Robert Falconer is an IFS therapist who recently wrote a controversial book called the Others Within US. Internal Family Systems (IFS) is the hot new therapy modality from RichardSchwartz, who wrote a forward to the book.
IFS posits that our Self is made up of many parts, like inner children, each trying there best to use old behavior patterns to protect us. These need to have their story witnessed, experience love and acceptance, and be relived of the burden their problematic behavior is trying to help with.
Falconer posits another phenomena - “unattached burdens”. These look like parts of the person’s psyche, but often have nothing to do with them, and can appear, well, demonic.
I’m trained in a few modalities. I specialize in the Ideal Parent Figure Protocol, but I’ve trained also in IFS, as well as Advanced Ego State Therapy, sometimes called “Resource therapy” created by Gordon Emmerson.
In fact, I believe I’m only one of two people in the USA trained in Resource Therapy. My bio HERE
Resource Therapy posits a number of objects, one of which seems similar to the “Unattached Burden.” Dr. Emmerson calls it an OPI. These are very rare, and still being studied.
For Emmerson, there are two types of Introjects, internalized impressions (usually of parents/family) held by Resource States, and the much more rare, Other Personalized Introjects (OPIs).
Dr. Emmerson writes in Learn Resource Therapy Clinical Qualification Student Training Manual:
"When spoken with directly they will claim not to be a part of the personality, and unlike Resource States they can permanently leave the personality.vWhile their etiology is unclear, I find when they are negotiated with to leave they can do so without any further indication of being present. Clients show improvement and often say they feel physically lighter.”
On identifying these objects he writes,
“When an OPI is asked, "Are you part of this person?" it will respond with
something like, "No, I'm not part of her." OPIs speak about the client in the third person, "She will never amount to anything."
While some Resource States will speak about other Resource States in the third person, "I don't like that part,"there is normally an acknowledgment that the two Resource States are different parts of the same person. When talking with an OPI there is an impression that you are almost talking with someone else, and not the client.
Resource Therapy OPIs will often say things like, "I know I shouldn't be here.” “You can't make me leave,” or “I am afraid to go." Sometimes OPIs will even claim to be another person who has died.
When an OPI is negotiated to leave, the client will often report that the very
critical voice that may have been heard for years is no longer heard.”
I’ve trained with him and he has an entire modality to deal with these objects.
My own opinion?
I think “Unattached Burdens” have a venerable presence in therapy, although different in kind, some perhaps being “protectors” and “introjects” and the like, but looking closely I can see some possible "UB’s.
Dr. Emmerson writes in Learn Resource Therapy Clinical Qualification Student Training Manual:
"When spoken with directly they will claim not to be a part of the personality, and unlike Resource States they can permanently leave the personality.vWhile their etiology is unclear, I find when they are negotiated with to leave they can do so without any further indication of being present. Clients show improvement and often say they feel physically lighter.”
On identifying these objects he writes,
“When an OPI is asked, "Are you part of this person?" it will respond with
something like, "No, I'm not part of her." OPIs speak about the client in the third person, "She will never amount to anything."
While some Resource States will speak about other Resource States in the third person, "I don't like that part,"there is normally an acknowledgment that the two Resource States are different parts of the same person. When talking with an OPI there is an impression that you are almost talking with someone else, and not the client.
Resource Therapy OPIs will often say things like, "I know I shouldn't be here.” “You can't make me leave,” or “I am afraid to go." Sometimes OPIs will even claim to be another person who has died.
When an OPI is negotiated to leave, the client will often report that the very
critical voice that may have been heard for years is no longer heard.”
I’ve trained with him and he has an entire modality to deal with these objects.
My own opinion?
I think “Unattached Burdens” have a venerable presence in therapy, although different in kind, some perhaps being “protectors” and “introjects” and the like, but looking closely I can see some possible "UB’s.
Think of those figures or forces in readily recognized by Freud as “daimonic” - the death instinct and ‘severe super ego.'
Or what Fairbairn described as an “Internal Saboteur” and Guntrip as the “anti-libidinal ego” attacking the “libidinal ego.”
Recall Jung’s “negative Animus” or what Jeffrey Seinfeld simply calls the “Bad Object.”
At least a handful of theses may be the equivalent of “Unattached Burdens."
They pop up plenty of places:
Sandor Ferencz’s paper “Confusion of Tongues” and the demonic mature inner “intelligences” occupying disassociated children…
Donald Sandner and John Beebe - distinguishing between the ego-aligned complexes (those where the projected contents have been a part of the ego and been repressed) vs. the ego-projected complexes, i.e., those that are usually experienced *not as parts of the ego’s identity but rather as projected qualities in other people.
They go on about how possession of the ego by the “ego- projected” complexes leads to archetypal affects and primitive forms of a projected “daemonic trickster.”
Edmund Bcrgler’s “Daimonion," a malignant spirit, internal angatonist with uncanny power.
Heck, in the early work of Charcot and Janet, daimons were named, flattered, and their cooperation enlisted in the treatment ! Janet was fond of tricking the inner daimons. His patient Achilles “possessed” by the Devil until Janet tricked him into cooperating with the treatment and then actually taking over the actual hypnosis of the patient from within!
The respected Jungian Donald Kalsched, whom I've spoken to, in his Trauma & the Soul, has plenty of stories that sound a lot like Unattached Burdens to me….
Dr Colin Ross, former president of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation from 1993 to 1994, actually performed a demonic exorcism, because he is so well respected he has also been able to publish peer reviewed articles on exorcism in therapy.
The famous Harvard-educated psychiatrist Dr. Scott Peck, after confronting several apparently possessed patients, eventually decided to add exorcism to the rest of his practice, with good results.
The belief in something like “non-egoic parts” needing something like "exorcism" is becoming more common.
I’ve personally spoken to “big names” who publicly would never say so, but privately believe in these objects.
Plus it's no secret more therapy modalities are incorporating spirituality and even resources from Shamanism, such as Lisa Schwartz’s Comprehensive Resource Model.
So….what do I think they are?
I haven’t the slightest clue.
But I am heartened that we are taking non-Western traditions and cultural experiences seriously with an open mind.
Ok, IF there were non-egoic parts….how?
Well, I love philosophy, but I take its conclusions pretty lightly.
At least a handful of theses may be the equivalent of “Unattached Burdens."
They pop up plenty of places:
Sandor Ferencz’s paper “Confusion of Tongues” and the demonic mature inner “intelligences” occupying disassociated children…
Donald Sandner and John Beebe - distinguishing between the ego-aligned complexes (those where the projected contents have been a part of the ego and been repressed) vs. the ego-projected complexes, i.e., those that are usually experienced *not as parts of the ego’s identity but rather as projected qualities in other people.
They go on about how possession of the ego by the “ego- projected” complexes leads to archetypal affects and primitive forms of a projected “daemonic trickster.”
Edmund Bcrgler’s “Daimonion," a malignant spirit, internal angatonist with uncanny power.
Heck, in the early work of Charcot and Janet, daimons were named, flattered, and their cooperation enlisted in the treatment ! Janet was fond of tricking the inner daimons. His patient Achilles “possessed” by the Devil until Janet tricked him into cooperating with the treatment and then actually taking over the actual hypnosis of the patient from within!
The respected Jungian Donald Kalsched, whom I've spoken to, in his Trauma & the Soul, has plenty of stories that sound a lot like Unattached Burdens to me….
Dr Colin Ross, former president of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation from 1993 to 1994, actually performed a demonic exorcism, because he is so well respected he has also been able to publish peer reviewed articles on exorcism in therapy.
The famous Harvard-educated psychiatrist Dr. Scott Peck, after confronting several apparently possessed patients, eventually decided to add exorcism to the rest of his practice, with good results.
The belief in something like “non-egoic parts” needing something like "exorcism" is becoming more common.
I’ve personally spoken to “big names” who publicly would never say so, but privately believe in these objects.
Plus it's no secret more therapy modalities are incorporating spirituality and even resources from Shamanism, such as Lisa Schwartz’s Comprehensive Resource Model.
So….what do I think they are?
I haven’t the slightest clue.
But I am heartened that we are taking non-Western traditions and cultural experiences seriously with an open mind.
Ok, IF there were non-egoic parts….how?
Well, I love philosophy, but I take its conclusions pretty lightly.
I suppose someone could invoke a form of Idealism, which quantum physics has been pointing to, and also *Donald Hoffman's quantum consciousness equations, where two seperate consciousness will combine, yet be one from a "higher frame", and still individually singular from a "lower frame.” (See below)
Plus it would make sense of the Near Death Experiences where the person reports not just seeing dead relatives, but becoming them.
Still, it’s awfully speculative, and really I simply haven’t a clue.
Find me here :
AttachmentHealingHelp.com
*See the equations explained under “Conjecture 3” of Hoffman’s paper Objects of consciousness HERE.
He explains :
“The theory of conscious agents proposes that a subject, a point of view, is a six-tuple that satisfies the definition of conscious agent. The directed and undirected join theorems give constructive proofs of how conscious agents and, therefore, points of view, can be combined to create a new conscious agent, and thus a new point of view.
The original agents, the original subjects, are not destroyed in the creation of the new agent, the new subject. Instead the original subjects structurally contribute in an understandable, indeed mathematically definable, fashion to the structure and properties of the new agent.
The original agents are, indeed, influenced in the process, because they interact with each other. But they retain their identities.
And the new agent has new properties not enjoyed by the constituent agents, but which are intelligible from the structure and interactions of the constituent agents. In the case of undirected combination, for instance, we have seen that the new agent can have periodic asymptotic properties that are not possessed by the constituent agents but that are intelligible—and thus not emergent in a brute sense—from the structures and interactions of the constituent agents.”
He explains :
“The theory of conscious agents proposes that a subject, a point of view, is a six-tuple that satisfies the definition of conscious agent. The directed and undirected join theorems give constructive proofs of how conscious agents and, therefore, points of view, can be combined to create a new conscious agent, and thus a new point of view.
The original agents, the original subjects, are not destroyed in the creation of the new agent, the new subject. Instead the original subjects structurally contribute in an understandable, indeed mathematically definable, fashion to the structure and properties of the new agent.
The original agents are, indeed, influenced in the process, because they interact with each other. But they retain their identities.
And the new agent has new properties not enjoyed by the constituent agents, but which are intelligible from the structure and interactions of the constituent agents. In the case of undirected combination, for instance, we have seen that the new agent can have periodic asymptotic properties that are not possessed by the constituent agents but that are intelligible—and thus not emergent in a brute sense—from the structures and interactions of the constituent agents.”
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