image: Wikimedia commons (link).
One of the ways I am consistently amazed by the wisdom given to all cultures in the ancient myths is my continuing discovery of the work of some of the most forward-thinking healers in the field of trauma, mental health, and addiction healing and the way that much of the core of their work and the core of their insights matches what the myths are saying to us -- even those very earliest myths to which we have access today, such as those from the earliest texts of ancient Sumer and ancient Egypt and the Vedas of ancient India.
Most recently, I have been exploring the amazing work of Dr. Richard Schwartz, who founded the Internal Family Systems therapeutic paradigm (often abbreviated as "IFS").
One of Dr. Schwartz's most profound discoveries, a position at which he arrived through interaction with numerous patients and one with which he certainly did not begin (he was actually initially dubious that it could be possible, based on the teaching he had received in his professional training) is the concept of an innate and unbreakable Self, something which can be demonstrated to be taught through the world's ancient myths in which we often encounter a "divine twin" such as in the myths of Castor and Polydeuces (or Pollux, with Pollux being the immortal twin in that pairing), or Heracles and his twin Iphicles, or Gilgamesh and Enkidu (who are paralleled by Jacob and Esau in the Bible), or the dual sets of twins in the Popol Vuh of the Maya (in which one set of twins does not escape the underworld, while the other set of twins does), or even Jesus and Thomas Didymus (the Twin) in the New Testament gospels -- and there are many other examples.
Listen to the way Dr. Schwartz describes this unbreakable Self, and the way it can play a very positive role in every aspect of our lives (writing here in the second edition of his book, Internal Family Systems Therapy):
We are all born with a Self. It does not develop through stages or borrow strength and wisdom from the therapist, and it cannot be damaged. It can, however, be occluded or overwhelmed by parts. 43
[. . .] therapists who have used IFS over the past three decades verify that everyone can access the active compassionate leader we call the Self, which is characterized by clarity, perspective, compassion, and other qualities that constitute effective leadership. This is true no matter how severe their symptoms or how initially polarized their internal system. When the Self is differentiated from the parts, people experience what we are calling a Self-led state of mind. 44
The Self of IFS interacts with parts and is also transcendent. As an entity, it is available to hear competing perspectives, to nurture, and to problem-solve. As a wave, it is one with the universe and other people as if, at that level, all waves overlap in ultimate commonality. Parts find the relationship with the Self incredibly reassuring, but to reap the benefits of being with the Self, they must first risk differentiating from and noticing the Self -- a frightening prospect for many protectors. 45
Since these feelings automatically emerge as soon as parts separate, we access the Self-energy that is already there, and we don't have to ask the client to make an effort to feel any particular way. The one caveat in this process is that it requires at least some willingness to find out if the Self exists and some curiosity when experiencing the Self. Without willingness and curiosity, we may view experiences of the Self as delightful aberrations or illusions, unattainable in everyday life. 46
Below are two videos, one with Dr. Schwartz and the second with another senior IFS practitioner, Dr. Frank Anderson, in which the understanding of "Self" and "parts" are explained more fully (links to both of those videos are here and here). Please note that while I may not agree with every single position expressed by everyone in these interviews, I am quite convinced of the validity of the general pattern being expressed by the system Dr. Schwartz has discovered and articulated -- and of its resonance with the teachings found in the world's ancient myths:
Here is my transcription of one of the sections in Dr. Anderson's interview in which he describes the IFS understanding of the plurality or multiplicity inherent in everyone, as well as the critical concept of the Self, which (as both Dr. Schwartz and Dr. Anderson point out) is described in so many of the world's ancient traditions. This discussion can be found beginning at approximately 11:00 into the video:
In the mental health field in the ways that I was taught, multiplicity is pathological -- and we don't have that view at all in Internal Family Systems. We believe that everybody has multiplicity, that we're all born with it, that it's a normal function: that it's healthy, in fact. And that is a place where we diverge a bit from mainstream, because when I was in my residency program, for example, if anyone had multiplicity, it was pathological and our goal was to make them whole again. And we don't feel that way: parts are normal, everybody has them, they interact with each other in wonderful, lovely ways; they interact with the world -- and then when difficult or overwhelming experiences happen in our lives, which it does for all of us of course, these parts take on extreme roles. So the parts are not the pathology: parts take on extreme roles. And so that's one of the things that we hold differently.
I think one of the other big kind of assumptions in IFS and somewhat of a divergent view is that everybody has what we call Self-Energy. Some people call it "internal wisdom," some people call it their "Core," their soul -- and we believe everybody's born with it, everybody has it, and it does not need to be cultivated. It's one of the things in the mental health field that happens a lot is: "build somebody's strength, build their resources, build their access to be able to handle things." Our view is different than that -- it's like, "No: everybody has it, it's in there." They may not have access to it -- and it doesn't need to be cultivated; it doesn't need to be built: it's inherently in us. As a matter of fact, in our view, you're born with it -- we all are. So we all have parts, we all have Self: they're all normal -- and they work smoothly and well together, or not. And when they don't, there's discord within the system, and that's when people end up coming to the therapist's office: to sort through the discord.
These descriptions, from Dr. Schwartz and Dr. Anderson -- leading (and in the case of Dr. Schwartz, founding) voices in one of the most cutting-edge therapeutic paradigms in mental health and trauma recovery -- can be seen to have been anticipated by the world's ancient wisdom encoded in the myths given to all the various cultures of the human family.
Indeed, as I have written in previous posts (such as this one about the "Descent of Inanna," a myth found in some of the most ancient texts we have from the ancient culture we call Sumer), the ancient myths also teach that we can be ignorant of the very existence of what Dr. Schwartz and practitioners of the IFS therapy refer to as Self -- and that one of the purposes of the myths appears to have been to remedy this lack of awareness of this tremendous resource of Self, which everyone is born with and which does not need to be cultivated, but with whom we can lose connection, primarily through the interference of parts taking on the role of "protectors," for whom trusting in the leadership of Self can be a very "frightening prospect for many protectors."
If this incredible innate gift of Self has so many positive qualities, how is it that trusting in Self is so difficult for parts which have taken on extreme roles? In a very important part of the interview with Dr. Anderson, beginning at about 46:30, Dr. Anderson gives us an example of the pattern through which we can become alienated from our Essential Self:
What ends up happening in trauma -- OK, if you're on the playground, and you're being bullied by a bunch of kids: you're experiencing something painful, OK? And, depending on the level of the severity or the extreme nature of it, what ends up happening there is there's a chasm between the Self and the parts. Self is there, parts are there, and if you're getting yelled at and screamed at or hit or punched or whatever in this bullying situation, it's too much to handle. Trauma is overwhelming by definition. What ends up happening in the moment of trauma is that Self leaves, to protect our essence. And parts are left carrying the bag. So there ends up being this chasm between the Self and the parts. Parts are left getting yelled at and beat up, or whatever. Self is protected: our core, our essence, is protected. But what ensues as a result of that is there's a chasm between the Self and the parts. The parts don't like the Self: "You left me, to get beat up. You left me to be yelled at and screamed." Now, we know that Self is not malicious in intent at all: Self is preserving the essence of what's good in all of us. And Self was the same age at the time of the trauma. But parts experience the Self as abandoning them. Part of healing in trauma is repairing that Self-to-part relationship. And there's often a moment of apology and repair: "I'm sorry. I was six years old too. I did the best I could." And there's a repair in the internal relationship.
In the ancient myth of Eros and Psyche, which forms one of the central "stories within a story" in the amazing esoteric text of the Metamorphoses of Apuleius (not to be confused with the Metamorphoses of Ovid), most commonly known today as "The Golden Ass" (shortened version of "The Golden Tale of the Ass"), but which myth is also referenced by numerous ancient sources, including sources centuries earlier than Apuleius, we see a powerful dramatization of loss of trust in the Higher Self, leading to disastrous loss of contact with Self and alienation and isolation of Psyche.
As I have argued in my books Astrotheology for Life (2017) and Myth and Trauma (2020), the myth of Eros and Psyche (along with many other myths from around the globe) can almost certainly be understood as teaching the very same "plurality" or "multiplicity" of personhood inherent in the human condition -- with Eros corresponding to the Higher or Essential Self, and Psyche corresponding to our, well, psyche: our egoic mind with all its wonderful parts, sometimes in harmony with one another, but sometimes polarized due to experiences such as those described in the two interviews linked above.
I recommend obtaining an actual copy of The Golden Ass by Apuleius and reading the entire story (I've always been partial to the translation by Jack Lindsay linked here), but the pattern of the loss of communion with the Higher Self represented by Eros in the story is quite familiar to anyone who grew up hearing any sort of fairy tales: Psyche is living happily with her loving husband, even though she has never actually laid eyes on him -- but her jealous sisters show up and introduce doubts about the true identity of her unseen husband, insinuating that he must be some kind of hideous monster since he will not allow Psyche to actually see him. So, Psyche follows the advice of her two sisters (who may very well be seen as representing a dramatization of a somewhat dysfunctional internal family, expressed as external characters in the story) and waits until her husband is asleep in their bed, at which time she creeps out of bed and gets a lamp in order to see what he actually looks like:
image: Wikimedia commons (link).
Sadly for Psyche and her relationship with Eros, she is astonished and delighted to find that her husband is in fact the divine Eros -- but as she stares at his sleeping form, a drop of oil spills from the lamp and alights upon the shoulder of the slumbering god. The burning oil awakens Eros, who immediately sees that Psyche has failed to trust in him -- and he flies out the window, apparently lost to her forever.
This lack of trust in the Self is seen in numerous other myths from around the world, characterized by doubt -- including the story of "Doubting Thomas" found in the Gospel according to John in the New Testament, as well as the example of "Doubting Arjuna" found in the Mahabharata of ancient India (the "doubting" of Arjuna leads to the beloved Bhagavad Gita, spoken (or sung) by the Lord Krishna to address the doubt of Arjuna (just as Jesus addresses the doubt of Thomas in the John Gospel).
Whether they are aware of these connections or not, the discoveries of Dr. Schwartz and Dr. Anderson regarding the alienation of the Self from the parts -- discoveries established through hundreds or even thousands of interactions with clients during their therapeutic work and expressed in the above interviews and in Internal Family Systems, Second Edition -- can be seen as being dramatized in the ancient myths of the world, including the powerful myth of Eros and Psyche.
As Dr. Anderson explains in the quotation cited above, parts experience Self as having abandoned them -- but I have argued that the ancient myths have as one of their central messages the path to recovery of the Self from whom we have been alienated. And this recovery is of course a central aim of the IFS system of therapy as well.
The ancient myths dramatize the reconciliation of Psyche with Higher Self, as shown in the top image, depicting the famous revival of Psyche by the kiss of the god Eros, who rescues her from actual death (again: for the entire story, I recommend the version preserved by Apuleius from the period we call the first century AD or CE).
It is my belief that the work of forward-thinking therapists, such as Dr. Richard Schwartz and Dr. Frank Anderson, as well as of healers such as Dr. Gabor Maté, reflecting their experience in the field with thousands of patients, can prove to be tremendously helpful to just about everyone living in this modern world, and dealing with even the most urgent issues we face in our lives.
And, I am equally convinced that this central message of the myths, involving the vital importance of recovering our relationship with Self, also forms one of the central keystones of the world's sacred stories, such that this ancient treasure should be regarded as a tremendous resource for our benefit, even in this very present moment.