Disclaimer: I only know about IFS from this sequence, so I might confuse parts of it with my own models.
I think there is a value (or at least could be) in speaking of IFS parts as being person-like to a somewhat larger degree than a fully reductionist model would imply them to be:
When focusing on a part, a big chunk of one’s mind is involved, which I expect to lend one’s experience of the part actual person-like properties even if they were not there initially. Also, I would expect this effect to be easily amplified by having expectations of agency while focusing on the part (if I expect the part to be person-like, I will model it as a person and then just use my person-model of the part in order to interact with it). It seems plausible/possible that using one’s ‘dealing with a person’-abilities (where everyone has a lot of experience) for interacting with parts is easier to apply than using a more abstract model (I do not know much about other models, so it might well be that there are other easy-for-humans-to-apply methods which don’t use ‘mini-people’).
With this I think that the IFS framing of parts as ‘mini-people’ can be seen as a feature, not a bug—although one should keep in mind that perceiving a part as strongly person-like is not necessarily a property of the part. I would expect: For improving one’s understanding of the mind, one should not overestimate the degree of person-hood of parts; for dealing with one’s parts, treating them as mini-people might be useful even if they aren’t.
My impression was that parts in IFS range from if-then-rules to dissociated personalities (I was surprised to learn that their existence is debated; non-debated complex examples are described in Subagents, trauma and rationality). Because of this I thought that the descriptions as ‘mini-people’ are mostly meant to be easy to grasp and remember and do not claim to be accurate over the whole range.
Disclaimer: I only know about IFS from this sequence, so I might confuse parts of it with my own models.
I think there is a value (or at least could be) in speaking of IFS parts as being person-like to a somewhat larger degree than a fully reductionist model would imply them to be:
When focusing on a part, a big chunk of one’s mind is involved, which I expect to lend one’s experience of the part actual person-like properties even if they were not there initially. Also, I would expect this effect to be easily amplified by having expectations of agency while focusing on the part (if I expect the part to be person-like, I will model it as a person and then just use my person-model of the part in order to interact with it). It seems plausible/possible that using one’s ‘dealing with a person’-abilities (where everyone has a lot of experience) for interacting with parts is easier to apply than using a more abstract model (I do not know much about other models, so it might well be that there are other easy-for-humans-to-apply methods which don’t use ‘mini-people’).
With this I think that the IFS framing of parts as ‘mini-people’ can be seen as a feature, not a bug—although one should keep in mind that perceiving a part as strongly person-like is not necessarily a property of the part. I would expect: For improving one’s understanding of the mind, one should not overestimate the degree of person-hood of parts; for dealing with one’s parts, treating them as mini-people might be useful even if they aren’t.
My impression was that parts in IFS range from if-then-rules to dissociated personalities (I was surprised to learn that their existence is debated; non-debated complex examples are described in Subagents, trauma and rationality). Because of this I thought that the descriptions as ‘mini-people’ are mostly meant to be easy to grasp and remember and do not claim to be accurate over the whole range.