Internal Family Systems Therapy: Second Edition

Good update to the first edition (includes some wrenchingly powerful details on the development of IFS, which are a teaching in themselves on not giving up on something you believe in), but I think it would have been even better had the authors kept the first edition Case Example chapter, which I think is invaluable for providing a fleshed-out overview of how IFS works. The remainder of this review is the same as my review of the first edition.This is a must-read for anyone wanting to understand their psychological world better. Prior to reading this, I had engaged in a fair amount of inner work....but this book, nevertheless, blew my mind. It is a very precise, safe, and powerful system for working with inner conflicts. It renders methodologies for working with inner critics that rely on the concept of the "super-ego" crude, clumsy, and inefficient, if not dangerous.Reading this book gave me the conceptual framework I needed to work effectively with an IFS therapist (I had been very resistant to the idea of "parts", which this book was instrumental in alleviating). Note, however, that as eye-opening as this book is on its own, it is not a substitute for working with a skilled IFS therapist (which has further blown my mind in ways I was not expecting even after reading this book).

As a new therapist, this book is incredibly helpful. Easy to read.

Enlightening book about human psychology. It goes over parts theory and how those parts operate and how they can block you or others to uncover underlying trauma. This book is not necessarily for the curious only, as it is packed with a lot of information that goes in depth. People just curious should see his other book "No Bad Parts" that is geared for casual consumption or just the curious.

This book is truly a textbook in that it is chock full of important information, but it's written in a way that everyone can understand and it draws you along easily, yet each paragraph is it's own concentrated nougat of important information that I dont want to put down. Plenty of examples that are directly from therapy sessions, but the examples are not tiresome. This book is very well written and thought out and helpful.

Coming from a therapist in graduate school, this is a groundbreaking system of therapy. It synthesizes many different theories into a unique framework, that is adaptable to any set of issues a client may have. A must read for any therapist in the field.

I am finishing up Internal Family Systems Therapy, 2nd Edition (Kindle version). I am very impressed with the content which goes both deep and wide, is reflective and prescriptive, allowing me to really get a deeper feel for the value of IFS and how to use it in my own life. It is a handbook that is easy to stay connected with - at least that is my experience.*However the Kindle version needs to updated with a technical issue since highlighting is dysfunctional. It cannot be aimed where I want it! Once this is fixed, I am all in with 5 starts.

Must read for people wanting to integrate/ learn IFS and parts- work into therapy sessions

Definitely a book for therapists using Internal Family Systems, Parts work. I am a trained and certified Brainspotting Therapist, just recently, and have never used Parts work until a training in Brainspotting. When I went into my practicum as the client, WOW, my parts came out and I was overwhelmed at how quickly my younger parts came out and wanted to speak. Absolutely incredible. I decided this year when learning this that I immediately wanted to start using Parts work with my clients. This book, along with the original IFS book by Richard Schwartz and the workbook, are just ingenious and amazing. This particular book helped me to learn all I needed to learn about IFS and parts work in a limited amount of time to be able to immediately start using Parts work in Brainspotting therapy sessions with clients. It made me think back on sessions with clients that their parts were speaking/coming out and I wasn't addressing them. I am so excited to start using IFS/Parts work to allow clients to go even deeper into their psyche to address those deep brain issues that they so want to address. Great book!!!

Excellent. This psychotherapeutic approach is the most powerful, gentle and effective trauma-based intervention I have encountered in over a decade of professional practice. Useful for almost any client presentation. A non-pathologizing, empowering client-centred approach that is original, easy to use, minimizes client drain and therapist burnout, and when used properly minimizes client re-traumatization and therapist secondary traumatization. This second edition is a streamlined, much improved update on how to conceptualize, work with and troubleshoot IFS with clients. I like that it helps the therapist remain healthy in this difficult field. Importantly, IFS also connects well with powerful adaptive client spiritual beliefs and the sacred in general, giving suffering personal meaning and catalyzing both client and therapist growth. Highly recommended.

Maybe to a typical Westerner approaching the subject of mind, the psycho concept of multiplicity of parts behind IFS might be considered somewhat strange in comparison to say thousands of years of Shamanistic healing practices. Modern forerunners spring to mind like Jung’s active imagination (along with complexes and archetypes), i.e. “the technique wherein the contents of one's subconscious are translated into images, narrative or personified as separate entities” (Wiki); and, Psychosynthesis’ subp’s (Assagioli, Ferrucci) likely to have been Dick’s background learning - along with Hakomi body centred therapy (Kurtz). What these therapies' further share in common is a validation of the importance of the spiritual level of human existence (Self-energy).However, unlike most multi-part therapies, the make-up of a ‘part’ in IFS does not constitute an unidimensional emotional energetic force, nor is it locked into one specific role, or the result of an introjected childhood script (internalisation); further it is not only a diagnosis of a pathology, such as frozen traumatic phenomena. Instead, IFS considers all these characteristics and more to be features of a rounded, living identity, either born wholly manifest or remaining latent until triggered; and with each part capable of inhabiting a range of qualities, including its untainted ‘naturally valuable state’.There is more than a passing nod to Shamanic practices of the past such as ‘soul retrieval’ with IFS’s 'witnessing' and the removal of emotional blockages (‘unburdening’). Nevertheless, an original aspect which makes IFS’s provenance all the more ‘curious’ (one of the eight markers of Self) is how having previously trained in external family systems (EFS?) therapy and initially discounting intrapsychic phenomena as bunkum, Dick stumbled across the concept of Parts, despite: “the idea we are collections of inner people do not fit well with Western scientific traditions.” In tracking the inner dynamics of his clients, he came to realise the parts resembled the dysfunctional ones he had learnt about in external family systems; eg. lost child, hero, scapegoat, parentised child, etc., which exhibited an underlying dynamic of being forced into an extreme role because of misattunement to an adverse environment, ie. from scarring or wounding.In IFS theory, these once naturally valuable parts (aspects of the real Self) become imprisoned by a series of jailors and are pushed into the shadow as Exile parts. Jailors acting as Protectors either operate based on minimising the risks of danger to the Exiles (Manager with a future-orientated planning function) or in reducing the harmful feelings the Exiles can bring to the system (present moment Firefighters with a somewhat reckless attitude). To add further conflagration to the system the Protectors also can have exiles who are wounded (to a lesser or greater degree) and need to be approached first in building trust and a relationship, termed ‘be-friending’.IFS therapy involves getting the client to unload the burdens (extreme emotions and beliefs) carried by the parts and traps them in their roles, transforming these into liberated energetic elements in the psyche once again. It does so by entrusting the Self to be involved in this process establishing a relationship between the client and their own Self as an internal axis of reflective ‘Insight’, or with the assistance of the Self of the therapist/practitioner using loving presence to talk to the client in a technique called ‘Direct Access’. IFS does not require tactile sensory input from the practitioner and the session can be carried out in secret without any disclosure. Due to its client-centred approach the primary healer-client dyad is reversed inside as the client’s newly brought out Self-energy becomes the internalised good figure (rather than the therapist as attachment figure).IFS’s emphasis on collaboration has obvious applications in the study of Leadership since it promotes the Self much more as an active leader of a system (whereas Jung talked about the passive witness, for example); and in its Center for Self Leadership, promoting IFS’s organising principles and insight-busting model for handling conflicts, the world might have every reason to dare to hope.Finally, IFS’s openness to giving access to training to those without a clinical therapeutic background is a welcome sea change IMHO and with its ready adaption to the virtual world of the Internet and facility at providing a spine to many multi-modal approaches, there is every reason to believe mainstream take-off is not futile. Either by chance or cosmic opportunity IFS seems ready-made for this decade’s grand revolution in the wellness space…

来月本邦でもようやく内的家族システム療法の翻訳書（アンダーソン先生とシュアルツ先生らの共著）が出版されるので、嬉しいかぎりです。本書もIFSの創始者のシュアルツ先生が共著で書かれている本ですが、内容からいっても、今まで出版されたIFS関連の本の中で最も体系的に書かれており、IFSを学びたい方にとっては必読書と言えます。浅井&花丘先生、この本もよろしくお願いします‼︎

Great introduction to IFS

Interesting information