IFS - Internal Family Systems Therapy

[Turgon]

Richard Schwartz started developing this therapeutic model back in the 1980's after working with clients who were bulimic and anorexic. By working with them and their extreme coping mechanisms, he discovered 'parts', sub-personalities, that existed that were influencing their behaviour and compulsions. His first major discovery of this was with a client who would cut herself. He spent one particular session with his client, arguing and trying to force the part of her that was cutting herself to stop. They managed to get this part to agree only to have his client come back the next session with her face slashed. In a fit of despair, he said aloud that he gave up, only to have this part of her reveal that it didn't event want to cut itself, and this opened the door towards a dialogue of what it actually wanted to release and unburden, and for her to actually start healing and integrating herself.

From Casswiki about Little 'I's':

The Fourth Way teaches that man in his normal state is not a single being. Rather, man is a collection of inconsistent habits, programs, or stimulus-response patterns; these rule all kinds of inner and outer behavior, and whichever resulting 'self' is active at the moment calls itself 'I' and sees itself always as the one, same person.

A metaphor that describes this state compares man to a nation where every citizen gets to be king for 5 minutes, with absolute power to enter into any commitments and to generally do what he pleases. The concept of the little 'I' is related to the concept of 'program,' 'personality' and 'buffer.'

The FotCM associates the concept of little 'I' with a neurological imprint or conditioned response or to a mental state that is characterized by typical conditional responses. Social roles which one assumes automatically without conscious decision are examples of different little 'I's coming in control in different combinations at different times.

Little 'I's are typical of the default state of man and are not a pathological condition like multiple personality disorder (MPD). Psychiatric conditions like MPD can arise if little 'I's are unusually split, which is not the case in normal 'sleeping' man. What contemporary psychology calls normal personality is however from the viewpoint of the Fourth Way a mechanical chaos of competing little 'I's, far removed from a 'fixed self' or 'real I.'

The model itself, aligns with Gurdjieff's concept of the Many I's. Although Schwartz's approach to these 'I's'/parts is different.

Generally, there are three main types of parts as described by IFS - Managers, Firefighters and Exiles.

Managers are the parts of one's self that needs to be 'on top of things'. Always in control of situations, one's self, heading off potential problems or issues. The inner critic, for example, could be seen as a Manager. In a misguided attempt to protect a person, it uses criticisms and negative self-talk in order to convince a person to do or not do something in order to avoid feelings of failure, rejection, etc.

Firefighters are parts that step in to 'soothe' and put out fires, again, in a misguided attempt to regulate one's self and protect from Managers punitive measures to control or when exiles start coming to the surface. This could be seen in the form of addictions, or compulsive habits or behaviours that rely on short term relief to escape from immediate pain or suffering without taking into account long-term consequences.

Exiles are the parts of ones self that hold onto the trauma's of the past that were never fully experienced or unburdened. They are usually quite young, and Managers and Firefighters spend a lot of time preventing exiles from coming to the surface through distraction and control because of the overwhelming nature of the hurts.

All three kinds work at odds with one another, creating seemingly endless patterns of suffering and programmed responses. A manager is constantly trying to keep exiles at bay, and when an exile bubbles to the surface, bringing with it the suppressed and repressed hurts and trauma's of the past, this can cause firefighters to immediately activate to try and medicate those hurts and pains away, which causes another manager to become harsh towards the firefighter for going back to self-destructive habits, which is reminiscent of unresolved hurts and trauma's, activating yet another exile. This type of polarization of parts is akin to a house divided and fractured, causing chaos

According to Schwartz, all of these parts are necessary and valuable to the healthy functioning of a human being as they make up the inner ecology of one's psyche or soul, but as sub-personalities, become stuck and frozen in time because at some point in a person's past, the Self, the Real I, experienced events that were so traumatizing, that a part stepped in to 'take on' the extreme beliefs and emotions that were formed from these past events. Through his work, he found that attachments or objects then glob onto these parts, distorting and influencing these parts further, which in turn influence the person. So when a part is activated, it's using a narrow and outdated belief system from the past to superimpose itself in the present.

In his book Internal Family Systems Therapy he uses the analogy of a company. Every person has their role to play within the system and there is harmony and balance when parts find their essential roles and work together instead of against one another. His style of therapy essentially is about learning to reconnect with the Self, one's essence, by teaching clients how to un-blend (not identify) with these parts so that instead of parts acting for the whole, they can be witnessed, understood and negotiated with so they can be unburdened of their extreme beliefs and emotions and eventually integrated or transformed.

Here as an interview with Andrew Hubermann about it, including working with some of Hubermann's parts to see what the process is like.

 

[Il Matto]

Thank you @Turgon for this great summary of IFS.
As I've mentioned in other threads, after you mentioned IFS in discussion I decided to look into it, read 'An Introduction to IFS' and 'No Bad Parts' by Schwartz and have subsequently started working with the exercises and meditations that can be found in the 'IFS Workbook' (no earth shattering revelations so far, but I'm trying not to anticipate / have expectations!).

The model itself, aligns with Gurdjieff's concept of the Many I's. Although Schwartz's approach to these 'I's'/parts is different.

In my - admittedly limited - experience so far I can certainly see how the inner work of IFS aligns quite nicely with Gurdjieff's concept of the Many I's that make up the personality of the normal 'sleeping man. As I was reading the above mentioned books by Schwartz, however, there was a quiet voice in the back of my mind (a 'part'?) that wanted to know why Dr Schwartz had made the assumption that all the 'parts' had their origins within the individual as projections of the psyche. I wanted to know if Dr Schwartz had entertained the idea that we may - when really 'going inside' to converse with these different parts, or I's - come across some that have their origins outside of us, either as spirit attachments or installed programmes from our 4D STS friends.
Then, this morning, I came across this substack post: IFS and the Spirits. Now, in reading this substack post you're obliged to read through quite a bit of woo woo nonsense / assumptions IMO, but the point is made:

And I have long held a critique of the above modalities re: respectability politics and uncredited Indigenous influences, but also re: commodifying and depersonalizing the Spirits, treating them as a resource and therefore behaving VERY extractively towards them.

So if IFS guy is now saying Parts are actual spirits (which I agree), is this a good thing? People in the IFS world confirmed to me that he didn’t say this sooner out of respectability and wanting to make a name for himself. He taught this modality to thousands of people, thousands of mainstream psychotherapists practice this. Worked with spirits but acted like they were just psychic projections explainable in Western psychology terms.

But there are protocols to working with spirits that there are not if you think they’re just “aspects of the psyche”. There are necessary respect and reciprocity protocols. Which people were not/are not doing. And likely are not going to start doing in conjunction with IFS because they mostly have no clue how and are not experienced as Spirit workers.

In highlighting this I'm certainly not trying to suggest that Dr Schwartz' IFS modal is wrong or not useful - I think it's a valuable tool. I can't really speculate on Dr Schwartz' motivation for presenting the IFS model in the way he did if he suspected that external forces could also be involved - perhaps it was simply out of a desire for respectability? I do think it's worth considering, however, that there is another dimension or level of complication added to the inner work it presents when you take into consideration the possibility that it may not always be in your best interests to 'harmonize' with all the parts, or many I's, you come across (some may need a dose of Spirit Release Therapy, for instance).
Its worth noting as well that the author of the above substack post accuses Dr Schwartz of being on one extreme regarding the provenance of our psychic 'parts' and then goes on to imply that all 'parts' are 'land spirits' (the other extreme). A rather nice example of the polarization that Dr Schwartz discusses, actually!
For my part, I'm going to continue working through the IFS Workbook and journaling about my experiences, but I'm also going to get myself a copy of Spirit Releasement Therapy by William Baldwin (a long overdue purchase) and continue re-reading High Strangeness alongside Beyond Disclosure and the Cassiopaean Substack. Knowledge Protects.

 

[Turgon]

Those are great points brought up as I have had similar questions in mind. Reading through the book I linked to in the original post, he does discuss burdens as being separate and external, and also having objects attached to parts. I interpret this to mean separate entities, or energetic attachments, etc. that are being released in the process of working with parts that frequency resonate because of the held on-to extreme beliefs and burdens or unresolved traumas that have never been resolved. So that by working on the Self through the parts, attachments are eventually released.

The little I've read of Baldwin's work, I do wonder if the inquiry process of Schwartz' parts work follows along similar principles as SRT and therefore it doesn't really matter if it's a part or separate beings. Correct me if I'm wrong but in Baldwin's work, I remember there being accounts of objects appearing in someone's auric field. In one IFS meditation session, that did happen and the belief and the memories from childhood associated with that object 'appeared' and I saw how they all connected together.