Totally agree that IFS parts are best represented as beliefs (or clusters thereof), rather than ‘parts’.
This reminds me of Alfred Adler’s Individual Psychology. Adler believed the mind was monolithic— for example, he didn’t like to distinguish between the conscious and the subconscious— and this is in part why he named his psychology ‘Individual’ (indivisible) Psychology. If there were to be legitimate IFS parts in the mind, or even if etiological trauma[1] were to truly exist, then the mind would not be monolithic.
“etiological trauma”: trauma from past events that hypothetically would determine a person’s behavior in the present.
“Etiological” is as opposed to “teleological”— where ‘teleological trauma’ (note: no one uses this term except for me[2]) would just be “beliefs held in the present that make false/harmful predictions about the future”.
Totally agree that IFS parts are best represented as beliefs (or clusters thereof), rather than ‘parts’.
This reminds me of Alfred Adler’s Individual Psychology. Adler believed the mind was monolithic— for example, he didn’t like to distinguish between the conscious and the subconscious— and this is in part why he named his psychology ‘Individual’ (indivisible) Psychology. If there were to be legitimate IFS parts in the mind, or even if etiological trauma[1] were to truly exist, then the mind would not be monolithic.
“etiological trauma”: trauma from past events that hypothetically would determine a person’s behavior in the present.
“Etiological” is as opposed to “teleological”— where ‘teleological trauma’ (note: no one uses this term except for me[2]) would just be “beliefs held in the present that make false/harmful predictions about the future”.
Though I did get this idea from The Courage to be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga.