. Earley makes a distinction between what is called the inner child and the exiles in the following way
[quote author=Self Therapy]
IFS uses the term exile to refer to what has been called the inner child. However, people often talk about the inner child as there were only one. In IFS, we recognize that there are many inner child parts or exiles, each carrying its own burden. Every exile must be healed in a way that is unique to it because each has its own feelings, burdens and memories.
[/quote]
These emotions and views held by exiles are called their burdens. IFS maintains that the parts are not defined by their burdens - they have their own intrinsic potential. So when the burdens are shed through therapy, the parts can take on a new and different role in the psyche.
Firefighters
Firefighters are dangerous parts inside the psyche (the name does not seem to do them justice - osit). Dr Schwartz writes
[quote author=Dr Schwartz]
[This] group of parts jumps into action whenever one of the exiles is upset to the point that it may flood the person with its extreme feelings or make the person vulnerable to being hurt again. When that is the case, this third group tries to douse the inner flames of feeling as quickly as possible, which earns them the name firefighters. They tend to be highly impulsive and strive to find stimulation that will override or dissociate from the exile's feelings. Bingeing on drugs, alcohol, food, sex, or work are common firefighter activities.
[/quote]
Self mutilation is also described as a firefighter inspired activity in the self-leadership website. Jay Earley writes that such firefighters can even cause somebody to have a traffic accident to prevent some locked up memory from being accessed. Reading this, it reminded me of DC Hammond's lecture "hypnosis in MPD" or the Greenbaum speech which I had read in the cassiopaea website few years back. In that lecture there was mention of self-destructive elements mind-programmed within the psyche to protect secrets - some really dark stuff. It seems that the IFS system scratched the surface in this regard with their "firefighter" part.
Origin of IFS
The founder of IFS is Dr Richard Schwartz, a family therapist. According to Dr Schwartz, he combined concepts and methods of existing schools of family therapy with the hands-on knowledge of sub-personalities which emerged from his long experience working with clients. The IFS model has evolved over the past 20 years. Dr Schwartz says that one of the key features of IFS is that it studies the often complicated interrelationships between the various sub-personalities within the psyche which is often ignored in other psychotherapeutic techniques. Sustained behavioral changes are difficult to obtain without looking at such inter-relationships within the components of the psyche. The IFS model basically views the psyche of being composed of relatively discrete parts which have their own qualities and own individual roles to play in life. Due to traumatic life experiences - specially in childhood - many parts are forced out of their normal roles and the whole system is reorganized in an unhealthy way which persists into adult life. Readers familiar with the recommended reading material in this forum know this dynamic quite well. IFS aims to identify individual parts and their inter-relationships with other strongly connected parts and work with them to restore the ecological balance in the inner world.
Parts of the Psyche
IFS model identifies a Self which is regarded as the spiritual core of the psyche having qualities like perspective, compassion and creativity. It broadly categorizes other different parts of the psyche into managers/protectors, fire-fighters and exiles. Like the name Internal Family System suggests, different components of the psyche are treated like people with whom it is possible to enter into communication.
Self
The Self is the center of compassion and nonjudgmental perspective in the psyche. Healing of the psyche happens through this state of Self. And after healing is effected, the goal of the IFS process is to have this Self as the master of the psyche where it properly organizes the work of the different parts. The Gurdjieff analogy of a house of servants comes to mind in this context. The Self in IFS terminology possibly plays the role of the steward in the house of servants after psychological healing. Jay Earley writes about the following characteristics of the Self from a psychological healing standpoint in the book "Self Therapy"
[quote author=Self Therapy with some paraphrasing for clarity]
The Self is the agent of psychological healing in IFS. It is, by nature, compassionate and curious about our parts. The Self wants to connect with each part and get to know it and heal it.
Let's look at four qualities of the Self that are particularly important for psychological healing. When you are in the Self, you will naturally embody these qualities.
1) The Self is connected. When you are in the Self, you naturally feel close to other people [or parts of the psyche] and want to relate in harmonious, supportive ways.
2) The Self is curious. When you are in the Self, you are curious about other people [or parts of the psyche] in an open, accepting way..........This curiosity comes from an accepting place, not a critical or judgemental one. When parts sense this genuine interest, they know they are entering a welcome environment, and they are not afraid to reveal themselves to you.
3) The Self is compassionate. Compassion is a form of kindness and love that arises when people [or parts of the psyche] are in pain. When you are in the Self, you naturally feel compassion for others as well as yourself.
4) The Self is calm, centered and grounded. This is especially helpful when you are relating to a part that has intense emotions. Intense grief or shame, for example, can be overwhelming if you are not grounded in the Self.
[/quote]
Protectors/managers
Protectors/managers are the parts of the psyche which are largely responsible for running our lives. They try to maintain functionality and keep the psyche safe. Due to traumatic life experiences (in childhood or later), these parts often take on extreme roles where they try to keep the psyche from feeling intense emotions and maintain the status quo. In this sense, they act like Buffers as described by Gurdjieff. Protectors/managers can block off pain that arises from deep inside the psyche so that it is not felt consciously. They also work towards arranging external circumstances so that this deep internal pain is not triggered by outside events. These are the parts which are accessed at first when doing inner work on the psyche.
Most protectors come to play extreme roles as a mechanism to cope with traumatic events - especially encountered in childhood. The dissociations described in "Myth Of Sanity" is attributed to the work of protectors in the IFS model. Protectors could use a variety of strategies - like closing off emotions by being overly intellectual, going into denial, compulsively meeting others' needs, projecting feelings on other people etc as defence mechanisms to protect the psyche. The strategies used are based on the level of knowledge and experience that the psyche had at the time when the traumatic events were experienced. So older the trauma, more primitive the coping strategy. These protectors fail to realize that the psyche is no longer a child and has more resources at its disposal to deal with adult life situations and is no longer as endangered by similar situations. Some protectors take on the role of the inner critic (or negative introject) mimicking a parent or authority figure.
Exiles
Exiles are young parts that suffered the original trauma in the past. These are the parts that hold the pain which the protectors are trying to keep from surfacing. Exiles are often stuck at a particular time in childhood at a specific age when it encountered some trauma. Sometimes, the trauma plays out over the years and the exile holding the trauma is not frozen at a single time point. In general, exiles exhibit a wide variety of painful memories - feeling lonely, abandoned, abused, betrayed, ashamed, angry,terrified, powerless etc. In addition, they have negative views about the world and themselves.
Because exiles hold the pain from past events, they are exiled by protectors into the dark recesses of the psyche, away from the light of consciousness. Earley makes a distinction between what is called the inner child and the exiles in the following way
[quote author=Self Therapy]
IFS uses the term exile to refer to what has been called the inner child. However, people often talk about the inner child as there were only one. In IFS, we recognize that there are many inner child parts or exiles, each carrying its own burden. Every exile must be healed in a way that is unique to it because each has its own feelings, burdens and memories.
[/quote]
These emotions and views held by exiles are called their burdens. IFS maintains that the parts are not defined by their burdens - they have their own intrinsic potential. So when the burdens are shed through therapy, the parts can take on a new and different role in the psyche.
Firefighters
Firefighters are dangerous parts inside the psyche (the name does not seem to do them justice - osit). Dr Schwartz writes
[quote author=Dr Schwartz]
[This] group of parts jumps into action whenever one of the exiles is upset to the point that it may flood the person with its extreme feelings or make the person vulnerable to being hurt again. When that is the case, this third group tries to douse the inner flames of feeling as quickly as possible, which earns them the name firefighters. They tend to be highly impulsive and strive to find stimulation that will override or dissociate from the exile's feelings. Bingeing on drugs, alcohol, food, sex, or work are common firefighter activities.
[/quote]
Self mutilation is also described as a firefighter inspired activity in the self-leadership website. Jay Earley writes that such firefighters can even cause somebody to have a traffic accident to prevent some locked up memory from being accessed. Reading this, it reminded me of DC Hammond's lecture "hypnosis in MPD" or the Greenbaum speech which I had read in the cassiopaea website few years back. In that lecture there was mention of self-destructive elements mind-programmed within the psyche to protect secrets - some really dark stuff. It seems that the IFS system scratched the surface in this regard with their "firefighter" part.