Internal Family Systems and Parts Work

If you have heard yourself say “a part of me wants to stay and a part of me wants to run,” you have done parts work. Internal Family Systems, developed by Richard Schwartz from the 1980s, turned that everyday way of speaking into a full model: the mind is made of parts, each with a role and a history; the parts fall into protectors and the wounded exiles they protect; and beneath them is a Self, calm and curious, which can lead the system if the parts let it (Schwartz, 1995; Schwartz & Sweezy, 2020).

IFS has become one of the most widely taught approaches of the last two decades, and its vocabulary has spread far beyond therapy. Much of it maps closely onto ideas the psychodynamic tradition had been developing for fifty years before, which is not a criticism. Schwartz drew on family systems theory rather than on psychoanalysis, and arrived at some of the same places by another road.

The Map

Parts: Sub-personalities with their own feelings, beliefs and aims. The psychodynamic cousins are self-states, which Mardi Horowitz and Philip Bromberg described as whole configurations of feeling and relating that come and go, and internal objects, the inner figures taken in from real people. An IFS “inner critic” part is, in object-relations terms, often an internalized critical parent.
Managers: Proactive protectors that keep the system safe through control, perfectionism, people-pleasing or planning. These are close to the higher and intermediate defenses: anticipation, intellectualization, reaction formation, and the organized styles described under personality styles.
Firefighters: Reactive protectors that douse pain when an exile breaks through, by any means: drinking, rage, binges, dissociation. In the defense hierarchy these are the action and disavowal defenses, acting out and dissociation among them.
Exiles: Young, wounded parts carrying shame, fear and the memory of being hurt, kept out of awareness by the protectors. Psychodynamically, these are the repressed and split-off experiences, the frightened child state, and the painful scenes that a defense is protecting against. See what a defense is afraid of.
Self: The core of the person, characterized by calm, curiosity, compassion and clarity, which is not a part and cannot be damaged. This is the idea with the fewest direct psychodynamic equivalents. Winnicott’s true self is the nearest, though it is a source of spontaneity rather than a wise leader. The observing capacity that the Self provides is what psychodynamic writers call self-observation or mentalizing.
Unburdening: The IFS process of helping an exile release the beliefs and feelings it took on. The psychodynamic account of the same change is working through and corrective emotional experience: the old scene is revisited in a relationship where something different is possible.

Where They Agree

No bad parts. IFS insists every part has a positive intent. The defense tradition says the same: every defense was once the best available solution to a real problem.
Protectors first. IFS will not go to an exile until the protectors consent. Anna Freud said analyze the defense before the wish, for the same reason (A. Freud, 1937).
Multiplicity is normal. Both traditions hold that a healthy mind is many, and that trouble comes from parts or states that cannot communicate.
The relationship heals. In IFS, the Self’s compassion toward a part; in psychodynamic work, the new relational experience.

Where They Differ

Where the parts came from. IFS asks how family-of-origin experiences burdened a part, but its parts are the person’s own. Object relations theory holds that inner figures are built from real other people, which means the inner critic sounds like someone, and knowing who can matter.
The Self. IFS posits an undamaged core in everyone. Psychodynamic theory is more cautious; the capacity to observe oneself with compassion is developed, unevenly, and can be strengthened, but it is not assumed to be sitting intact underneath.
Literalness. IFS often works with parts as if they were people, with names and ages, in guided inner dialogue. Psychodynamic clinicians tend to treat self-states as descriptions of experience rather than as inner persons, and to be wary of reifying them.
Relationships with other people. IFS has been extended to couples and families, but its primary map is inner. The psychodynamic picture insists that patterns live between people as much as inside them; see vicious circles and accomplices.

Sources

Bromberg, P. M. (1998). Standing in the Spaces. Analytic Press.
Freud, A. (1937). The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence (C. Baines, Trans.). Hogarth Press.
Horowitz, M. J. (1987). States of Mind (2nd ed.). Plenum.
Schwartz, R. C. (1995). Internal Family Systems Therapy. Guilford Press.
Schwartz, R. C., & Sweezy, M. (2020). Internal Family Systems Therapy (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.