Reading Between the Parts #

“Psychedelic Medicine and Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy: A Clinical Skills Manual” (2026) lays out a clinical protocol (IFS-PAT) for integrating Internal Family Systems therapy with psychedelics. The authors walk through the full arc of a course of treatment. The manual is aimed at practicing clinicians rather than a general audience. I’d been eagerly waiting for these authors to put their cards on the table. Now that they have, three things stand out: two sloppy sections, one recurring confusion that runs deeper than either, and a guess about why.

Fostering client autonomy is a core goal of IFS, and nothing in the book’s title restricts its scope to clinician-led sessions. Yet after a competent historical recap of psychedelic use, both guided and unguided, the book settles into the guided mold without a backward glance (p. 46). Cause for concern? Sitters don’t share the client’s altered state, which creates an empathic gap, and the sober/intoxicated divide invites guru-disciple dynamics. Better training and oversight could mitigate both, but cost is structural. MDMA and psilocybin sessions can last four or more hours. With trained sitters charging roughly $200/hr, guided therapy is priced out of reach for many. (Ketamine is an exception: short sessions keep the costs down.)

A guide can serve a real function: to hold space for a part that’s taken over when the client’s Self isn’t available. But not every client’s Self goes missing. That difference is worth screening for, but the book doesn’t even acknowledge it. Disconcerting. The same page also asserts that “the stories we hear from people who use psychedelics with and without psychotherapeutic support make it very clear that the quality of the therapeutic relationship is vital.” Such an extraordinary claim, yet they cite nothing—contrary to the other cited claims in this section.

Since the book offers no way to gauge whether a client has enough access to Self, I can propose a decision rule: the ability to meditate effortlessly for a sustained period, say, 20 minutes. I’d argue that effortlessness is only possible with inner trust and harmony, so it’s evidence of Self leadership. Hence, clients who self-certify can dispense with the sitter. It’s a blunt criterion, no doubt, but blunt is superior to nothing.

The second lapse appears in the Attachment to Peak Experiences section (pp. 114–115). In its centerpiece example, Alexander Beiner expressed his hope for “more elves, less introspection” (a nod to the “machine elves” DMT users sometimes report encountering), and felt frustrated when DMT delivered something else instead. The book reads this as Beiner showing “subtle or not-so-subtle attachments to those transcendent or peak experiences.” But that’s a misdiagnosis.

The real issue is blurring together two kinds of beliefs. One is about process: sitting with the medicine, whatever it brings, is worthwhile. The other is about content: what the journey should contain. Beiner hadn’t lost faith in the process; he’d fused a specific expected content with it. The book fails to draw this distinction. Stripped down, the whole section amounts to noting that a part can hold a belief that brings disappointment—like believing in the tooth fairy. That’s not a phenomenon peculiar to psychedelics, and it hardly merits mention. (Is there anything wrong with seeking peak experiences? Maybe we’re just witnessing buttoned-up psychologists trying to keep decorous distance from anything that smells recreational.)

The third issue is different in kind: not a lapse in one section, but a confusion the book inherits from Schwartz’s larger body of work. Self-like parts, Schwartz’s term for a part that impersonates Self, make an appearance in the first chapter’s introduction to IFS. He’s returned to it across several books over the years, often leaving loose threads dangling.

This book compounds the confusion with fresh variations. Four conditions are offered as signaling a Self-like part (pp. 15–16), but they don’t function as a coherent checklist. Two are theoretically checkable. One: “other parts turn away or ignore them.” The other: a self-report from some underspecified perspective that the client “sees the Self-like part standing in for them (‘I see me’).” The twist is that a part could pass one and fail the other; the book offers no guidance for that case. The other two conditions are vague enough to fit many stuck moments in therapy: “they have an agenda and lack curiosity,” and “therapy is stuck, but it’s unclear why.” I’d argue that last one is the most honest. When a practitioner is confused, “Self-like part” is often the excuse reached for.

Compare this to the tidy worked example from “IFS Skills Training Manual” (2017, p. 48). Charley’s food-stashing protector is prompted: “Ask how old it thinks you are.” The answer is 10, the age Charley was when his father left and the family went hungry. But the 10-year-old is a Self-like part only because the stasher is perceiving him that way. Self-likeness is a relational property, a function of the perceiver not the part being perceived. (I discuss this at length in “Religion Unburdened by Belief,” pp. 45–47.)

In contrast, Juan’s part does nothing more than exhibit ordinary protector resistance: “But hold up. What do you mean by parts? I’m me. One person.” “Why call that parts? I don’t like feeling sad. I don’t want to feel sad. How does it help?” “But I don’t want to hear from other parts.” The speaker tag “Juan’s Self-Like Part” is applied without any discernible justification. Not one of the book’s own tests is ever consulted. A reader trying to learn the method from this transcript has no way to reconstruct the rule the authors are applying.

Let’s take stock: an unacknowledged screening gap, a misdiagnosed peak-experience case, and a checklist that is not used in its own example. How did all this survive four eminent authors and Jenessa Jackson’s editorial scrutiny? Schwartz is something of a living legend. He has advanced a model that’s reshaped how a whole generation of therapists think about the mind. A devoted following treats his word as gospel. My guess: he’s fishing. Not for admirers, of which he has plenty, but for the rare commentator with a spine.

Or maybe I’m the one putting Schwartz on a pedestal. Maybe we’re just seeing a founder moving fast and trusting his reputation to cover the gaps, but I doubt it. None of this changes the book’s significance as the first IFS-and-psychedelics book with Schwartz’s name on it. But significance isn’t the same as getting it right. If my guess holds, the lapses are a bit of Schwartz’s playful mischief: a little nonsense dropped into the text on purpose to find out who pushes back instead of genuflecting. Maybe this is me taking the bait. Now let’s see if Schwartz will reel me in.

Reference Material #

Client-Therapist Relationship (p. 46) #

The client-therapist relationship is another topic that’s been attracting attention during the psychedelic renaissance but was taken as an unexamined given in the pre-renaissance era (Nutt et al., 2023). Traditionally, the client-therapist relationship was considered a fundamental element of the “set and setting” that facilitated (1) safety and (2) the transformational potential of psychedelics. While this first claim tends to be relatively uncontroversial, some have questioned the role of the therapeutic relationship in the efficacy of psychedelic medicine (Goodwin, Malievskaia et al., 2023). However, their argument tends to be more about the pragmatics of the approval process for a novel drug. Regulatory bodies like the FDA examine drugs not psychotherapies, which actually complicates the job of interpreting drug treatment outcomes (Goodwin, Malievskaia et al., 2023).

These are fair, pragmatic points from scientists working with pharmaceutical companies to get their drug approved and to market. But their claim that the therapeutic relationship does not contribute to the efficacy of psychedelic medicine fails to acknowledge countervailing evidence (O’Donnell et al., 2024). For example, Levin and colleagues (2024) found that the quality of the therapeutic relationship established in preparatory psychedelic medicine sessions was associated with participants’ ability to access mystical experiences during the psychedelic journey, and these were in turn associated with their ultimate depression scores at follow-up.

The stories we hear from people who use psychedelics with and without psychotherapeutic support make it very clear that the quality of the therapeutic relationship is vital. Moreover, we’ve found that the right set, setting, and preparatory work have more effect on the depth of an individual’s experience than dosage. A little goes a long way with the right psychotherapeutic container. At present, more evidence in the scientific literature corroborates our experience than refutes it, but of course the larger scientific, regulatory, and funding communities will require more corroborating research. So far, we agree with Richards’s (2015b) assertion that set and setting are crucial variables in producing the desirable mental health effects of psilocybin; it will not banish emotional suffering the way aspirin banishes a headache. Rather, it allows us to “explore a range of nonordinary states. It unlocks a door; how far one ventures through the doorway and what awaits one in the realms beyond largely is dependent on non-drug variables” (Richards, 2015b, p. 140).

Attachment to Peak Experiences (pp. 114–115) #

People who take psychedelic medicines more than once often develop subtle or not-so-subtle attachments to those transcendent or peak experiences. While connecting with Big Self relieves some parts of their sense of disconnection, their suffering, and their fear of death, other parts can feel overwhelmed and alarmingly insignificant. Since the vivid quality of the Big Self experience fades between journeys, the ones who found relief and yearn for more may spurn the parts who want or need to focus on personal stories.

From ancient times, meditators and contemplative practitioners have known that mental avoidance strategies, including rigid attachments, are connected to psychological suffering. As the Third Patriarch of Zen, Hsin Hsin Ming, wrote in the fifth or sixth century:

“The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. When love and hate are both absent, everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. If you wish to see the truth, then hold no opinions for or against anything.” (Kornfield, 1996, p. 148)

When we call a protector extreme, we’re talking about its rigid attachment to a survival strategy that was once developmentally appropriate and relationally useful but has now exceeded its expiration date. When protectors get stuck repeating strategies that now cost more than they offer in benefits, they almost invariably cause more of the problem they fear most. In IFS-PAT, we point this out gently, coaching with challenging questions (“Is this working?”), admiring and praising their hard-won early successes and good intentions, and offering the enticing alternative of Self-leadership.

Alexander Beiner (2023) wrote about his experience with psychedelics in a pioneering study of long-acting intravenous DMT at Imperial College London. Beiner was chosen for the study because of his extensive experience with psychedelics. While reflecting on his intentions prior to his journey, he acknowledged that he was hoping to have a transpersonal or metaphysical experience rather than a personal one. Beiner explained that he had many metaphysical and insightful experiences when he first started his exploration with psychedelics. However, in recent years, in the context of personal inner development work, his psychedelic experiences had become increasingly psychological, a trend he found tiresome. “I was looking for more elves, less introspection” (p. 28).

On his first journey, Beiner encountered a teaching presence. But the encounter didn’t move him deeper into his desired metaphysical experience. Rather, much to his frustration, the teacher enjoined him to pay attention to an unresolved personal obstacle. “It told me that by avoiding my pain around the situation I had cut myself off. I was in an emotional limbo. If I wanted novelty, it told me, this unresolved baggage was what was keeping me from it” (p. 34).

Similarly, in IFS-PAT, clients are often presented with the need to attend to avoided obstacles, including protectors who cling to the status quo for fear of what might come next. When we come across scared parts, we listen, validate their feelings, and invite them to try something new with the medicine and Self.

Opening to their experience often leads clients to banished stories and the opportunity to connect with an exile, as Beiner did. Spontaneous unburdenings seem to be more common in the psychedelic medicine space than in regular IFS sessions, but we can also use the standard unburdening process in the golden hours or during integration sessions.

Self-like parts (pp. 15–16) #

Case Example: Juan Speaks from His Self-Like Part

At this point, as you’ll see in the following excerpt, Juan responds to the therapist by speaking from a Self-like part, a common obstacle to accessing Self. Self-like parts are well-meaning managers who feel responsible for everything and can’t easily trust the idea that someone else (Self) exists and can help. These parts are common, and many therapists have therapist parts who would qualify (a topic we’ll explore in more detail in chapter 4). Here’s how to tell the difference between the Self and a Self-like part:

• Self-like parts have an agenda and lack curiosity. They want the target part (or some other part) to change. They may be subtly critical or intellectually distant.
• Although Self-like parts say all the right things, other parts turn away or ignore them.
• Therapy is stuck, but it’s unclear why.
• When turning their attention inside, the client sees the Self-like part standing in for them (“I see me”). When we are experiencing a scene from the perspective of Self, we are seeing through the eyes of Self rather than seeing Self as a character in the scene.

Juan’s Self-Like Part: But hold up. What do you mean by parts? I’m me. One person.

Therapist: You are certainly you. But if you’re like me and everyone else, you have parts. Mentally, you’re plural. For example, you’re talking about feeling sad and also feeling fed up with feeling sad. Right?

Juan’s Self-Like Part: Why call that parts? I don’t like feeling sad. I don’t want to feel sad. How does it help?

Therapist: You don’t have to call the sadness and the dislike of sadness “parts” the way I do. But if you’re willing to try talking with them, you’ll find they have interesting, useful things to tell you.

Juan’s Self-Like Part: But I don’t want to hear from other parts.

Therapist: Would it be okay if we could make it safe to hear from them?

The therapist is now clear that this is a Self-like part and starts making the case for cooperation.

Juan’s Self-Like Part: I’m trying to hold things together. I need to keep going. I don’t want to talk to the sadness.

The Self-like part describes its job.

Therapist: That makes a lot of sense—you are trying to hold things together. And it sounds like it’s getting really exhausting. What if the sadness were to agree not to take over? And if you’re worried at any point, you can just hit the pause button. This is important because Juan can help the sad part feel better. Then you wouldn’t have to work so hard to keep it out of mind.

Here, the therapist switches to using direct access and speaks directly to the Self-like manager so that Juan can listen and learn. The therapist validates the understandable aims of the protector and also acknowledges the costs (exhaustion). The aim is to persuade the part to try something new.

Juan’s Self-Like Part: What’s the point? It won’t work.

Self-like parts often have a hard time believing they shouldn’t be in charge.

Therapist: The sad part isn’t going away. We can help it feel better.

Juan’s Self-Like Part: Who’s we?

Therapist: Good question. I don’t mean you. I want you to meet the Juan who’s not a part. He can help. Can I show you?

Updating a Part (IFS Skills Training Manual, 2017, p. 48) #

CHARLEY: I hide food. It even seems crazy to me. My husband finds muffins and bagels in my bureau or my bedside table and he thinks it’s pretty strange but he just laughs.

THERAPIST: Does that part know you have plenty of food now?

CHARLEY: My mom put a chain around the fridge and padlocked it. We were always hungry. My youngest brother and I used to go around the back of Stop & Shop at night to get the fruit and vegetables they threw out.

THERAPIST: Does the part who stashes food for you now know that things have changed?

CHARLEY: No.

THERAPIST: Ask how old it thinks you are and don’t censor the answer, just say what comes up.

CHARLEY: Strangely, I hear 10 years old. That really surprises me.

THERAPIST: That’s when your dad left, right?

CHARLEY: Yes. We really had nothing for a while there. But it was late summer so we kids found berries in the woods and stole from the farmer next door. When school started my mom got hospitalized and we were sent to foster homes.

THERAPIST: Let’s give your food stashing part a chance to get to know the you who is not a part. Would he like a tour of your life today?

CHARLEY: He’s amazed. He had no idea.

THERAPIST: What do you say to him about food?

CHARLEY: We’re okay. That’s never going to happen again. I’m showing him how our refrigerator opens and closes and we have a shopping list so he can pick whatever he wants.

Charley’s food stashing protector still saw Charley as a starving 10-year-old boy, not an adult man with a husband and refrigerator of his own that is full of food.

As we see in this example, parts can be completely unaware of the present, in which case they need to be updated.