Richard Schwartz, Ph.D. - IFS & Psychedelics: Tapping Into Self Energy for Healing Trauma

In this episode of The Psychedelic Podcast, Paul F. Austin welcomes Dr. Richard Schwartz, creator of the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model of psychotherapy. Dick shares how he discovered that psychedelics naturally facilitate access to what IFS calls "Self energy" - the compassionate core within everyone that can heal wounded parts. He explains how medicines like ketamine and MDMA help relax protective parts of our psyche, revealing both Self energy and exiled parts that need healing. Dick reveals his personal journey with psychedelics, including his work with ketamine-assisted IFS therapy, and discusses the relationship between psychedelic experiences and spiritual guides. He emphasizes how reframing "bad trips" as opportunities for exiled parts to be witnessed can transform challenging experiences into profound healing moments.

Dick Schwartz began his career as a family therapist and academic at the University of Illinois at Chicago. There he discovered that family therapy alone did not achieve full symptom relief. His patients became his teachers as they described their inner "parts," which formed networks resembling the families he had been working with. He found that when patients separated from these parts, they shifted into a state of curiosity, calm, confidence, and compassion—what he called the Self. From these explorations, the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model was born in the early 1980s. Now evidence-based, IFS has become widely used, particularly for trauma work, offering non-pathologizing techniques for individuals, couples, families, corporations, and classrooms. Dick lives with his wife Jeanne near Chicago.

Highlights: 

• The natural synergy between psychedelics and IFS therapy
• How psychedelics temporarily quiet protective "manager" parts
• Understanding how there are “no bad parts” of the psyche
• The difference between Self and parts in IFS
• Reconceptualizing "bad trips" as healing opportunities
• IFS and shadow work
• How psychedelics accelerate access to exiled parts
• Moving IFS beyond therapy into leadership and systemic change
• Legacy burdens: healing inherited trauma collectively

Episode Sponsors: 

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