There’s a growing convergence of opinion from a range of disciplines challenging the traditional idea of the unitary personality in favor of the view that each of us actually contains a multiplicity of selves.
In this session recording, two noted clinical practitioners will focus on how what’s often identified as pathology reflects childhood defensive adaptations of some of these selves.
Together, they’ll demonstrate how the perspective of inner multiplicity can be used to elicit therapeutic healing, self-awareness, and growth.
Who should takes the course
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychiatrists
- Addiction Counselors
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Physicians
- Other Helping Professionals
Learning Objectives:
- Evaluate how to help clients avoid overidentifying with a single part of themselves, and empower them to move beyond diagnostic labels.
- Use the enhanced ability to perceive the workings of one’s mind to achieve greater personal integration.
- Analyze the distinction between the Self and one’s parts and how it can help clients develop a capacity for Self-leadership and self-regulation.
- Analyze the practical similarities and differences between two widely influential models of therapy, IFS, and Compassionate Inquiry.
Course Modules / Outline
Introduction
- Bringing Together Internal Family Systems & Compassionate Inquiry
- The Development of IFS
IFS “Therapy Session” for Gabor Maté
- Feeling the Jealousy & Resistance
- Being with the Jealous Part
- Curiosity
- Moving from Hurt to a Good Place
- Letting Go of Old Feelings
Compassionate Inquiry “Therapy Session” for Richard Schwartz
- Shyness & Fear of Public Speaking
- In Touch with Feelings
- Staying Focused on Feelings
Comparing Approaches
- “Veronica” Compassionate Inquiry Therapy Demonstration with Gabor Maté
- “Kita” IFS Therapy Demonstration with Richard Schwartz
Questions from Audience
Why Take This Course?
We’ve been taught to see ourselves as a single, unified identity. But what if that idea is limiting—or even harmful?
In The Myth of the Unitary Self, two of the world’s most respected voices in trauma and psychotherapy—Dr. Gabor Maté and Dr. Richard Schwartz—invite you to explore a radical truth:
You are not one thing. You are many inner parts, each with a story, a role, and a need to be heard.
This course offers more than just theory. Through live, unscripted therapy demonstrations, you’ll witness how two powerful models—Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Compassionate Inquiry—can reveal the hidden wounds behind anxiety, shame, jealousy, and resistance… and unlock deep healing.
You’ll Learn How To:
Understand and work with your inner parts, not against them
Identify protective patterns rooted in early trauma or emotional survival
Differentiate your true Self from the roles you’ve internalized
Let go of shame and overidentification with pain-based identities
Gain clinical insight and emotional clarity from two master therapists in real-time dialogue
Meet the Course Expert:
Gabor Maté, MD (pronounced GAH-bor MAH-tay) is a retired physician who, after 20 years of family practice and palliative care experience, worked for over a decade in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side with patients challenged by drug addiction and mental illness. The bestselling author of five books published in nearly 40 languages, including the award-winning In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction, Gabor is an internationally renowned speaker highly sought after for his expertise on addiction, trauma, childhood development, and the relationship of stress and illness. For his groundbreaking medical work and writing he has been awarded the Order of Canada, his country’s highest civilian distinction, and the Civic Merit Award from his hometown, Vancouver. His most recent book, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture is a New York Times and international bestseller.
Richard Schwartz began his career as a family therapist and an academic at the University of Illinois at Chicago. There he discovered that family therapy alone did not achieve full symptom relief, and in asking patients why, he learned that they were plagued by what they called “parts.” These patients became his teachers as they described how their parts formed networks of inner relationship that resembled the families he had been working with. He also found that as they focused on and, thereby, separated from their parts, they would shift into a state characterized by qualities like curiosity, calm, confidence and compassion. He called that inner essence the Self and was amazed to find it even in severely diagnosed and traumatized patients. From these explorations, the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model was born in the early 1980s.
IFS is now evidence-based and has become a widely-used form of psychotherapy, particularly with trauma. It provides a non-pathologizing, optimistic, and empowering perspective and a practical and effective set of techniques for working with individuals, couples, families, and more recently, corporations and classrooms.
In 2013, Schwartz left the Chicago area and now lives in Brookline, MA where he is on the faculty of the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.
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