Archetypal psychology and Internal Family Systems

Archetypal psychology and Internal Family Systems

From the Polytheistic Psyche to Parts Work

Introduction

James Hillman’s archetypal psychology and Richard Schwartz’s Internal Family Systems therapy appear, at first sight, to describe remarkably similar psychological worlds.

Both reject the idea that a healthy person possesses a single, uniform mind. Both treat internal multiplicity as normal rather than automatically pathological. Both encourage people to recognise distinct inner figures, voices, motives and emotional positions. Both resist attempts to eliminate troublesome psychological states merely because they are disruptive. Both ask what an apparently destructive inner presence may be trying to protect, express or accomplish.

A person may therefore say:

One part of me wants to leave.
Another part is terrified of being alone.
A third part condemns both of them.

Hillman would recognise a polycentric psyche populated by different persons and perspectives. IFS would recognise an internal system of parts whose conflicts can be investigated and reorganised.

The resemblance is real. Hillman came very close to establishing the philosophical basis of a parts-working approach.

He did not, however, create anything identical to IFS. The two approaches differ profoundly over the organisation and purpose of inner multiplicity.

IFS proposes that every person possesses a core Self, qualitatively distinct from their parts, capable of leading the internal system with calmness, curiosity, compassion and clarity. The official IFS model states that the Self “can and should lead” and that parts should ultimately respect its leadership and decision-making role. (IFS Institute)

Hillman regarded precisely this kind of central authority with suspicion. He believed that the ideal of one governing Self reproduced a monotheistic and hierarchical image of psychic life. Archetypal psychology instead sought to protect the psyche’s inherent plurality from being subordinated to a single centre, even one described as compassionate or enlightened. Hillman wrote that the soul’s multiplicity required an equally differentiated psychological framework rather than a system ruled by one privileged principle. (Wasabi Technologies)

The contrast can therefore be stated simply:

IFS is a psychology of many parts governed by one Self.

Hillman offers a psychology of many persons without a permanently sovereign centre.

This difference affects nearly everything else: the meaning of a part, the purpose of therapy, the interpretation of pathology, the role of childhood, the nature of healing and the degree to which inner figures should be changed.

Did Hillman invent parts work?

Hillman did not invent psychological multiplicity, nor did Richard Schwartz.

Western psychological theories had long divided the personality into distinct agencies, states or subpersonalities. Freud proposed id, Ego and superego. Jung described complexes as partially autonomous personalities. Roberto Assagioli’s psychosynthesis worked explicitly with subpersonalities. Transactional analysis distinguished Parent, Adult and Child ego states. Object-relations theories examined internalised relational figures, while Gestalt approaches sometimes placed conflicting aspects of the person into dialogue.

Schwartz himself acknowledges this earlier history. In his account of the development of IFS, he refers to Freud, object relations, transactional analysis, psychosynthesis and cognitive schemata as predecessors. His distinctive contribution was to apply family-systems thinking to the relationships among inner parts: tracking coalitions, conflicts, protective arrangements and repeated interactional sequences as though the internal world were a family system. (IFS Institute)

Hillman does not appear in Schwartz’s standard account of the model’s origins. There is therefore insufficient evidence to claim that IFS developed directly from Hillman’s archetypal psychology.

The resemblance is better understood as a convergence. Hillman and Schwartz reached the multiplicity of mind from different directions:

• Hillman arrived through Jung, mythology, Renaissance philosophy, phenomenology and poetic imagination.
• Schwartz arrived through structural and strategic family therapy and through listening to clients describe conflicting parts of themselves.

Hillman developed an account of what a multiple psyche is like.

Schwartz developed a method for working with how a multiple psyche organises itself.

Hillman’s work might therefore be described as an undeveloped form of parts psychology,but not yet parts therapy. He offered a theory of inner plurality without a systematic procedure for negotiating among the persons who populate it.

The comparison at a glance

Question	Hillman’s archetypal psychology	Internal Family Systems
Is the mind naturally multiple?	Yes. Psyche is inherently polycentric and personifying	Yes. The mind contains an indeterminate number of parts
What are the internal figures?	Images, persons, gods, complexes, moods and archetypal perspectives	Relatively discrete subpersonalities with feelings, beliefs, memories and intentions
Are difficult figures bad?	No. Pathology belongs to soul and may reveal neglected realities	No. Every part has a positive underlying intention
What causes disturbance?	Literalisation, ego domination, neglected images, cultural and worldly damage	Parts become burdened and forced into extreme protective roles
Is there a central Self?	No permanently sovereign centre; the Self risks becoming psychological monotheism	Yes. Self is distinct from parts and should lead the internal system
What is the goal?	differentiation, deepening, soul-making and a more imaginative relationship with pathology	harmony, unburdening, healing of exiles and Self-leadership
Are parts transformed?	The relationship with an image changes; transformation is not always the aim	Extreme parts release burdens and recover non-extreme roles
Is childhood central?	Sometimes, but Hillman resisted reducing psyche to childhood development	Frequently central, especially where young exiles carry trauma or shame
How are figures approached?	Description, personification, analogy, amplification and deliteralisation	Unblending, direct dialogue, witnessing, retrieval and unburdening
How is the outer world treated?	Psyche extends into culture, objects, landscapes and institutions	Inner and outer systems influence and parallel one another
What validates the method?	Interpretive richness, phenomenological precision and cultural insight	Clinical usefulness, systemic coherence and an emerging empirical literature

The table reveals why the two approaches can feel closely related while remaining theoretically incompatible at their centres.

Natural multiplicity

The strongest point of agreement concerns the normal multiplicity of mind.

Hillman’s polycentric psyche

Hillman rejected the assumption that one consistent identity stands behind every mood, thought and desire. Psychological life is populated by different figures and centres of initiative.

The person who appears at work may not value the world in the same way as the person who appears in intimacy. The dutiful figure that maintains order may conflict with an impulsive figure seeking escape. A frightened child, punitive judge, tired caretaker and ambitious hero may each organise experience differently.

These figures are not necessarily artificial masks covering a single authentic personality. They may express genuine psychological realities.

Hillman described the ego itself as one fantasy or perspective within psyche rather than the unquestioned owner of the whole personality. Archetypal psychology sought to release psychological diversity from the domination of a single-centred ego and to specify the different figures or styles of consciousness appearing through it. (Wasabi Technologies)

IFS multiplicity

IFS begins with a similar proposition: it is natural for the mind to be subdivided into an indeterminate number of parts. These parts may appear through thoughts, feelings, sensations, bodily locations, voices, images or impulses. They interact with one another and can become polarised into opposing positions. (IFS Institute)

A person may contain:

• a perfectionist part attempting to prevent criticism;
• an avoidant part preventing exposure to possible failure;
• an angry part defending a vulnerable part;
• a caretaking part seeking safety through usefulness;
• a despairing young part convinced that abandonment is inevitable.

IFS does not regard the existence of such parts as evidence that the personality has disintegrated. Multiplicity is considered normal; difficulty arises when parts become trapped in extreme and inflexible roles.

The shared correction

Both approaches challenge what might be called the monolithic-personality error:

Because one body and one legal identity exist, there must be one internally consistent psychological agent.

Ordinary language already contradicts this assumption:

“Part of me knows better.”

“I was not myself.”

“I hate that side of me.”

“Something in me refuses.”

“I argue with myself.”

Hillman and IFS both take such statements seriously rather than dismissing them as inaccurate figures of speech. The disagreement begins when they ask how these internal positions should be organised.

What is a “part”?

The apparent similarity between an IFS part and a Hillmanian personification can hide an important difference.

The IFS part

In IFS, a part is a relatively distinct subpersonality. It may possess:

• feelings;
• beliefs;
• intentions;
• bodily sensations;
• memories;
• an apparent age;
• a characteristic voice;
• expectations about other parts;
• strategies for controlling danger.

Parts are not regarded merely as temporary metaphors invented during therapy. The official model says that experiences affect parts but do not create them: parts are already present in actuality or potential. Harmful experience can force them into extreme roles and load them with “burdens” that are not intrinsic to their healthy nature. (IFS Institute)

This gives the IFS part a certain continuity. A perfectionist part encountered today may be recognised as the same part that tried to prevent humiliation during childhood.

The Hillmanian person

Hillman’s inner figures are more fluid and less systematically defined.

A mood can personify itself. A dream figure can appear as a centre of intention. A symptom may act like a persecutor, guardian, lover or judge. A god may provide the mythic background through which a whole style of consciousness becomes intelligible.

These presences do not necessarily form a fixed internal population.

The old woman in one dream need not be the same “part” as an elderly voice appearing years later. An angry warrior may emerge in one situation without becoming a permanent member of an internal family. A city, landscape or institution may also personify a psychological reality, meaning that not every figure belongs inside the individual.

Hillman was less interested in building an inventory of subpersonalities than in asking:

Who appears to be speaking now?

The answer specifies a present style of consciousness rather than necessarily identifying a stable internal entity.

Parts as nouns and parts as verbs

The difference might be expressed grammatically.

IFS tends to treat a part as a noun:

There is a protector that behaves this way.

Hillman more often treats personification as a verb:

This experience is presenting itself through the figure of a protector.

The distinction matters because nouns tend to stabilise identities. Once a figure is named “the protector,” later experiences may be interpreted through that existing category.

Hillman would ask whether the name continues to sharpen the image or has begun to imprison it.

Personification and direct dialogue

Both approaches use personification, but they do not use it for exactly the same purpose.

Hillman: personification as psychological precision

For Hillman, personification restores faces, voices and intentions to abstract psychological functions.

Instead of saying:

“I experience self-criticism,”

the person may say:

“A grey-haired examiner reads every sentence and shakes his head.”

The second description reveals far more:

• age;
• authority;
• institutional judgement;
• disappointment;
• written evaluation;
• repeated failure.

The examiner may then be explored through image, mythology, cultural history and the person’s associations. The aim is to make the experience more particular and less literal.

Personification also relativises the ego. The judgement is no longer identical with objective truth or with the whole person. It belongs to a particular figure.

IFS: personification as relationship

IFS goes further by establishing an active relationship with the part.

The person may be invited to ask:

• What does the examiner fear would happen if it stopped criticising?
• How old does it believe the person is?
• When did it take on this role?
• Which vulnerable part is it protecting?
• What does it need before it can step back?
• What role would it prefer if it no longer had to criticise?

The inner figure is treated less as an image to contemplate and more as a system member with whom communication and negotiation are possible.

The official IFS outline includes direct relationships with parts, dialogue between Self and parts, part-to-part communication, imagery, journaling, bodily localisation, retrieval of younger parts and negotiated pacing with protectors. (IFS Institute)

Hillman’s unfinished therapeutic possibility

Hillman clearly approached this territory. Once an internal figure has been personified, dialogue becomes an obvious next step.

Yet Hillman was reluctant to turn personification into a repeatable therapeutic sequence. He feared that procedural methods could instrumentalise images, making them serve the ego’s wish for improvement.

IFS accepts that risk and attempts to manage it through respectful, compassionate engagement. It does not merely witness the examiner; it asks whether the examiner can change its role.

Hillman protects the figure’s autonomy.

IFS recruits that autonomy into a process of healing.

The decisive disagreement: the Self

The largest difference between Hillman and IFS is not their understanding of parts. It is their understanding of what stands in relation to the parts.

The IFS Self

IFS proposes that every person possesses a core Self that is different in kind from the parts.

When sufficiently differentiated,or “unblended”,the Self is described through qualities including:

• calmness;
• curiosity;
• compassion;
• confidence;
• clarity;
• creativity;
• courage;
• connectedness.

The official model describes the Self as centred, secure, able to listen and capable of effective leadership. Therapy seeks to differentiate and elevate the Self so that parts contribute their abilities while respecting its ultimate decision-making authority. (IFS Institute)

Self is therefore not simply one more subpersonality. It occupies a privileged level in the system.

Parts may become fearful, controlling, enraged or overwhelmed. Self is understood as remaining fundamentally undamaged beneath these extreme states.

Hillman’s objection to the Self

Hillman regarded the privileging of a single Self as a return to psychological monotheism.

Jung had already distinguished the conscious ego from a greater Self. But Hillman argued that even the Jungian Self could become a supreme organising authority under which the psyche’s many figures were expected to unite.

From Hillman’s perspective, replacing the ego with an enlightened Self does not necessarily abolish hierarchy. It changes the identity of the ruler.

IFS makes this hierarchy explicit:

Self should lead.

Parts should respect Self’s decisions.

Hillman would probably ask:

• Why must one position always lead?
• Is calm curiosity appropriate to every psychological event?
• Can anger, grief or erotic possession know something that centred observation cannot?
• Does Self represent a universal psychic reality or a culturally preferred style of consciousness?
• Is “Self-energy” being discovered, or is a particular state being designated as superior?
• What happens when a person does not experience such a centre?

Hillman’s polytheistic psychology does not deny that calm, compassionate reflection is valuable. It denies that this perspective possesses a permanent divine right to govern every other psychological state.

IFS as benevolent monotheism

From a Hillmanian standpoint, IFS might be described as benevolent psychological monotheism.

It allows a large internal pantheon, welcomes every member and condemns none of them,but still installs one figure as sovereign.

The IFS internal system resembles a constitutional monarchy or a well-run family:

• all members deserve respect;
• each has legitimate needs and abilities;
• no member should be exiled;
• one mature centre nevertheless carries final responsibility.

Hillman’s model resembles a polytheistic city:

• authority changes according to situation;
• different gods govern different domains;
• conflict cannot be permanently resolved;
• no single centre can represent the totality;
• political life consists in negotiating irreducible differences.

This does not prove that Hillman is clinically preferable. A system without any coordinating centre may have difficulty acting, maintaining commitments or containing destructive impulses.

It does show that IFS resolves the problem of multiplicity by restoring the very unity Hillman deliberately refused.

“No bad parts” and Hillman’s pathologising

A second major point of convergence is the refusal to condemn disturbing psychological states.

IFS: positive intention

IFS proposes that there are no inherently bad parts.

A part may:

• attack the person;
• sabotage relationships;
• induce withdrawal;
• demand perfection;
• use alcohol;
• binge eat;
• become suicidal;
• inflict self-injury.

Yet the model assumes that beneath the destructive method lies a positive protective intention.

A firefighter may use an extreme behaviour to extinguish the pain of an activated exile. A manager may dominate daily life to prevent rejection or humiliation. The behaviour can be harmful while the part itself remains worthy of curiosity and care.

The official IFS model states that therapy does not seek to eliminate parts. It seeks to release them from extreme roles so their constructive qualities can re-emerge. (IFS Institute)

Hillman: pathology as an activity of soul

Hillman reaches a related but more radical conclusion through the concept of pathologising.

The psyche does not merely suffer accidental faults. It generates:

• disturbance;
• abnormality;
• fantasy;
• obsession;
• fragmentation;
• melancholy;
• fear;
• distortion.

These experiences may reveal limitations in the ego’s account of reality or in society’s definition of normality. A symptom should therefore not be treated merely as an alien defect requiring removal.

IFS asks:

What is this distressed part trying to protect?

Hillman asks:

What does the psyche’s production of this pathology allow us to see?

The questions overlap, but they are not identical.

Protection versus revelation

IFS commonly interprets extreme behaviour as protective. A harsh critic tries to prevent failure. An avoidant part tries to prevent rejection. A compulsive behaviour tries to prevent contact with intolerable pain.

Hillman does not assume that every symptom is best understood as protection.

A symptom may:

• expose the absurdity of a way of life;
• force descent into grief;
• break an inflated identity;
• introduce mortality;
• express a god or myth neglected by consciousness;
• reflect damage in the social or physical world.

Its function may not be to protect a young exile. It may be to disrupt, accuse, deepen or disorient.

IFS tends to make pathology intelligible through benevolent intention.

Hillman preserves a more disturbing possibility: psyche may produce affliction without translating it into a hidden programme of benevolent protection.

Is “no bad parts” too reassuring?

The IFS principle is therapeutically powerful because it reduces shame. A person no longer has to wage war against the part that drinks, withdraws or becomes enraged.

Hillman might nevertheless warn that the principle can become another premature interpretation.

Before saying that a destructive figure is protective, we should ask:

• Does it actually present itself as a protector?
• What precisely does it say and do?
• Is its supposed positive intention being inferred by the therapist?
• Does the interpretation soften something that should remain morally or psychologically disturbing?
• Can an inner position reproduce cruelty without being transformed immediately into hidden care?

Hillman would not necessarily call the figure bad. He would resist deciding too quickly that it is good underneath.

Burdens and images

IFS distinguishes the healthy nature of a part from the burden it carries.

A burden may consist of:

• shame;
• terror;
• guilt;
• beliefs such as “I am worthless”;
• responsibility for another person’s emotions;
• inherited or absorbed expectations;
• traumatic memories.

The burden does not belong to the part’s essence. Once released, the part can take on a less extreme role. A controller might become an organiser. A critic might become a discerning editor. An angry defender might become a boundary keeper. (IFS Institute)

Hillman would probably question this distinction between a part’s true nature and its acquired burden.

From an archetypal perspective, the critic’s severity, age, costume and atmosphere may be inseparable from the image through which it appears. Removing those characteristics to reveal a healthy internal role could amount to replacing the figure with one more acceptable to the therapeutic system.

Hillman might ask:

Who has decided what this part is “naturally” meant to be?

The question exposes a possible Essentialism in IFS. If a part’s extreme qualities do not truly belong to it, the therapist must possess some implicit standard for distinguishing its authentic nature from its acquired distortion.

IFS answers that parts themselves reveal their preferred non-extreme roles once they feel safe enough to release their burdens.

That response preserves some client authority. Yet the whole process remains organised by a theory in which calm cooperation and Self-leadership are considered natural, while extreme conflict is considered burdened.

Hillman’s psychology is less confident that psyche possesses an original harmonious arrangement waiting to be restored.

Development, childhood and the exile

IFS gives childhood injury a clearer and more systematic role than Hillman.

Exiles

In IFS, exiles are commonly young parts carrying experiences of:

• fear;
• shame;
• abandonment;
• helplessness;
• rejection;
• terror;
• grief.

Other parts attempt to prevent these experiences from overwhelming the person. Managers organise life to avoid triggers; firefighters respond urgently when exiled pain breaks through. (IFS Institute)

This generates a developmental model:

1. a vulnerable part experiences injury;
2. the part becomes exiled;
3. protectors adopt extreme roles;
4. the internal system becomes polarised;
5. therapy establishes sufficient Self-leadership;
6. protectors permit access to the exile;
7. the original experience is witnessed;
8. the exile and protectors release their burdens.

IFS did not arise solely from trauma theory, but trauma and childhood injury have become central to many applications of the model.

Hillman’s resistance to childhood reduction

Hillman was suspicious of psychotherapy’s tendency to interpret present experience primarily through childhood and family history.

A recurring judge may resemble a punitive parent. But it may also express:

• institutional surveillance;
• religious guilt;
• cultural ideals of productivity;
• an archetypal senex figure;
• economic insecurity;
• a genuine present danger;
• the person’s relation to age, law or mortality.

To explain the judge primarily as a protector formed around a wounded child risks returning psychology to the developmental reduction Hillman challenged.

Hillman does not deny that children are injured or that childhood experiences persist. His objection concerns explanatory monopoly.

A figure may be old without being derived from childhood.

A part may appear childlike without being a preserved child self.

A mythic pattern may organise personal memory rather than being caused by that memory.

The developmental gain of IFS

Hillman’s resistance also has a cost.

Without a sufficiently developed account of attachment, trauma and learning, archetypal psychology can treat historically produced suffering as timeless mythology. Abuse may become a descent narrative. Fear may become a god. A protective adaptation may be discussed as an archetypal figure without recognising the circumstances that made the adaptation necessary.

IFS supplies what Hillman often lacked:

• developmental history;
• relational sequence;
• protective function;
• temporal origin;
• a method for revisiting unresolved experiences.

Hillman protects the image from being reduced to childhood.

IFS protects childhood from disappearing into image.

Unblending and deliteralisation

One of the closest technical parallels exists between IFS unblending and Hillmanian deliteralisation.

IFS unblending

A part is blended when its perspective occupies the person so completely that it appears to be the whole self.

Instead of:

“A part of me believes I am worthless,”

the person experiences:

“I am worthless.”

IFS invites the part to step back enough for the person to relate to it from Self. The feeling is not suppressed; identification with it becomes less total.

Hillmanian deliteralisation

Hillman similarly seeks to loosen literal identification.

The statement:

“I am a failure”

may become:

“A merciless examiner presently sees me as a failed candidate.”

The second formulation reveals:

• a speaker;
• a standard;
• a judgement;
• a relational position;
• a particular psychological world.

The judgement remains emotionally real, but it is no longer the only conceivable truth.

The subtle difference

Unblending assumes that when the part steps back, Self becomes available.

Deliteralisation makes no such assumption.

After the examiner has been differentiated, another figure may appear:

• a frightened child;
• an angry rebel;
• a tired worker;
• an ambitious rival;
• an amused trickster.

Hillman does not require a calm, central observer to emerge. One perspective gives way to another, and psychological reflection consists in recognising their differences.

IFS says:

“I am not the part; I am the Self relating to the part.”

Hillman says:

“I am not only this perspective; psyche can imagine through many perspectives.”

The distinction is small in practice but enormous in theory.

Inner polarisation and psychological conflict

IFS’s strongest conceptual advance over Hillman is its systematic attention to relationships among parts.

Suppose a person repeatedly alternates between overwork and complete withdrawal.

IFS might identify:

• a manager convinced that relentless productivity prevents rejection;
• an exhausted firefighter that shuts the system down;
• an exile carrying fear of being worthless;
• a polarisation in which each protector intensifies in response to the other.

The more the manager demands work, the more urgently the firefighter seeks escape. The more the firefighter withdraws, the more terrified and controlling the manager becomes.

This creates a feedback loop.

Schwartz’s family-therapy background enabled him to map these sequences as systemic relationships rather than isolated symptoms. He describes IFS as applying structural, strategic, narrative and Bowenian family-therapy ideas to the ecology of inner subpersonalities. (IFS Institute)

Hillman would recognise the two figures and might amplify their mythic styles:

• the tireless ruler;
• the exhausted deserter;
• the demanding Saturn;
• the dissolving Dionysian response.

But he offers less guidance for examining their repeated interaction.

IFS asks:

What does each part do when the other acts?

That is a genuinely systemic question and an important development beyond personification alone.

Hillman provides differentiation of figures.

IFS provides a map of the relationships among them.

A worked comparison: the inner critic

Consider a person who says:

“Whenever I prepare to show anyone my work, an old schoolmaster appears in my mind. He taps a ruler against the desk and says, ‘You have mistaken enthusiasm for ability.’”

A Hillmanian inquiry

Hillman’s method would remain close to the image:

• How old is the schoolmaster?
• What is he wearing?
• Does the ruler threaten punishment or merely demand attention?
• What kind of desk is present?
• Is the person a child in the scene?
• What tone does he use?
• Does “enthusiasm” appear to offend him?
• What institution does he represent?
• Is he contemptuous, disappointed, tired or afraid?
• Which literary, historical or mythological figures resemble him?

The purpose is to particularise the figure.

Perhaps the schoolmaster belongs to a Saturnian world of hierarchy, time, limitation and severe judgement. That amplification might deepen the experience, but it should not replace the particular man with a generic “Saturn archetype.”

The work may end when the person can recognise:

“This is the old schoolmaster’s judgement, not an objective measurement of my ability.”

No attempt is necessarily made to heal, retire or retrain him.

An IFS inquiry

IFS would also locate and describe the schoolmaster, but would move towards dialogue:

• How does the person feel towards this part?
• Can any angry or frightened reactions step back?
• What does the schoolmaster fear would happen if he stopped?
• When did he first take on the role?
• Which part is he protecting?
• Does he believe the person is still a child?
• What evidence would help him trust Self?
• Would he permit contact with the vulnerable part he protects?
• What role would he prefer if criticism were no longer necessary?

The schoolmaster may reveal that he attacks first to prevent public humiliation. Behind him may be an exile carrying memories of ridicule.

After witnessing and unburdening the exile, the schoolmaster may become a careful editor rather than a persecutor.

What Hillman contributes

Hillman guards against converting the schoolmaster too rapidly into a standard “manager part.”

His age, rhetoric, historical atmosphere and attitude towards enthusiasm may contain meanings that the protection narrative misses.

Perhaps he is not simply preventing humiliation. Perhaps he embodies a whole educational culture that distrusts imagination. Perhaps he expresses the internalisation of class authority. Perhaps his ruler measures everything because he inhabits a world in which only the measurable is legitimate.

What IFS contributes

IFS asks what the schoolmaster is doing in relation to other parts and whether that relationship can change.

Hillman can produce a rich description of the inner drama without providing a method for reducing its power.

IFS can transform the relationship, although its standard categories may sometimes narrow the image.

integration versus differentiation

IFS and Hillman use multiplicity in pursuit of different psychological outcomes.

IFS harmony

IFS aims to achieve balance and harmony in the internal system.

Parts are not destroyed or merged into one identity. They remain differentiated, but they cease dominating or fighting one another. Self leads; protectors relax; exiles become integrated into present life; parts take on constructive roles. (IFS Institute)

This is a plural system organised around coherent cooperation.

Hillmanian differentiation

Hillman’s goal is not necessarily harmony.

Psychological development may mean becoming more precise about differences:

• this grief is not that grief;
• this anger belongs to Ares rather than to moral judgement;
• this desire does not agree with duty;
• this dream figure does not wish to join waking life;
• this symptom cannot be integrated without losing what it reveals.

Hillman fears that harmony may be achieved by suppressing the irreducible claims of incompatible perspectives.

Aphrodite and Athena do not merely misunderstand each other. They value different worlds.

Dionysus cannot simply become a recreational adviser within Apollo’s orderly administration.

Hades does not necessarily wish to join the daylight community.

Conflict as permanent

IFS tends to regard extreme polarisation as a burdened state that can be reorganised.

Hillman allows for the possibility that conflict is constitutive rather than curable.

Some tensions cannot be finally solved:

• freedom and security;
• individuality and belonging;
• desire and obligation;
• permanence and change;
• life and death;
• care for oneself and responsibility to others.

A therapy promising lasting internal harmony may disguise tragedy as dysfunction.

Conversely, a psychology celebrating permanent conflict can leave people trapped in avoidable suffering.

IFS asks how conflict can become cooperative.

Hillman asks what truth would be lost if conflict were resolved.

The internal family and the polytheistic pantheon

The governing metaphors deserve close attention.

Family

IFS imagines the internal world as a family.

This implies:

• relationships;
• attachment;
• protection;
• hierarchy;
• generational difference;
• conflict;
• caregiving;
• negotiated roles;
• the possibility of reconciliation.

The metaphor derives naturally from Schwartz’s family-therapy background.

It also carries cultural assumptions. Families are commonly expected to possess some form of responsible leadership, to protect vulnerable children and to restore damaged relationships.

Pantheon

Hillman imagines the psyche as a polytheistic pantheon, theatre or city.

This implies:

• distinct domains;
• competing values;
• temporary possession;
• ritual boundaries;
• irreducible difference;
• changing authority;
• political negotiation;
• no final reconciliation.

A family asks how its members can live together.

A pantheon asks which god governs which domain and what happens when one god intrudes upon another’s territory.

Different political theories of mind

IFS resembles a therapeutic democracy supervised by a wise executive.

Hillman resembles pluralist politics without a permanent sovereign.

In IFS, the central danger is that extreme parts take over the system.

In Hillman, the central danger is that one part, especially the heroic ego or monotheistic Self, which claims to represent the entire psyche.

Both models therefore oppose dictatorship, but they disagree about whether legitimate central government is possible.

Does IFS literalise the parts?

IFS practitioners differ in how literally they understand parts.

They may be treated as:

• metaphors;
• neural or emotional networks;
• learned self-states;
• dissociative organisations;
• subpersonalities;
• genuinely distinct inner minds;
• spiritual realities.

The official model sometimes uses ontologically strong language. It says parts are always in existence as potential or actuality and describes Self as a different level of entity. (IFS Institute)

Hillman would probably appreciate the refusal to reduce inner persons to “mere” metaphors. His gods and figures also possess a degree of autonomy.

Yet he repeatedly warned against literalisation.

A figure must remain simultaneously:

• real as psychological experience;
• metaphorical in its mode of presentation;
• uncertain in its ultimate ontology.

IFS can become literalising when every emotional shift is assumed to reveal a distinct part or when the therapist treats imagined dialogue as a factual recovery of hidden history.

A client may say:

“The young part showed me that something happened when I was four.”

This can mean several things:

• an image arose during therapy;
• a present emotion was represented by a four-year-old figure;
• a memory was recalled;
• a hypothesis about the past was generated;
• a symbolic narrative formed.

Those possibilities are not evidentially equivalent.

The presence of a vivid young part cannot by itself establish that a specific forgotten event occurred.

Hillman’s commitment to ambiguity offers an important safeguard:

Treat the image as psychologically real without assuming that it is a literal historical record.

The problem of therapeutic authority

Both approaches are intended to reduce domination by the therapist, but both can create new forms of interpretive authority.

The Hillmanian authority

The archetypal therapist may possess extensive knowledge of:

• mythology;
• philosophy;
• religion;
• literature;
• alchemy;
• symbolism.

This knowledge can become a power differential. The practitioner may imply that they recognise the god or myth hidden within an experience better than the person experiencing it.

The IFS authority

IFS explicitly says that clients provide the material and that the therapist should regard the client’s Self as a co-therapist. (IFS Institute)

Nevertheless, the model can become self-confirming.

A client who questions the model may be told:

“That is your sceptical part.”

A client who does not feel compassion may be told that another part is blended.

A client who cannot locate Self may be told that protective parts are blocking access.

Every objection can therefore be reinterpreted as further evidence for the theory.

This is epistemically dangerous. A model becomes difficult to challenge when disagreement is absorbed as a symptom of the very process being questioned.

A responsible response is:

“Your scepticism may be a part-like experience, but it may also be a reasonable evaluation of the therapy, the therapist or the model. It deserves consideration on its own terms.”

Recent criticism of IFS has focused on the limited evidence base, the possibility of exaggerated claims and the need for research on contraindications and harms. The Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy published a 2024 critique arguing that the popularity and promotional claims surrounding IFS had outpaced its empirical support. (Psychotherapy Society)

Hillman’s perspectivism provides a useful correction: no therapeutic model should imagine that it occupies the only valid perspective.

The world outside the parts

Hillman is considerably stronger than IFS in resisting the relocation of suffering into the individual.

IFS and external systems

IFS does recognise that internal and external systems affect one another. Its official outline states that changes in the internal system affect external relationships and vice versa, and that therapists should assess external contexts and constraints. (IFS Institute)

A controlling manager may reflect an actual controlling workplace. A frightened exile may remain unsafe within an abusive relationship. Internal work cannot succeed if external danger continues.

Hillman and the soul of the world

Hillman goes further.

He questions the assumption that a distressing figure must belong primarily inside the person.

The persecutor may be:

• a manager;
• a benefits system;
• a school;
• a psychiatric institution;
• a family authority;
• an economic arrangement;
• a surveillance technology.

A person’s inner critic may not merely project judgement onto the world. They may inhabit a world organised through continual assessment.

A person’s exhausted part may not simply carry an old burden. The person may actually be overworked.

A fearful protector may be responding accurately to discrimination or danger.

Hillman’s anima mundi relocates psyche in objects, places, systems, cities and landscapes. Psychological work must therefore ask not only:

“Which part of you responds this way?”

but:

“What is happening in the world to which this response may be appropriate?”

The political risk of IFS

IFS becomes politically conservative when every conflict is translated into an internal family problem.

A person may become calmer and more Self-led while remaining exposed to:

• poverty;
• exploitation;
• coercion;
• institutional discrimination;
• environmental destruction;
• inadequate housing;
• abusive treatment.

Parts work can help the person respond, but it must not redefine adaptation as justice.

Hillman’s central warning remains relevant:

The world should not be permitted to damage people and then classify their reactions as merely internal burdens.

Spiritual and metaphysical differences

Both approaches occupy an ambiguous territory between psychological metaphor and spiritual claim.

Hillman’s gods are neither merely invented labels nor necessarily literal supernatural beings. He describes them as metaphors for modes of experience and as numinous borderline persons. Archetypal psychology imagines the gods but does not require religious worship or doctrinal belief. (Wasabi Technologies)

IFS similarly varies between secular and spiritual interpretations.

Self may be described as:

• metacognitive awareness;
• compassionate consciousness;
• a regulatory capacity;
• an innate healing intelligence;
• spiritual essence.

The clinical model does not require one settled metaphysical interpretation. Problems arise when metaphorical usefulness is presented as proof of ontology.

The fact that a person benefits from imagining a compassionate Self does not demonstrate that an undamaged metaphysical essence exists.

Likewise, the fact that an archetypal image feels autonomous does not demonstrate that an external god has entered the person.

Both methods are strongest when they preserve the distinction between:

• experience;
• metaphor;
• psychological model;
• historical claim;
• metaphysical belief.

What Hillman could contribute to IFS

Hillman’s work can provide several important corrections to parts therapy.

Greater attention to the image

IFS may identify a figure rapidly as a manager, firefighter or exile.

Hillman would delay classification and ask what makes this particular figure distinct.

A blacksmith, schoolteacher and prison guard may all behave protectively, but they inhabit different psychological worlds.

Resistance to functional reduction

IFS commonly asks what a part is protecting.

Hillman asks what the figure reveals, evokes and demands.

Not every psychological presence should be reduced to its function within a system.

Suspicion of the central Self

Hillman reminds IFS that Self is also an image carrying philosophical, religious and political assumptions.

Calm compassion is valuable, but it should not automatically be treated as the ontological centre of every person.

Recognition of irreducible conflict

Some tensions cannot be unburdened into harmony.

Therapy may need to help a person live ethically within a tragic conflict rather than promise its resolution.

Cultural and mythological depth

IFS parts can become generic roles.

Hillman returns them to histories, traditions, places, stories and collective images.

19.6 Attention to the world

The figure may express institutional or environmental realities rather than only internal family dynamics.

19.7 Protection against literalised memory

An image of a young part may be psychologically meaningful without constituting documentary evidence about childhood.

What IFS could contribute to Hillman

IFS can also be understood as completing several practical possibilities that Hillman left underdeveloped.

A repeatable clinical structure

Hillman offers an attitude of attention but few procedural steps.

IFS provides a teachable sequence for identifying, approaching and negotiating with parts.

Relational mapping

IFS studies how internal figures react to one another rather than interpreting each separately.

Respect for protective adaptation

IFS asks why a destructive strategy originally became necessary.

This can reduce shame and restore historical context.

20.4 Consent and pacing

The official method recommends approaching protective parts first, respecting their fears, negotiating pace and avoiding forced access to vulnerable material. (IFS Institute)

20.5 A clearer developmental account

IFS relates present patterns to attachment, trauma, family dynamics and learning.

A method of change

Hillman can deepen a person’s relationship with an image without clarifying how disabling repetition might alter.

IFS explicitly seeks changes in internal roles and relationships.

Greater accessibility

Hillman’s writing is philosophically rich but often difficult.

IFS translates multiplicity into a language that many clients can use immediately.

Could a Hillman-informed parts practice be developed?

A synthesis is possible, but it would not be orthodox Hillman or orthodox IFS.

It might be called polycentric parts work.

Such an approach would begin with several principles.

The psyche is naturally multiple

Conflicting inner positions are not automatically evidence of illness or defective integration.

A part is a provisional description

“Part” names a distinguishable psychological position without deciding whether it is a metaphor, self-state, neural organisation, archetypal person or stable subpersonality.

No figure is reduced immediately to a category

Manager, firefighter and exile may be useful descriptions, but the precise image comes first.

No part is condemned

Harmful behaviour can be opposed without declaring the figure itself evil.

Positive intention is investigated, not assumed

Some figures protect. Others accuse, mourn, disrupt, seduce, witness or reveal.

No central Self is required as metaphysical fact

A compassionate observing position may be cultivated without being declared the person’s one true essence.

Leadership can be contextual

Different capacities may lead in different circumstances:

• courage during danger;
• grief during mourning;
• caution during uncertainty;
• anger during boundary violation;
• reason during technical decision;
• play during creative exploration.

History and myth are held together

A figure may express developmental injury and archetypal pattern simultaneously.

Inner and outer systems are assessed

The person’s environment may be reinforcing or accurately represented by the internal drama.

Images are not treated as recovered facts

Imaginal truth and historical evidence must remain distinct.

Change is permitted but not forced

Some figures may transform. Others may need recognition, limitation or continued negotiation.

This synthesis would retain IFS’s compassion and relational method while abandoning its strongest claim that one undamaged Self should naturally govern the system.

The evidence base of IFS

Hillman’s archetypal psychology and IFS make different kinds of claims, but neither should be exempt from critical evaluation.

Hillman’s work is principally philosophical, interpretive and phenomenological. It does not offer a treatment protocol readily testable through controlled clinical trials.

IFS makes more direct therapeutic claims and must therefore be assessed through outcome research.

A 2025 scoping review identified 27 peer-reviewed studies: 17 case studies, five quasi-experimental studies, three qualitative studies and two randomised controlled trials. The review concluded that IFS appeared promising, especially for chronic pain, depression, post-traumatic stress and the cultivation of self-compassion, while emphasising that the research remained limited in scope. (Scribd)

One small randomised pilot study assigned 37 female university students with depressive symptoms to IFS or treatment as usual using CBT or interpersonal therapy. Depression declined in both groups, with no significant difference in the rate or magnitude of improvement. The authors regarded this as preliminary evidence rather than proof of superiority. (PubMed)

In January 2026, a further randomised controlled trial evaluated the online group-based PARTS programme, derived from IFS, in 60 people with PTSD. Participants were assigned to PARTS or an active nature-based stress-reduction comparison. Reports from the research centre state that the IFS-derived programme produced significantly greater reductions in PTSD symptoms, but the trial remains an early study of a specific group programme rather than confirmation of every theoretical claim or every use of IFS. (PubMed).

The evidence is emerging and promising but still comparatively small. Larger independent trials, replication, comparisons with established treatments, mechanism studies and systematic monitoring of adverse effects remain necessary.

Clinical benefit would not by itself prove that parts and Self exist exactly as IFS theory describes them. A therapy can help because of compassion, exposure, decentring, emotional processing, therapeutic alliance, imagery or narrative reorganisation even if its explanatory ontology is incomplete.

Treatment outcome and theoretical truth are different questions.

A final evaluation

Hillman stood remarkably close to parts work.

He had already proposed that:

• psyche is multiple;
• internal figures possess relative autonomy;
• the ego is not the whole person;
• troublesome figures should be approached rather than eliminated;
• personification creates psychological distance;
• different inner persons establish different worlds;
• pathology may contain intelligence or meaning;
• psychological health does not require uniformity.

What he did not develop was:

• a systematic way of identifying internal relationships;
• a theory of protector–exile organisation;
• a procedure for dialogue and negotiation;
• a method of unblending;
• a developmental account of burden formation;
• an explicit process of therapeutic transformation.

IFS supplies all of these.

But it supplies them by returning to an organising Self whose leadership Hillman would almost certainly regard as a new form of psychic monotheism.

The relationship is therefore not one of primitive precursor and completed successor.

Hillman is not simply an incomplete IFS theorist.

IFS is not simply archetypal psychology made practical.

Each identifies the other’s principal weakness.

Hillman shows that a parts model can become too orderly, developmental, functional and centred.

IFS shows that a psychology of multiplicity can become too descriptive, unstructured and uncertain about how suffering changes.

Hillman asks us to respect the internal persons without forcing them into harmony.

IFS asks us to believe that respectful internal relationships can make harmony possible.

Their most useful combination would not choose one proposition absolutely. It would hold open a more demanding question:

Can psychological parts be brought into cooperative relationship without reducing their difference, subordinating them to a supposedly universal centre or denying that some conflicts belong as much to the world as to the individual?

That question represents the point at which Hillman’s archetypal psychology might become a genuine parts-working practice,and at which parts work might become more psychologically plural than IFS currently allows.

Reading guide

James Hillman

Archetypal Psychology: A Brief Account

An accessible PDF contains Hillman’s concise treatment of psychic multiplicity, personification, polytheism, the ego, the gods and his criticism of single-centred models of consciousness. It is the most useful primary source for comparing Hillman with IFS. (Wasabi Technologies)

“An Inquiry into Image”

This freely accessible essay develops Hillman’s distinction between general symbolic categories and particular psychological images. It is especially relevant to the risk that IFS categories such as manager, firefighter and exile could replace the exact figure presented by the person.

Re-Visioning Psychology

Hillman’s major theoretical work develops personifying, pathologising, psychologising and soul-making. It provides the wider philosophical basis for his plural model of psyche.

The Dream and the Underworld

This work demonstrates Hillman’s reluctance to make every inner figure serve healing, integration or waking development.

Internal Family Systems

“The Internal Family Systems Model Outline”

The IFS Institute’s freely accessible outline provides the clearest concise statement of the model’s assumptions, goals, categories of parts, concept of Self, clinical techniques and relationship between inner and outer systems. (IFS Institute)

Richard Schwartz, “Evolution of the Internal Family Systems Model”

This freely accessible account explains how Schwartz moved from structural family therapy to the idea of an internal family. It also identifies earlier parts-oriented traditions and explains IFS’s distinctive systemic contribution. (IFS Institute)

Brenner, Schwartz and Becker, “Development of the Internal Family Systems Model”

This peer-reviewed historical paper examines the development of IFS and its debts to family-systems therapies. The abstract and bibliographical record are accessible through PubMed. (PubMed)

Schwartz and Sweezy, Internal Family Systems Therapy

This is the principal professional account of IFS theory and clinical practice. The second edition covers parts, Self, polarisation, unblending, protectors, exiles and therapeutic procedure.

Research and criticism

Buys, “Exploring the Evidence for Internal Family Systems Therapy”

This 2025 scoping review identified 27 peer-reviewed studies and concluded that IFS was promising but supported by a still-limited body of research. (Scribd)

Haddock et al., depression pilot study

This randomised pilot study compared IFS with treatment as usual among 37 female university students. Both groups improved without a significant between-group difference. The complete abstract is freely accessible through PubMed. (PubMed)

Joss et al., PARTS trial

Published online in January 2026, this randomised trial compared an IFS-derived online group intervention with an active control in 60 participants with PTSD. (PubMed)

Brownstone, Hunsicker and Greene, “Internal Family Systems: Exploring Its Problematic Popularity”

This freely accessible 2024 article questions whether the clinical evidence justifies the breadth of claims made for IFS and calls for more attention to limitations and harms. (Psychotherapy Society)

Formal bibliography

Primary Hillman sources

Hillman, J. (1975) Re-Visioning Psychology. New York: Harper & Row.

Hillman, J. (1977) ‘An inquiry into image’, Spring: An Annual of Archetypal Psychology and Jungian Thought, pp. 62–88.

Hillman, J. (1979) The Dream and the Underworld. New York: Harper & Row.

Hillman, J. (1983) Archetypal Psychology: A Brief Account. Dallas, TX: Spring Publications.

Hillman, J. (1998) Healing Fiction. Woodstock, CT: Spring Publications. Originally published 1983.

Hillman, J. (2004) Archetypal Psychology. 3rd revised edn. Uniform Edition of the Writings of James Hillman, Vol. 1. Putnam, CT: Spring Publications.

Primary IFS sources

Schwartz, R.C. (1995) Internal Family Systems Therapy. New York: Guilford Press.

Schwartz, R.C. (2001) Introduction to the Internal Family Systems Model. Oak Park, IL: Trailheads Publications.

Schwartz, R.C. (2021) No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model. Boulder, CO: Sounds True.

Schwartz, R.C. and Sweezy, M. (2020) Internal Family Systems Therapy. 2nd edn. New York: Guilford Press.

Historical and theoretical sources

Brenner, E.G., Schwartz, R.C. and Becker, C. (2023) ‘Development of the Internal Family Systems model: Honoring contributions from family systems therapies’, Family Process, 62(4), pp. 1290–1306.

Deacon, S.A. and Davis, J.C. (2001) ‘Internal Family Systems theory: A technical integration’, Journal of Systemic Therapies, 20(1), pp. 45–58.

Drob, S.L. (1999) ‘The depth of the soul: James Hillman’s vision of psychology’, Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 39(3), pp. 56–72.

Samuels, A. (1985) Jung and the Post-Jungians. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Slater, G. (2012) ‘Between Jung and Hillman’, Quadrant: The Journal of the C.G. Jung Foundation, 42(2), pp. 14–37.

Outcome research and critical assessment

Brownstone, L.M., Hunsicker, M.J. and Greene, A.K. (2024) ‘Internal Family Systems: Exploring its problematic popularity’, Psychotherapy Bulletin, 59(3), pp. 38–42.

Buys, M.E. (2025) ‘Exploring the evidence for Internal Family Systems therapy: A scoping review of current research, gaps, and future directions’, Clinical Psychologist, 29(3), pp. 241–260.

Haddock, S.A., Weiler, L.M., Trump, L.J. and Henry, K.L. (2017) ‘The efficacy of Internal Family Systems therapy in the treatment of depression among female college students: A pilot study’, Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 43(1), pp. 131–144.

Hodgdon, H.B., Anderson, F.G., Southwell, E., Hrubec, W. and Schwartz, R.C. (2022) ‘Internal Family Systems therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder among survivors of multiple childhood trauma: A pilot effectiveness study’, Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma, 31(1), pp. 22–43.

Joss, D. et al. (2026) ‘A randomized controlled trial of an online group-based Internal Family Systems treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder: The Program for Alleviating and Resolving Trauma and Stress study’, Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy. Advance online publication.

Shadick, N.A. et al. (2013) ‘A randomized controlled trial of an Internal Family Systems-based psychotherapeutic intervention on outcomes in rheumatoid arthritis: A proof-of-concept study’, Journal of Rheumatology, 40(11), pp. 1831–1841.