The observations of Sigmund and Anna Freud about the mind fortifying itself with psychological “defenses” were spot-on. While his language (for it was initially his) may evoke images of insiders battling against outsiders, Freud’s main concern was conflict within the mind. Aware that the mind presented different features (conflict requires more than one party), Freud theorized a semi-personified, three-part model of mind. One part, the ego (“I” in English) used defense mechanisms to manage conflicts between the other two parts, the primitive, desirous, selfish id (“it”) and the judging, socially inhibiting superego (“above it”).

Meanwhile, other mental health practitioners who noticed inner conflict opted for a less compounded, finite model of mind. Sticking close to subjective experience, they addressed a multitude of independently motivated components, modes, or parts in therapy. Richard Schwartz, the family systems psychologist who developed internal family systems (IFS) therapy, started doing this while working with eating disorders.

Schwartz’s patients described their subjective experience in this way. When a vulnerable part gets hurt other parts take on protective roles. The first protectors (called managers in IFS idiom) try to prevent further injury by promoting social compliance and exiling the hurt part from consciousness (hence it is called an exile). He also learned that when the inhibitory, critical efforts of manager parts cause the emotional pain of exiles to resurface, reactive protectors (called firefighters) step in to restore balance with an expansive supply of promising disinhibitions, especially substances, gambling,

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