No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma & Restoring Wholeness with The Internal Family Systems Model

Written by: Richard C. Schwartz, PhD and published in 2021 by Sounds True

Internal Family Systems (IFS), a way of healing internal wounds through parts work, is talked about within therapeutic spaces and online as though it is a well-researched and validated modality, which is what brought me to the book to begin with. That specific widespread cultural framing is my largest concern with the book: it does not appear to suppose a responsibility to correct that narrative as well-researched or systematically explored it is not.

The author spends sentences here and there discussing spirituality, connecting it even to organized religions texts, and how IFS is a vision of his that he’s determined to bring to life, corroborated by his own experiences with people he’s worked with and those who he has trained has worked with. He waits until the end of the book, amidst sharing is own parts work and the younger versions of him that desire praise, to acknowledge the lack of validation through research (though he does mention a randomized control trial (RCT) with rheumatoid arthritis patients, but did not contextualize it as a proof of concept study nor that even though it is an individual psychotherapeutic modality, it was executed in the study as a group meeting which may confound the findings (as in the relationships with other group members may actually be the agent of change here an not IFS)). This sort of decontextualizing of the research, in the climate of 2025 with misinformation and disinformation abound, will continue to sow distrust as information is misrepresented by experts in service of marketing and selling. Saying that it’s “never been proven false” and that it operates as a “law of inner physics” is just the icing on the cake.

Additionally, what the author does not is discuss where parts work, described with different terminology, has been explored scientifically before: schema therapy. Schema therapy is conceptualized through early maladaptive schemas that start in young life and repeat throughout our lives, with schema modes being the coping styles used to avoid distress. This is similar to IFS in which parts function to protect from distress from inner wounds from childhood. However, there is never any mention of it. No learning lineage or citational genealogy, just IFS as a spiritual vision he has received to be spread by the author who closes the book framing critique or criticism as related to parts work he is still undergoing that is painful for him.

Beyond these two aspects that are irresponsible in my opinion, there is another point that I struggled with and that is ‘self’ - what the author conceptualizes as untouchable and innate and true that the ‘parts’ protect - cannot be accessed by children because they don’t have the ‘hardware’, described as brain capacity by the author. As a therapist who has worked a lot with children and young people, as well as conducted research with them, there is nothing from the research or my experience that leads me to an understanding that self requires brain capacity or age to have access to. Alongside that, one of the first things I was challenged to consider when conceptualizing my own research projects is ‘how could this be used with the worst of intentions’, and I couldn’t help but consider how people could frame brain capacity against people who are neurodivergent or disabled say some people can’t or won’t ever have access to their ‘self’. How dangerous that could be in the mental health industrial complex.

If you are looking for a spiritual healing practice, IFS could be worth investigating for yourself with discernment. I think the mass market appeal of IFS, without properly proclaiming or correcting it to be a spiritual practice, and instead a therapeutic modality wherein people could misinterpret it as well-research and validated is irresponsible at best and harmful at worst.

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The book can be purchased at an independent bookstore of your choosing through this affiliate link: https://bookshop.org/lists/read-in-2025-sydney-conroy-s-reads/ (which has the added bonus of supporting me so I have increased opportunity to write out more thoughts, musings, and considerations)!