Introduction: Working with “Parts” of the Psyche
Following my training as a Jungian analyst I became interested in several styles of therapy that expand upon Jung’s understanding of the complexity of the mind, in particular “Voice Dialogue” and “Internal Family Systems” (IFS). These are similar models of psychotherapy. What they share is an understanding of the personality as being made up of many subpersonalities, or parts. In the course of a day, all of us may think, for example, ‘a part of me wants to do this’ or, ‘a part of me doesn’t like that person’. The ‘parts’ way of working is about listening to the position of each part in whatever issue comes up. In the ‘listening’ process, there is always more to the situation there than one initially assumed and points of view that may have been dismissed are heard.
Both IFS and Voice Dialogue drew on several styles of psychotherapy, including Jungian approach as well as Gestalt therapy. The IFS model also has roots in family therapy. For those who are interested in the relationship between “parts” work and the Jungian theory, I will give a brief explanation of the complex at the end of this article.
Because they share a similarity, and to avoid confusion, I will discuss Internal Family Systems theory and leave Voice Dialogue to personal research. The Voice Dialogue websites listed below have a number of articles which outline this process.
Internal Family Systems (IFS)
Richard Schwartz, who formulated IFS, began his career as a family systems social worker. Schwartz discovered that, in troubled families, individuals were often trapped in unconscious patterns of behaviour that caused conflict and unless these patterns could be made conscious, family dynamics were not likely to make significant changes.
Schwartz wove different approaches into his knowledge of family systems to formulate IFS therapy which he describes as collaborative, non-pathologizing and accepting. Rather than trying to get rid of our less desirable or difficult qualities, all parts of our personality are considered valuable.
The Parts
When we experience an internal conflict, it is easy to identify the opposing parts. For example, one part of me (that loves to learn) may want to take a university course while another part of me (a banker part) takes an opposing position, arguing strongly and rationally that I can’t afford it, while yet another part (the critic) may point out that I’m not smart enough and will probably fail. In this internal freeforall, I will inevitably feel torn and indecisive. Even if I do make a decision, my internal critic part may attack with its agenda in order to make me feel guilty, stupid, ugly, awkward or selfish. Then, noticing this downward spiral, another part may begin to feel sad and hopeless because, according to it, nothing ever happens or changes. This is an example of any number of patterns that keep me stuck and do not allow me to expand and explore my life.
The parts function like members a large family, or tribe, with all its diversity. According to Schwartz, each part is with us from our birth, possessing its own temperamental style and gifts. Whether a part takes a strong position in the psyche, or exists only in potential, has to do with the individual’s historical experience in her or his environment. Over the years, some parts are rewarded by the family or culture and, of course, they become stronger and central in our personalities. They helped us survive. By contrast, we have parts that have been rejected and/or punished or ridiculed by the family, school system, or culture. They are banished and exist in a sort of exile in the unconscious. Very often, these are vulnerable infant or child parts although exiles can be any part which has been subjected to disapproval or considered threatening in some way to the family of origin.
All parts are valuable to the entire system in the same way that all parts of an ecosystem are necessary for the smooth running of that system. A “bad” part is simply a valuable part that has been driven into an extreme role by a traumatic situation.
The Self
At the centre of this diverse collection of parts is the Self, which we may experience as a ‘core self’ or ‘true self’ (in Voice Dialogue work, this is similar to the role of the “Aware Ego”). In Richard Schwartz’s experience, the Self is an active, compassionate leader of the parts. An experience of trauma (including neglect) can cause certain parts to take over and assume strong roles (a Pleaser, for instance) for survival purposes. In the process, they displace the leadership position of Self. What was initially a protective measure, solidifies, over time, into patterns that are difficult to change even though they may be clearly self-destructive. As these parts override the Self, the valuable, compassionate leadership is lost.
Schwartz has found that when this happens, the parts lose confidence in the leadership capacity of the Self. They come to believe that they have taken over the personality to the point of believing that they are the person. Whenever we describe ourselves as “procrastinators” or “weak-willed” or “bossy”, or any number of critical assessments, we are identified with a primary part (this particular one sounds the Critic). One major goal of IFS therapy is to distinguish between the parts and the Self. This is the heart of the work. Through continual, patient efforts at consciously locating that nonbiased position of the Self and separating from the parts, the Self will resume its role as the calm, compassionate leader. Then, as a solid, democratic leader, the Self will take the arguments of all the parts into consideration and arrive at decisions which benefit the total personality.
Like any tribe or community, the parts have different roles and they group into factions according to their interests and capacities. In the IFS model, the parts fall into three categories: Managers, Exiles and Firefighters.
The Managers and their Exiles
The “manager” parts assume typical roles such as an inner critic, organizer, judge, intellectual. Managers like to keep us in line and in top form with their ambitions, goals, and lists. We all have (and need) primary managers who have taken on (or react against) the rules of our culture, family, and experiences of trauma. They crack the whip in order to keep our behavior in line with those rules and beliefs. Manager parts use keep us well behaved so that the outcome is positive. Because of this, we are more likely to be well-regarded.
The strength of managers is proportionate to the vulnerability of those they protect: the child parts which have frozen in the time of earlier trauma.
Locked away or buried deep in the psyche, the younger parts are often barely detectable. Acting like exiles, they are frozen in time, feeling hurt, scared and sometimes speechless (if their origin is from preverbal times). These fragile young parts carry burdens of shame and worthlessness. Because of their isolation, they are completely unaware that anything has changed since the original trauma. In their time capsule, they are unable to understand that other parts (managers) have grown up, learned skills and become competent in the world. While the managers may be fully aware of how the individual’s life has changed, the exiles are stuck in the time of the original trauma. They appear to be inaccessible in this ‘time-warp’. This is why our self-defeating behavioral, emotional patterns are so tenacious and resist all our conscious desires and efforts to change. And it is also why we sometimes have a feeling of being a ‘fake’ or inauthentic. If a number of parts are not available and therefore cannot bring their gifts to the total psyche, we are, in fact, operating on a fragment of our potential. Often the child parts are essential to the feeling of authenticity.
The hidden parts exist, for the most part, undetected. But whenever they are triggered by, say, experiencing a situation similar to the original trauma (or even say,viewing it on television), an exile sometimes breaks out of isolation and is capable of flooding the personality with strong feelings of grief or fear. The managers consider this to be a dangerous situation and they react with self-punishments in the form of criticism (i.e. “You are such a baby!”; “I hate myself when I explode with anger.” “You are lazy and useless!”). Manager parts expect “good” adult behavior at all times and use any means they can to ensure that we behave. If you listen more closely, you may notice that they sound much like parents or former teachers or coaches.
The earliest job of manager parts was to step into real, threatening situations (such as abuse, neglect, or unavoidable trauma) in infancy and childhood in order to protect the vulnerable parts. Over time, however, the manager parts become extreme in their methods. They can be guilt and shame inducing, and critical to the point of making the person ineffective. Despite their often punishing techniques, the managers goal is to make sure that the child parts never experience the powerful emotions which seemed, at the time of the original trauma, capable of destroying the Self and the total personality. The Manager parts exist in a state of vigilance, anticipating these triggers. They are always on the job, exerting their control in their particular ways: by internal criticisms, or by having us please others, or by being “good” or “efficient”, or “intelligent” or any number of behaviors based on their beliefs in what is necessary for survival. The goal of these protectors is to ensure that the individual (the exiled parts) never feels that fear, humiliation, shame or helplessness again. They are rarely off duty. Consequently, when asked, they will often admit that they are very tired, or that they’re worried because their strategies have lost their effectiveness. Hence the feeling of crisis.
The Firefighters
Because of more acutely difficult early experiences, another level of defensive parts can emerge which Schwartz calls the “firefighters” –because of their tendency for quick rescue. While they share the same goal as the managers, these parts are associated with addictive behaviors. Whenever unbearable feelings are stirred up, a firefighter suddenly appears with strategies involving a quick escape. Firefighters drown or bury the threatening feelings with addictive behaviors involving, for example, alcohol, food, gambling,sex, shopping, or sleep. There is a powerful driven quality to firefighter behaviour which is hard to resist or argue against. Will power strategies are often short-lived and ineffective against the compelling urge of firefighter energy.
Sudden and destructive firefighter reactions are designed to protect vulnerable parts; but because their methods are so drastic, they are at odds with the manager parts whose style tends more to anticipating, and thus preempting, threatening situations by controlling the personality. Where managers are trying to please, appear perfect and be acceptable to or elevated by others, the firefighters tend to alienate and anger other people. Their tactics are judged as reactive and destructive; and invariably, when the dust settles, firefighters will be soundly criticized by manager parts who, for example, come in ‘the morning after’ with shame inducing judgments.
Schwartz named them “firefighters” because they are completely geared for immediate rescue. Initially, their goal was to take the person right out of the threatening situation with self-soothing behaviours. Unfortunately, like the Managers, a once helpful behavior becomes, over time, entrenched in the personality as difficult, stubborn and often destructive behavior patterns.
Multiplicity
The overall personality is a collection of parts. Schwartz describes this model:
“…it is useful to think of an internal system as a collection of related people of different ages, like a tribe. Some of these inner-family members are young, sensitive, and vulnerable children; others are older children, adolescents, and adults. In addition to different ages, they have different temperaments, talents, and desires. In a person whose Self is leading this group and the parts are relating harmoniously, the person will not experience each part distinctly and is likely to feel as if his or her mind is unitary. In this respect, the mind is like any other system, from an anthill to a basketball team to a corporation: When it functions well and all the members are in sync, it will seem like one unit. The individual members still exist and , once separated from the group, remain distinct and autonomous. Yet they are so coordinated that they create a kind of unity.
It is in polarized systems, at any level, that the members stand out in bold relief. This is why troubled people report feeling so fragmented–not necessarily because they have more personalities than ‘normal’ people, but because their personalities are fighting with one another rather than working together. Thus, the goal is not to fuse all these smaller personalities into a single big one. It is instead to restore leadership, balance, and harmony, so that each part can take its preferred, valuable role.”
As Schwartz points out, IFS works to restore the leadership of the Self so the more vulnerable parts may feel safe and the protectors can relax in their strategies of defense. This work is gentle, respectful and increasingly amazing to therapist and client who work together towards retuning the psyche. Both Voice Dialogue and IFS techniques work because they are not only about understanding one’s history but understanding experientialy. We talk not about the parts of the personality but with those parts. Often for the first time, the parts feel seen and heard. This is a step farther than intellectual speculation, which is often a primary step in the work of understanding and accepting oneself.
Jung’s Theory of the Complex
One of the earliest physicians to understand the plurality and fluidity of the individual mind was C.G. Jung. In the beginning of his career as a psychiatrist at the Bürgholzli Clinic, a psychiatric hospital in Zürich, Jung came to understand that, although the mind appears to act as a single entity, it is made up of numerous parts, which he called complexes. These internal structures, Jung noticed, acted independently, like subpersonalities. Years before he and Freud first met, Jung had published his research on complexes “The Association Experiment” which demonstrated the way in which the complex operated. In the ensuing years, personal crises and suffering led Jung deeper into his own inner work where he gained firsthand knowledge of psychic structures such as the complex, the unconscious and the collective unconscious.
A complex, Jung concluded, is a psychic fragment consisting of a core (that is connected with an archetype) around which cluster ideas and images collected from the person’s life experiences. Each complex has a definite emotional tone of, for example, irritation or love or anger. Complexes, Jung argued, are born during early life experiences and afterward they behave “like independent beings” (The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, para. 253). Everyone has mother and father complexes, as well as money complexes, and so on. How charged they are depends upon personal experience. For instance, a missing father, or a punitive, or a loving father, would result in very different father complexes.The variety of complexes is expressed in dreams where they may show up as people (known or unknown), forces of nature, animals or situations.
As long as a complex operates without our consciousness of it, it can rule with an uncanny power, feeling as if it has a direct connection to a “truth”. When we become possessed by a complex we become adamant that we are “right”. If our “truth” is challenged, we may become aggressive, upset, or in some way, touchy. Until we are able to question and critique our own truths, the complex rules. As Jung says, it “has” us. Complexes, then, are blind-spots; and as such, they are unknown to us but glaringly obvious to others. Our blind-spots are protected by the a variety of defenses– the primary one being denial. So while a complex may be obvious in another person we risk reproach by pointing them out (no matter how tactfully) and setting off the denial strategies. Complexes prefer to remain unconscious.
A central part of the work of Jungian approach is to begin to make our complexes conscious so that they no longer rule our lives from the unconscious. As complexes enter the “adaptive process” in therapy, Jung said, “they personalize and rationalize themselves to the point where a dialectical discussion becomes possible.” (On the Nature of the Psyche, CW8, par 384). In analysis, the process of understanding the complex may begin with the personification of a strong feeling. One can have a dialogue with the personified feeling by journaling in a method which Jung called “Active Imagination.” Sometimes feelings can be expressed in colour, shape or line. The goal is to get to know them. Since complexes are the structures of the psyche, we will never get rid of them. Jung suggested that in the process of becoming conscious and therefore more known, our complexes become less like enemies and more like partners. The ‘Parts’ work takes Jungian work a step farther past ‘talk’ therapy into an intimate, respectful encounter with the psyche in which the leadership of the self is invited to resume its rightful role.
For more information on C.G. Jung:
Jung, C.G.. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. (1961). Random House, New York, N.Y.
Stein, Murray. Jung’s Map of the Soul. (1999). Open Court, Chicago, Illinois.
For more information on Internal Family Systems (IFS):
Schwartz, Richard. (1995) Internal Family Systems. The Guilford Press, New York, N.Y..
For more information on Voice Dialogue:
Stone, Drs. Hal & Sidra. (1989) Embracing the Selves. New World Library, Novato, CA..
Stone, Drs. Hal & Sidra. (1993) Embracing Your Inner Critic Turning Self- Criticism Into A Creative Asset. Harper Collins Canada.
