Parts Work: An Illustrated Guide to Your Inner Life by Tom Holmes (2011) Paperback

This book brings Internal Family Systems to life in an exceptionally clear and captivating way. Between the evocative and fun illustrations, the living room metaphor, and the integration with Buddhism, it presents a wonderfully creative vision of the way our parts dance with each other and with us in our minds. It is highly recommended for anyone wanting to learn about the internal family systems model or about their inner lives.

A LOT of stuff to unpack here. Read this because this is the first new psychological technique I have heard of since my freshman year of college. I wanted a good introduction, and this book does an excellent job, and it contains a number of thoughtful exercises.

Now we have the heavy handed task of figuring out what this all means. Now, I will preface that I am not convinced by this, but I also must forewarn you that I am a freudian, and so I will certainly be lenient on the rigorous research arguments against this.

Generally, I find that positive psychology's usefulness, from discipline to discipline, is a negative correlation between accessibility and general usefulness. The more accessible the psychology, the less useful the show more corresponding material is. My junior year I took a course in positive psychology, and at the end of the day the most useful advice was that I should be meditating more, and generally that is the path that much of positive psychology falls into, and I do not blame it because of this. Its a relatively new study, we have not had the time to make advancements, do research, and get to the bottom of things. Internal Family Systems (IFS) work does not ever tout the terminology of positive psychology, but based on my previous knowledge this is fundamentally a positive psychology book.

I am just not sold on this. I think it has its benefits, and the testimony is certainly believable, but I do not know how much this admittance of "parts" is truly useful compared to just basic behaviorist theories. There is a fog of "new age-ness" that I cannot get past, I think it is more me than the book though. Just this level of imagination in therapeutic work does not seem like it begats the issue, more the issue rises up to create the imagery. Especially with the final part on spiritual revelation, I am not shocked to see the levels of Christian imagery appear more vivid to more Christian clientele. And none of this is even bad! I mean, if you use IFS to reach revelations about yourself and your habits that change your life, that is good. It is good when Freud teaches me to handle shame and dreams. It is good if astrology genuinely changed your life. It is good if CBT fundamentally changed your mental illness. I think this shows that it is more about taste than research to me, which is fine. This is not my taste, but I will try the exercises sometime over the next month and amend this review with my results. HOLD ME TO IT !!!! show less