Source
Schwartz, “Evolution of the Internal Family Systems Model”, LIT-579, read in full in NOTE-453 with two companion pages from the IFS Institute. Schwartz and Sweezy, Internal Family Systems Therapy, LIT-591, of which only chapter 1 (pp. 3–23) was read, in NOTE-457. That reading is a skim in the scheme’s sense: one chapter of twenty. Both NOTEs declined a THEORY comparing IFS with ACT, for want of process studies. This document states IFS’s own account, which both readings report in Schwartz’s words, and files it as Proposed for the same reason.
What was actually shown
Parts (LIT-591, ch. 1; LIT-579). Clients with bulimia described a “cacophony” of parts: a critic, a defender, a sad part, a part that “took over” to binge. Other clients told “remarkably similar stories”. Parts take common roles: managers that control and protect, exiles that carry pain, firefighters that suppress it in emergencies. The roles “could be changed if one intervened carefully and respectfully”. Extreme parts are protective, not pathological: Roxanne’s cutting part had the “two-pronged job” of taking her out of her body during abuse and holding back a dangerous rage.
What fails and what works. Coercing a part (“I badgered it for 2 hours”) was followed by worse self-injury. Asking with curiosity revealed its purpose. Going to vulnerable parts too fast was followed by accidents, fevers and migraines, which the clients’ protectors later “explained”.
The Self. Asking an angry part to “step back” produced “a calm, caring voice” (“Diane” in LIT-579, “Cora” in the book). Repeated with other clients, the procedure yielded a state they called “who I really am”. The Self “clearly did not need to develop over time”. It “wasn’t just a passive witness state … but could also be an active healing presence”. It is recognised by eight qualities: “calmness, curiosity, clarity, compassion, confidence, creativity, courage, and connectedness”.
What could have come out otherwise. Clients could have reported no stable state when parts stepped back, or one that differed from client to client. By Schwartz’s account they did not. That is the evidence, and it is clients’ reports interpreted by the model’s developer.
What this does not say
- That the Self exists as a mechanism of change. On THEORY-053’s terms, that clients improve when the Self is accessed is evidence for it only if a measure of Self-access changes first and specifically. None is reported.
- That everyone has a Self. That is generalised from the author’s practice (C2 in both NOTEs).
- That parts are real functional units. It is an assumption that clients’ reports of parts are data (NOTE-457, Assumptions).
- That IFS is effective. The SAMHSA rating the chapter mentions was not checked, and the research chapter (19) was not read.
- That the backlash is caused as described. Three anecdotes, with the causal reading supplied by the clients’ parts (NOTE-457, C3).
Connections
- QUESTION-034 asks what makes a population of interests act as one: bargaining, a change in which may act, or agreement. IFS gives a different answer from all three: leadership by a Self that is not one of the interests. That is what sets it apart from Ainslie’s bargaining interests (LIT-586) and Minsky’s society of mind (LIT-432).
- ACT’s self as context (THEORY-044, THEORY-051) is a contentless perspective learned from deictic relations. IFS’s Self is innate and has qualities. Both hold thoughts and feelings without fusing with them. A claim that this is a common active ingredient would need process studies the record does not hold (NOTE-453).
- Firefighters (bingeing, drugs, self-harm) are close to experiential avoidance in the psychological-inflexibility account (THEORY-050).