Richard C. Schwartz, Ph.D. – The Founder of Internal Family Systems
Richard Schwartz began his career as a systemic family therapist and an academic. Grounded in systems thinking, Dr. Schwartz developed Internal Family Systems (IFS) in response to clients’ descriptions of various parts within themselves. He focused on the relationships among these parts and noticed that there were systemic patterns to the way they were organized across clients. He also found that when the clients’ parts felt safe and were allowed to relax, the clients would experience spontaneously the qualities of confidence, openness, and compassion that Dr. Schwartz came to call the Self. He found that when in that state of Self, clients would know how to heal their parts.

How does IFS work in sessions?
Like members of a family, a person’s inner parts can take on extreme roles or subpersonalities. Each part has its own perspective, interests, memories, and viewpoint. A core tenet of IFS is that every part has a positive intent, even if its actions are counterproductive and/or cause dysfunction. There is no need to fight with, coerce, or eliminate parts; the IFS method promotes internal connection and harmony to bring the mind back into balance.
IFS therapy aims to heal wounded parts and restore mental balance. The first step is to access the core Self and then, from there, understand the different parts in order to heal them.
In the IFS model, there are three general types of parts:

1. Exiles: represent psychological trauma, often from childhood, and they carry the pain and fear. Exiles may become isolated from the other parts and polarize the system. Managers and Firefighters try to protect a person’s consciousness by preventing the Exiles’ pain from coming to awareness.

2. Managers: take on a preemptive, protective role. They influence the way a person interacts with the external world, protecting the person from harm and preventing painful or traumatic experiences from flooding the person’s conscious awareness.

3. Firefighters: emerge when Exiles break out and demand attention. They work to divert attention away from the Exile’s hurt and shame, which leads to impulsive and/or inappropriate behaviors like overeating, drug use or violence. They can also distract a person from pain by excessively focusing attention on more subtle activities such as overworking or over-medicating.

IFS therapists first help clients to disengage from their parts and connect with their TRUE SELF. From there, they can understand each part and heal it. The aim is to let go of the destructive roles and enter into a harmonious collaboration, led by the Self. IFS emphasizes the spiritual nature of the Self, allowing growth for spiritual development and self-awareness as well as psychological healing. The client learns how to reside in Self and witness the traumatic memory without being flooded by it. In this way the trauma is revisited, processed, and healing can begin without the risk of re-traumatization.