Lesson 1: How I Got Interested in Working with Inner Figures: the “Others Within”

Inner parts, inner figures, and the Others Within are synonymous, and I will use them interchangeably. We will talk more about this as we progress, but for now, a working definition of “parts” is “a symbolic representations of feelings, thoughts, sensations, intuitions experienced in dreams, imagination, or inner dialogue, embodying different traits, desires, or conflicts.”

My Interest in Inner Figures

My interest in working with inner figures began when I was young. Some of the first adult books I read were Sybil and When Rabbit Howls when I was around 10 years old (my dad let me buy them at the thrift store). The books detail the lives of women who, due to extreme trauma, have unconsciously created separate “selves” as a way of coping. BTW, I do not recommend those books to anyone in that age group; there were some horrific parts, and I’m sure I incurred some major nightmares as a result! :0 Nonetheless, I was fascinated by the idea that people could have distinct personality parts with separate voices, behaviors, and memories from their primary personalities.

Additionally, I spent much energy and time as a child trying to figure out what was happening in my relationship with my mother, whom I would now describe as experiencing an antagonistic personality style. I could never figure out why she lived in seething rage. My confusion was compounded by my father, a high school counselor for most of his career. To my questions, my dad would only say that mom “had trauma”, that she was “playing her old tapes,” and that I shouldn’t “be so sensitive.”

My first job after college as a new therapist was in the late 1990s (whew, that makes me feel old :) when I was hired to work first doing overnights in an inpatient psychiatric hospital and later as an outpatient therapist for the severely and persistently mentally ill population, some of who were diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder, previously known as “Multiple Personality Disorder.” I had the immense good fortune to be at a time and place where I was able to be supervised by Jim Knipe, PhD, a prominent figure in the treatment for those suffering from extreme trauma, specifically, people suffering distinct personality states, such as DID or lesser impactful Dissociative Disorders. Later, in addition to working with clients who presented with schizophrenia, schizoaffective, and bipolar states, I trained in 1998/99 with Marsha Linehan, PhD, in a two-week intensive course in Seattle and learned therapy techniques designed to help clients that tend towards a “less integrated” psyche; i.e., Borderline character styles, who are also prone to distinct personality states. The therapy is called “Dialectical Behavioral Therapy,” I facilitated individual and group therapy for clients falling in this range of experience for many years.

Even as I moved towards private practice and was working with people who generally had less intense mental struggles, I continued to be struck by how inner parts show up and affect us all. I followed the work of Frank Putnam, PhD, an early expert on DID, and Shirley Jean Schmit’s “Developmental Needs Strategy.” In Vancouver, Canada, I attended a conference led by Daniel Seigel, PhD, a prominent neuropsychologist, where he discussed how mindfulness can help people develop more compassionate relationships with themselves (which is critical in inner parts work). I also found a lot of wisdom and practical application in the widely used and recognized modern approach to inner part work Robert Schwartz’s “Internal Family Systems” (IFS). In more recent years, I’ve gravitated towards Depth Psychology, where a plethora of ideas and information can be found about effective ways to view, and to work with, inner parts, including the work of Robert Johnson, PhD, James Hillman, PhD, Sharon Blackie PsyD, Bill Plotkin, Mary Harrell, Patrick Harpur, PhD, and of course, Carl Jung, PhD.
  

A Bit of History and A Lot of Geekiness

“As Within, So Without, As Above, So Below, As The Universe, So The Soul.” 

Hermes Trismegist

Carl Jung created a model of the psyche, which included theories about the human conscious and unconscious. His Analytical Psychology model circled the idea of complexes, or “issues,” that arise from the unconscious. Complexes can be likened to what we think of as “parts.” He saw them as rooted in the unconscious of the human psyche and intertwined with archetypes such as Shadow, Animus/Anima, Ego, Persona, Self, Mother, Father, Trickster, etc. It was essential to Jung that his work be considered rational and scientific, and as a result, he was hesitant to expand on some of his more esoteric ideas. Only after Jung’s death, when The Red Book was published in 2009, the full spectrum of his theories became apparent. Over time, he became to view these “inner parts” as autonomous from the human psyche. Also, he indicated that the line between “inner” and “outer” may not be so firmly distinct as he once thought, meaning he began to doubt that all of these figures originated “within” us but instead lived in the psyche of the world, the Anima Mundi (closely related to his idea of the Collective Unconscious.) Jung says, “It is not we who personify them; they have a very personal nature from the beginning.” (CW v.13, p. 42).

Also in regards to working with inner parts, I am fascinated with psychology before it was “psychology.” Working with inner figures has a long history, probably as long as humans have been trudging around on this earth with some amount of consciousness. Again, like Jung’s postulation, pre-industrial cultures would not have thought our inner experiences were distinct from those outside of ourselves; the delineation was much more porous. One way the inhabitants of this Spirit World would have been thought to show up in the voices and entities that make themselves known in our inner world. It’s also notable that, unlike modern takes on the psyche, most early “psychologies” viewed the self as composed of multiple identities or entities versus having one singular “me.” Another critical difference is beliefs around our imaginative functions. Nowadays, we view the imagination as something made up, regressive, untrue, or false. In the past, the imagination served to perceive and interact with the unseen world, and it was thought to be just as valid as seeing with our eyes, feeling with our skin, hearing with our ears, or smelling with our noses.

“Sometimes, it is the reassurance of stories and hope in something unseen that lends the greatest tool to the health provider’s repertoire . . . We are so accustomed to looking for a physical, and thus pharmaceutical, intervention to enable us to continue our fast-paced lives that the fuller emotional and psychological landscape is lost and even when given consideration is verbalized in stress alone.

The Old English folk-healers, or cunning women, were addressing through ritual and amuletic prescriptions, the landscape of mental health by enabling a structure of belief for the mind to engage with. Magic, elves, rituals and the belief in lucky numbers and days of power and the specific ways to dig herbs were not mere superstitions, they were evidence that our ancestors knew the mind needed tending just as much as the body . . . To then frame the physical within a wider notion of the psychological by providing meaningful myths and supernatural encounters was not barbaric sorcery, it was a holistic understanding of the needs of human beings when faced with the worst experiences of illness and mortality.”

Sinead Spearing, Old English Medical Remedies

Under Johannes Gårdbäck, I spent a year learning the Swedish tradition of Trolldom, a folk tradition focused on interacting with natural and spiritual forces who often show up as intuition or inner voices. In addition to Scandinavian folk beliefs, I’ve also studied similar Irish and Scottish history themes and how the “folk” viewed and worked with “spirits.” Before Christianity turned them into “demons,” the Northern European culture would have been aware of draugr, succubi, hags, and night “mares” (an evil spirit or goblins believed to sit on people’s chests while they slept, suffocating them and causing bad dreams), fairies, black dwarves (svartálfar), light elves (ljósálfar), trolls, witches, brownies, the courts of the Seelie and Unseelie, tomte, nisse, Nuckelavee and banshees, to name a few. It’s just as likely you would know they are around by seeing them peering at you from behind a bush as hearing them say things in your mind. I focus my interest mostly on Northern European history, as this is where my people come from. If you go back far enough, every culture around the world has had beliefs in the unseen, and how to relate to it.

So, looking through these perspectives, “inner parts” are not inner, nor are “parts” necessarily a part of ourselves. It would seem that the word “spirits” would fit the description the best, but for modern psychology, these are terms of the past used by peoples who lived in the dark about science (although they were rich in knowledge about the study of the soul, the root of the word psychology). Therefore, I will stick with the terminology of inner parts, parts, others within, etc. just to keep us oriented in the current times.

Obviously, I have a lot of passion and interest in these topics :) However, like most human experiences, no one can say for sure was is “really real”. That’s pretty great because there are no wrong answers or perspectives on inner work. The Christian people I work with often identify their parts as being connected to Jesus, God, Mary, or angels and demons. When I work within mythology and folklore, inner parts often appear as dragons, maidens, kings, swamp monsters, peasants, knights, witches, etc. Others with a strong family line will experience their parts as ancestors or people who were once important in the community. Those who align with modern medical perspectives may experience their parts as parts of themselves, an aspect of one self. Again, there is no right way to experience your inner world. One of the reasons I value Jung’s theories around archetypes is that core energies, or the original forms, can have many different faces and shapes. Even though I’ll be sharing my view of how I like to work in these landscapes, please know that you can adapt, reject, or accept any or all of what I put out there. It is meant to be more of a scaffolding for your work and less of me preaching a particular perspective.