Dr. Richard C. Schwartz

Richard C. Schwartz, PhD, 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 relationships 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 this state the Self and was amazed to find it even in severely diagnosed and traumatized patients. From these explorations, the Internal Family Systems model was born in the early 1980s. IFS now has a growing evidence base 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, and families.