The Internal Family Systems

The IFS model views a person as containing an ecology of mind relatively discrete, each of which has important features and designed for everyone, and wants to play a valuable role. (For the evolution of this theory and its relation to other theories of multiplicity, see below.) These spirits, or parts, are forced to leave their major roles, however, through life experiences that reorganize the system ways.What circumstances force these parties to unhealthy extremes, and sometimes destructive roles? The trauma is a factor, but more often it is the family of a person at the origin of values and modes of interaction that create internal polarizations which degenerate over time and occur in other relationships. Object relations and self psychology have observed these processes. What’s new in IFS is its understanding of all levels of human organization – intrapsychic, family, and culture – through the same systemic principles, and intervention at all levels of ecological techniques analogy. An asset is an alcoholic family, where children are forced to the role of protection and stereotypes (the scapegoat, the mascot, lost children, and so on) from the extreme dynamics of their family. But these roles are not the essence of the child, however, once freed from its role in intervention, every child can find the interests and talents separate from the application of family chaos. The process itself seems to hold for the family inside – the components are forced into extreme roles by external circumstances, but become easily averaged over functional roles, once the system can operate safely in this way.