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A review by morgan_blackledge
No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model by Richard C. Schwartz
5.0
!!!!!DAMN I LOVED THIS BOOK!!!!!
My favorite book of 2022 (even though it came out in 2021)
Conventional psychology assumes that normal people are unitary in mind and personality, and deems the presence of “sub personalities” as a pathological outcome of trauma/dissociation.
Author Richard C. Schwartz claims otherwise, asserting that normal healthy human psychology consists of many sub personalities, which he refers to as “parts”.
A phenomena that is readily apparent to anyone who has ever experienced a sense of inner conflict, where “part” of you wanted one thing, and another “part” of you wanted another.
Schwartz asserts that many of the issues contemporary psychology and psychiatry pathologize are in fact, simply the result of Intrapsychic (part v. part) dynamics.
Schwartz posits that we reject certain parts of ourselves, and that we employ other protector parts to keep the unwanted parts in “exile”.
Schwartz contends that this sort of intra-psychic conflict engenders suffering, ties up valuable creative energy, and can keep us trapped in repetitive self-destructive cycles.
Schwartz developed Internal Family Systems (IFS) as a therapeutic model to encounter these parts as distinct inner beings, and to resolve these types of inner conflict, much the same way therapists do in family therapy.
If this sounds whack as fuck.
I’m with you 100%
In fact.
I initially dismissed IFS due to similar misgivings.
However.
My skepticism gave way when I gave it a try.
IFS is experiential.
And you really need to experience it to understand how powerful and direct it is.
This book is minimal on theory and heavy on exercises. If you try them, in good faith, you may be astounded at what you learn about yourself.
After working through the exercises in No Bad Parts, I discovered things about myself that I simply had never known, let alone understood.
In fact, I’m reeling from how utterly profound and liberating my experiences in IFS have been.
This is great stuff.
I am completely uncertain about the quality of this review.
Words fail.
But I hope you do yourself a favor:
Get No Bad Parts and do IFS.
I honestly can’t recommend it enough.
My favorite book of 2022 (even though it came out in 2021)
Conventional psychology assumes that normal people are unitary in mind and personality, and deems the presence of “sub personalities” as a pathological outcome of trauma/dissociation.
Author Richard C. Schwartz claims otherwise, asserting that normal healthy human psychology consists of many sub personalities, which he refers to as “parts”.
A phenomena that is readily apparent to anyone who has ever experienced a sense of inner conflict, where “part” of you wanted one thing, and another “part” of you wanted another.
Schwartz asserts that many of the issues contemporary psychology and psychiatry pathologize are in fact, simply the result of Intrapsychic (part v. part) dynamics.
Schwartz posits that we reject certain parts of ourselves, and that we employ other protector parts to keep the unwanted parts in “exile”.
Schwartz contends that this sort of intra-psychic conflict engenders suffering, ties up valuable creative energy, and can keep us trapped in repetitive self-destructive cycles.
Schwartz developed Internal Family Systems (IFS) as a therapeutic model to encounter these parts as distinct inner beings, and to resolve these types of inner conflict, much the same way therapists do in family therapy.
If this sounds whack as fuck.
I’m with you 100%
In fact.
I initially dismissed IFS due to similar misgivings.
However.
My skepticism gave way when I gave it a try.
IFS is experiential.
And you really need to experience it to understand how powerful and direct it is.
This book is minimal on theory and heavy on exercises. If you try them, in good faith, you may be astounded at what you learn about yourself.
After working through the exercises in No Bad Parts, I discovered things about myself that I simply had never known, let alone understood.
In fact, I’m reeling from how utterly profound and liberating my experiences in IFS have been.
This is great stuff.
I am completely uncertain about the quality of this review.
Words fail.
But I hope you do yourself a favor:
Get No Bad Parts and do IFS.
I honestly can’t recommend it enough.