What if I’m interested in getting to know my subpersonalities, but I’m not sure what they are? [I personally don’t have the problem of needing to identify mine; we are pretty well identified!]

This exercise on Integral Options Cafe about defining the disowned self, or a set of disowned subpersonalities, gets me thinking. In a nutshell, the exercise suggests picking an intimate relationship that you have with a friend, family member, lover, etc. Then list all the ways in which that person pisses you off. In what ways does the person seem contemptible, inferior, weak, whiny, etc.? What don’t you like about this person?

Also, at the same time, collect a list of traits that are the opposite of what piss you off about this person. What’s so good about you? What are your strengths? What are the parts of you that give you satisfaction?

The traits that you identify with and that make you happy correspond to the traits of a primary self, someone that you identify with very closely, maybe even your ego or everyday persona. The traits that piss you off about the other person are still your very own traits, but put in the form of a disowned self, someone that you do not identify with and try to shove away.

The conclusion here is to run toward, not away from, the piss-off traits. The piss-off traits represent the parts of you that you dislike so much that you project them onto other people, claiming that someone else over there is a perfectionist, critical, uptight, unemotional, flat and pedantic problem, not you! The piss-off traits are all you, and, the more you shove them away onto other people, the more they will come back and bite you in the ass. [Suppression never works.]

Self-knowledge lies in the places you least suspect it: the places inside you where you don’t want to go. Potential self-knowledge lies, waiting, inside your faults. If you turn yourself to face you, but you’ve never caught a glimpse of how the others must see the faker because you’re much too fast to take that test [ch-ch-ch-changes], you need to slow down and scrutinize what you hate in other people.

What you hate in others is what you reject in yourself. What you reject in yourself is mostly just parts of yourself marked so strongly by dislike that they seem negative, but they’re not inherently bad. You in your hate just think they’re bad. They’re really not. They’re really value-neutral, and they can be employed beneficially if you look past the coating of hatred and see them for the raw materials they are.

This message has been brought to you by the one who knows these things. Thank you.

Apparently there’s a relatively recent movement championing the dialogic self, viz., the idea that we are groups of voices with different perspectives and positions.

Also, apparently, John Rowan, author of the rather dry Subpersonalities, is coming out with a new book next month called Personification: Using the Dialogical Self in Therapy and Counseling. I’m sure it discusses in a structured way what I learned the hard and lonely way to do all by myself.

What I want to know is where all this theory and information was when I was convinced I was going insane??

Internal Family Systems [TM] is a mode of therapy that identifies various subpersonalities inside us and, as part of the therapeutic relationship with our therapists, identifies the roles and functions of the subpersonalities. The description below of Internal Family Systems comes from my interpretation of a summary of the practice here.

IFS believes in three types of subpersonalities — managers, exiles and firefighters — and a Self. A Self is defined as the authentic core of a person, an integrated system of consciousness and traits. Removed somewhat from the turmoil of managers, exiles and firefighters, it is competent and wise, full of compassion for the more fragmented subpersonalities. The Self is not a subpersonality.

As for subpersonalities, one group of them is the managers. As rule makers, managers demarcate the boundaries between the Self and the firefighters and the exiles. Managers are like border guards that want to keep everyone in their own little worlds. Managers are very invested in the smooth function of the whole person, so they may emphasize order, organization, rationality and rule-following. They remind me of the Freudian superego.

Another group of subpersonalities is exiles. Exiles are little, lost, lonely parts of ourselves, often remnants from childhood that we have hidden away. We can think of them as unhappy pieces of ourselves that we have shoved in a closet. Exiles can be strong and insistent in their demands because they want nothing more than to have attention paid to them.

Causing interference between exiles and everything else are the firefighters. When the exiles start to come out of the closet, the firefighters step in. The firefighters may be characterized as panicky, dancing distractions, personalities that we take on when things, such as sensations from our exiles, seem too overwhelming. Maladaptive coping strategies such as emotional eating, watching TV till one is in a stupor or getting smash-assed drunk commonly identify firefighters.

With all the managers, exiles and firefighters running around, it’s a very busy place inside us! According to IFS, we are often confused, our behavior directed by the immediate demands of an exile or by the stringent control of a manager or by the escapist fantasies of a firefighter…instead of by the calm, wise compassion of the Self.

IFS uses the idea of subpersonalities to help us identify our managers, exiles and firefighters, become conscious of how they act and why and talk to them so that we understand them. Once we understand the motivations of our subpersonalities, we can respond compassionately to them from our Selves. We may be able to change our subpersonalities’ behaviors so they aren’t so detrimental; we might even be able to integrate them into our Selves so that we can be more whole.

…Supposedly.

I have the following questions. 1) How do managers and firefighters differ? Both seem to be ways to manage the appearance of exiles. 2) If one is hung up on identifying with, say, the managers instead of one’s Self, how does one learn to get in touch with one’s Self? 3) In general, I understand the point of identifying and working with subpersonalities, but why is integration always heralded as the ultimate goal? 4) Oh yeah…and what does this mean for the world beyond the individual?

Subpersonalities may be defined as little, semi-autonomous clusters of traits inside us with their own peculiar thoughts and worldviews that we as a whole employ in our daily lives. I personally think they overlap a lot with imaginary characters, which is why I just now typed "subpersonalities" into Google and came up with this blog entry from Integral Options Cafe, in which the author tries to define subpersonalities. The author also discusses some books and psychological theories that use the subpersonalities model. The author mentions the book Subpersonalities by John Rowan [which I have read and reviewed in my ongoing bibliography about paracosms and imaginary characters and such], as well as other sources that I have not looked into and need to.

Hooray, more places to look for interpretations of paracosms and imaginary characters!

Later I should write something about Internal Family Systems [TM].