Internal Family Systems Expands on Freud

"While his language (for it was initially his) may evoke images of insiders battling against outsiders, Freud's main concern was conflict within the mind. Aware that the mind presented different features (conflict requires more than one party), Freud theorized a semi-personified, three-part model of mind. One part, the ego ("I" in English) used defense mechanisms to manage conflicts between the other two parts, the primitive, desirous, selfish id ("it") and the judging, socially inhibiting superego ("above it")."

"Meanwhile, other mental health practitioners who noticed inner conflict opted for a less compounded, finite model of mind. Sticking close to subjective experience, they addressed a multitude of independently motivated components, modes, or parts in therapy. Richard Schwartz, the family systems psychologist who developed internal family systems (IFS) therapy, started doing this while working with eating disorders. Schwartz's patients described their subjective experience in this way."

Mind contains multiple motivated subpersonalities that interact and often conflict. Freud proposed a three-part structural model—ego, id, and superego—where the ego uses defenses to manage internal conflict between desire and social inhibition. Other clinicians observed numerous independent parts and treated them as distinct modes. Richard Schwartz developed Internal Family Systems (IFS) after patients described protective parts that defend vulnerable exiles: managers that promote compliance and exile hurt parts, and firefighters that respond to resurfacing pain with impulsive, disinhibiting behaviors like substance use, gambling, pornography, or bingeing. Influence on parts occurs through relationship rather than direct control.

Read at Psychology Today