President, Chief Executive Officer & Director, Hci
Search every verified Richard Swartz interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Richard Schwartz, the developer of the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model of psychotherapy, has been active in discussing and promoting the model through various interviews and webinars. In a 2021 interview, Schwartz described the IFS model as one that posits the mind is not unitary but contains multiple "parts," and that everyone has an "undamageable, intact self" which, when accessed, possesses qualities like calm, curiosity, compassion, and courage. He stated that the model is "a model of total utter compassion for everything inside of you," and that learning to love one's own parts can change how one interacts with others. Schwartz also discussed the importance of respecting "protective parts" during therapy, noting that he learned this lesson after clients experienced negative reactions when he bypassed these parts to work directly with vulnerable "exiles." In a 2020 webinar, Schwartz applied the IFS framework to societal and global issues, particularly the COVID-19 pandemic. He described the pandemic as a "wake-up call" that could force individuals and societies to reconsider their values, and he compared the "unrestrained growth" driven by "striving parts" in individuals to the economic models of many countries. Schwartz stated that the pandemic has caused immense pain but also offered an opportunity for healing, and he argued that the more "self" people bring to the crisis, the more likely its lessons will be learned. Separately, in a 2019 customer spotlight, Schwartz discussed a successful digital marketing campaign for a retail sale, noting that it brought in 1,200 leads at a cost of about one dollar per lead and that the campaign was being rolled out for future events.
“All of us have no bad parts. When we focus on whatever the part is, say it's a part that makes you addicted or has made you hit somebody, you begin to see how it got forced into this role and how much it doesn't like the role but feels like it's necessary to protect you or other vulnerable parts.”
“The idea that the mind is unitary has a history that I cover to some degree in the book and is also related to the fear of being thought of as a multiple personality, which I alluded to earlier or the fear of hearing voices means you're crazy, which is a totally different phenomenon.”
“When you do this work and realize that parts aren't what they seem, it changes the way you understand yourself and others profoundly. If everybody knew there was this undamageable, intact self inside of themselves and others, connected in a way we were talking about before, it would transform human interaction.”
“Our parts actually are sacred beings and they have bodies. I don't really know how to describe it other than as you ask these questions inside, I'm not talking about literal bodies but about the felt sense of them, like a fireball in the gut or a weight on the shoulders.”
In this Scholar Spotlight we feature Richard Schwartz who was a Member in the School of Mathematics earlier this year. He talks ...
Tami Simon talks to Dick about the transformation that occurs when we welcome every part of who we are. He explains that even ...
... Richard Schwartz, Ph.D. IFS has become a widely-used form of psychotherapy that is increasingly being applied to coaching.
Listen as IFS Founder, Richard Schwartz confronts the challenges we face internally and as a society from the COVID-19 ...
Sign in to search the full transcript archive, filter by topic, and access every quote from Richard Swartz.