Internal Family Systems
School of Professional Psychology and Health ICPW 6591 1.00
Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a psychotherapy modality developed by Dr. Richard Schwartz. It incorporates systems thinking as a way for us to study, understand and ultimately love and attend to the many different parts of our psyches. The different parts tend to take on specific types of roles within the psyche, and to have family-system type dynamics with each other. Parts all have important and valuable roles to fulfill for the individual system, but can be pushed into dysfunctional roles by trauma and other difficult life experiences. IFS is a modality which seeks to help the individual to establish supportive, healing relationships with all of the parts of her/his psyche, and to help the ecology of this system to come into balance. This course presents the basic concepts of the IFS model and will facilitate students to learn how to work with their own parts. The course includes readings, lectures, demos and experiential exercises.
