I was emailed this by an IFS-trained therapist and psychedelic researcher, who agreed to me sharing it: '‘I follow your blog and wanted to get in touch regarding the most recent post. I recently ended therapy with an IFS practitioner because of a sudden introduction to Falconer’s ideas into our work and subtle suggestion of ritual abuse. I was shocked and saddened after years of working with this therapist and named it. We tried to work through it but I ended therapy because it felt that trust had been broken. I really appreciated your post because it echos exactly my experience and I worry for clients who are less able to state when a boundary is transgressed.’
I am level 2 trained in IFS through the IFS Institute and working towards certification. I use this modality mainly with clients and I frequently use it in conjunction with low dose ketamine.
I think there is an inherent issue in writing an article like this about a particular modality that one is not trained in themselves. There is much nuance that you are not capturing as it relates to working with IFS, and instead you’ve jumped to many inaccurate conclusions.
When working with unattached burdens through the lens of IFS, one is never using anything other than the clients language for them. We aren’t even calling them “unattached burdens” and certainly not labeling them as “demons” or assigning any value to such as being “good” or “bad”. Instead we are supporting the client in coming into a deeper relationship with the energy that is present and getting to know it more and then from there helping to shift the relationship with it in a way that allows for more harmony in one’s inner system. All the while we are always using their own words for it.
“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”—Shakespeare, The Tempest
Great article — it's a topic that touches a sacred cow on the altar of the psychedelic temple.
To discover the most maleficent demons imaginable, one need only peruse the daily headlines or listen like a fly on the wall to the conversations reverberating in the board rooms, war rooms, and legislatures across the globe. All the devils and angels are already alongside us, living as us, incarnated in human form. If it's demonic activity one seeks, there's no need to reach for an invisible meta-reality to find it—the phone call is coming from inside the house.
But for some reason, this plane doesn't have enough demonic or angelic energy for some—their imaginations crave more drama, and they feel the need to reach for the invisible and the supernatural. Magical, untestable, unverifiable belief systems co-arise with convenient scapegoat personifications like Satan or a demon army to explain why things are so. Psychedelics hyper-fertilize the imagination and shamans fan the flames to keep you committed to their brand.
I've spent about 10,000 hours in Pentecostal and Evangelical Christian churches as a child, plus a few dozen intensive shamanic psychedelic ceremonies around the globe, and the only thing I'm convinced of is that building a belief system around unverifiable, invisible beings is the top method to prey on the weak-minded and the gullible, and keep them coming back for more paid "healings." In my mind, worrying about invisible imaginary VooDoo curses takes our attention off the real demonic energies at work in the world right before our eyes, through ordinary mundane human activity. There is no 'other' to blame for the vicissitudes of life; there is only radical self-responsibility to accept what's going on in this plane and work on one's self and the plane through action.
Mine isn't a popular belief.
Most people seem to find it more convenient to reach for the 'invisible other' and to imagine the supernatural as being responsible for events. This is why I enjoy getting away from people, sitting in nature looking at a beautiful vista. The forest doesn't believe in demonic trees; otters aren't haunted by Poltergeists; the grass blade doesn't look over its shoulder when the sun sets. And when you don't believe, the way nature doesn't believe, the notion of invisible entities having any power over you blows away in the wind.
"The truth does not require your participation in order to exist. Bullshit does."—Terence McKenna
Hm, I think that what I will take away from this is the need for informed and ongoing consent in the psychedelic process. Persons should be made aware that they may have an experience of energies/entities etc. If that is not what they ever want to experience then they can, in a fully informed way, say no to psychedelics or use this info to better choose their practitioner/guide.
Secondly, I noticed that you wrote about a poorly organized ayahuasca ceremony. This is again a warning to the populus that setting is key to the experience. Some shamans, guides that I know go to lengths to protect the psychedelic space (energetically).
I do agree that emperical studies of IFS is needed. Re navel gazing, however, that could be said of most therapy modalities: IFS, CBT, Somatics, psychoanalysis etc. Actually, I read an article by a psychoanalyst (sorry, cant remember reference) who critqued psychoanalysis for the danger of making patients, "better narcissists" unconcerned with the social, cultural and other contextual factors affecting everyone. Yet, I am sure psychoanalysts who practice with a cultural, relational or systemic lens would disagree. So, I think the problem, as with anything, is how something is practiced. My experience of working with my 'parts' as a client is that it makes me more compassionate with others because we all are struggling with parts of ourselves that are wounded and sometimes we act out of those parts. As a level 1 IFS trained therapist, I am able to better understand the impact of cultural and legacy burdens (racism, classism, gender discrimmination, intergenerational trauma etc) on my clients.
In Jamaica we have a way of saying, one mind says this and another mind says that. But it is all one mind.
I don't have any experience or training in UB and would never suggest that to someone I am working with. I noticed from a previous comment by someone more experienced in this area, that it is a rare phenomenon and that ethical practitioners proceed with caution. Ethical practitioners ought to know the limits of their practice. Therapists are human right, led by many motivations. Some may lead or guide from their own motivations (financial, ego, trauma led). This is a real danger of any therapy because clients are often in vulnerable places and so I appreciate any effort to empower the public about what to look for and what are red flags.
Just a note, I couldn't resist: if UBs are not 'parts' of us then the refrain 'no bad parts' still has merit.
On a cultural level, in Jamaica (where I was born, where I live and practice) many people believe in entities/demons/dark spirits and you can be 'possessed' anywhere not only in a psychedelic community. Sometimes, clergy exploit this belief system to the detriment of persons struggling with psychosis etc. So again, this type of exploitation of persons happens everywhere, which is beyond frustrating. How do we reduce harm in the field of psychedelics and in therapy? I guess that is what we are all here trying to better understand.
Jules your writing is increasingly sensationalist and misleading. Bob Falconer does not make a habit of calling UBs ‘demons’ or evil nor do any reputable therapists trained in the IFS model of psychotherapy. The explanation is far more bland and non-pathologising just as is it is in most shamanic traditions. Usually practitioners are referring to intrusions of energy that happen to be in the wrong place and could be contributing to symptoms such as reduced energy, addictions etc. Bob takes a huge amount of care to stress how this is a rare phenomenon and details how to avoid harms when contemplating if something is a ‘part’ or a UB.
Interesting article, Jules, and very interesting to read the passionate defensive responses to it. I have minimal IFS training but I like its language sometimes (I use it in conjunction with a different modality for trauma work). I also have many reservations about it: seeing how evangelical people who train in it become about IFS makes me feel uneasy. I’ve also heard from someone who trained up to level 3 that in IFS there’s no such thing as transference and countertransference, that the therapist is always in Self, which is utterly ignorant, arrogant, and harmful to the client.
Apparently I had very bland IFS therapy, without demons or psychedelics, but during which I raised my sleeves to show recent bruises and cuts from domestic violence to my therapist, and she sighed with impatience and said “can we do some inner work now?” She couldn’t deal with real-world circumstances, couldn’t operate outside of IFS at all. This is the real demonic property to these completely theoretical therapeutic treatments: the bizarre and cultish was their practitioners follow them, blind to the actual client. Your piece brings that out perfectly.
Thank you for writing this. IFS presents itself as a normal, evidence based therapy but seems very culty in practice. Fine to engage with spirituality, religion etc. but don't do so while selling yourself as a scientific, evidence based therapy (pick a lane).
People are very suggestible when on psychedelics, and it poses difficulties from a number of perspectives. First, it can lead to influence - either intentional or inadvertent - upon the person on the journey from those around them. (Hence, the real concern about mind set and a safe setting.) Where that influence is useful is if someone is having a bad journey, and wants to 'change the channel'. The thing is, as a sitter it is important to not cause harm through projection. (The last thing I would want to do is distort someone's already vulnerable state by implanting an idea that could easily take root in their psyche.) What I would encourage before a session is that someone bring an item with which they have uniformly positive associations to the session to act as a stimulus to change the channel to very positive associations. This method gets around the sitter projecting and gives the person on a psychedelic journey a tool which they already have. I hate to use a popular film to express this idea, but think of the film "Inception", and how each of the team had to create a personal totem that they crafted for themselves and which they did not share with anyone else as a way to discern if they were dreaming or awake. Giving that power of auto-suggestion to the person before they go on a psychedelic journey is the most ethical approach and it empowers.
I do have concerns with the inculcation of supernatural beliefs during psychedelic sessions, and examples abound of this in new religious movements and through fears being induced that are imaginary but become 'as real'. Grave harms have occurred through such things as false memory syndrome, and the Satanic Panic in the late 20th century. So, I think we need to acknowledge this human tendency and avoid infecting a person who is on a psychedelic journey with such a psychologically 'dark seed'.
Just keep in mind how suggestible and open a person on a psychedelic is, and cause no harm. And I think that having a preparatory sober session to discuss this with a person is essential so that they can be aware of the vulnerabiity and have a tool of their own creation to change the channel if they choose to use it.
lmao I had NO idea IFS was running this type of game - honestly I mostly avoided it because it seemed like boring podcast-bro midwittery, didn't realize it was channeling literal demonic entities like this. Anyway it seems like IFS like hypnotherapy and psychedelics is in the unfortunate position of having access to a *technique* that can be relatively impactful without being founded in a rigorous theoretical and ethical frame. In the case of IFS, the technique is an induced shared fantasy between therapist and patient into a world inhabited by 'parts' - personified crystallizations of otherwise pre-verbal behavioral patterns and tendencies. Once distilled into parts, these psychic complexes become much more malleable, which is helpful if you're trying to rid yourself of certain tendencies but also makes you highly suggestible. A therapist without proper training (not saying this is all of IFS, idk), can do some real damage - that video of Castlewood you shared is truly chilling and I really feel terrible for the victims.
Why are we talking so much about IFS? Because MAPS/Lykos decided to put it in their super special therapy protocol for MDMA-PAT and submit it to the FDA. Psychedelics are nonspecific amplifiers. They take all of the standard pitfalls of traditional therapy and crank them to 11. As such they must be studied more carefully than other modalities. All the therapists pushing psychedelics claiming to have empirical evidence for their therapeutic value need to buckle up. If you want science to give you its blessing you must first submit to the gauntlet of skepticism that every clinical practice must endure. This is going to be a rough ride for everyone who has a lengthy history of underground work in the field. Going for FDA approval is going to put a lot of practice under the microscope. Scientists are absolutely brutal when analyzing each others work. There are no rainbows and unicorns here.
It is clear you have NO DEPTH OF UNDERSTANDING of IFS or unattached burdens from your article. As you say, you've never had IFS and your description of it is far from reality. Yet you seem quite intent on weaving a biased narrative - a marker for somebody who has not done their own inner work. Perhaps you could take this to therapy rather than criticising it so unfairly. Or better, find something to write about that you have a depth of understanding about.
IFS, in my opinion, has way more basic problems then at one extreme, planting satanic parts. It's a way too concretized mode of working with self states. OR: you name your self states even if you do not have them. That is also a bit wack. Agree that naming what, let's say you "have" in rigid ways (firefighter, etc) feels unnecessary and a bit brain-washy, group think, hypnotic trance-ish (especially in a hyper suggestible non ordinary state of cscness) and as well, confuses the diagnosis of "true" dissociation--like DID. I have my guesses as to why IFS is so popular in psychedelic medicine, but a more sophisticated approach to this might be doing dissociative sx scoring OR using a more generic self state way of working. Best book for this is Haunted Self (no satan!!). I had never even thought of the implanting satanic parts. OMG.
Many thanks for posting this criticism of IFS and UBs! It's important not to loose our ability for critical thinking, especially for seemingly fantastical therapies or phenomenons.
About the evidence base, I believe there are now three RCTs showing positive results. That's not enough to call it evidence based (I'd say there must at least be a meta analysis) bit at least it's on its way. (Compare with PDT which has 300 RCTs or CBT that has thousands). Probably this will go the way of current therapy research and IFS will show to be as effective as every other evidence based therapy and common factors (ie effective therapists) will be more important.
Speaking about UBs I don't find it very sympathetic or impressive for it to be a secret teaching at higher levels in the training (although the cat is out of the bag now), providing no public examples of it (although they are coming now) and sneer at unspiritual people or the arrogance of not accepting traditional spiritual interpretations. It's all a bit cultey and I hope we can get away from this.
Speaking of interpretations. In the very similar Ego State Therapy there are things called "introjects" which are eg internal models of parents, friends etc which are not part of the system. Clients can speak from and with these introjects even though they're not parts and there are techniques of how to handle them. Isn't it reasonable that some introjects are fragmentary and not full personas, just like fragmentary memories in ptsd?
Now I've watched Falconer in the UB video and read half of his book and I must say that he's impressively gentle and light in handling these "non-parts". Probably introjects need their own techniques. But I also agree about the risk of imposing suggestions and ideas in the client, that brought us false memories and SRAs. Not being mindful of that means not learning from history and denying responsibility.
I know therapists have a huge work unblendong critical and analysing parts, but let's give them some appreciation for not wanting to repeat past mistakes!
I was emailed this by an IFS-trained therapist and psychedelic researcher, who agreed to me sharing it: '‘I follow your blog and wanted to get in touch regarding the most recent post. I recently ended therapy with an IFS practitioner because of a sudden introduction to Falconer’s ideas into our work and subtle suggestion of ritual abuse. I was shocked and saddened after years of working with this therapist and named it. We tried to work through it but I ended therapy because it felt that trust had been broken. I really appreciated your post because it echos exactly my experience and I worry for clients who are less able to state when a boundary is transgressed.’
I am level 2 trained in IFS through the IFS Institute and working towards certification. I use this modality mainly with clients and I frequently use it in conjunction with low dose ketamine.
I think there is an inherent issue in writing an article like this about a particular modality that one is not trained in themselves. There is much nuance that you are not capturing as it relates to working with IFS, and instead you’ve jumped to many inaccurate conclusions.
When working with unattached burdens through the lens of IFS, one is never using anything other than the clients language for them. We aren’t even calling them “unattached burdens” and certainly not labeling them as “demons” or assigning any value to such as being “good” or “bad”. Instead we are supporting the client in coming into a deeper relationship with the energy that is present and getting to know it more and then from there helping to shift the relationship with it in a way that allows for more harmony in one’s inner system. All the while we are always using their own words for it.
“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”—Shakespeare, The Tempest
Great article — it's a topic that touches a sacred cow on the altar of the psychedelic temple.
To discover the most maleficent demons imaginable, one need only peruse the daily headlines or listen like a fly on the wall to the conversations reverberating in the board rooms, war rooms, and legislatures across the globe. All the devils and angels are already alongside us, living as us, incarnated in human form. If it's demonic activity one seeks, there's no need to reach for an invisible meta-reality to find it—the phone call is coming from inside the house.
But for some reason, this plane doesn't have enough demonic or angelic energy for some—their imaginations crave more drama, and they feel the need to reach for the invisible and the supernatural. Magical, untestable, unverifiable belief systems co-arise with convenient scapegoat personifications like Satan or a demon army to explain why things are so. Psychedelics hyper-fertilize the imagination and shamans fan the flames to keep you committed to their brand.
I've spent about 10,000 hours in Pentecostal and Evangelical Christian churches as a child, plus a few dozen intensive shamanic psychedelic ceremonies around the globe, and the only thing I'm convinced of is that building a belief system around unverifiable, invisible beings is the top method to prey on the weak-minded and the gullible, and keep them coming back for more paid "healings." In my mind, worrying about invisible imaginary VooDoo curses takes our attention off the real demonic energies at work in the world right before our eyes, through ordinary mundane human activity. There is no 'other' to blame for the vicissitudes of life; there is only radical self-responsibility to accept what's going on in this plane and work on one's self and the plane through action.
Mine isn't a popular belief.
Most people seem to find it more convenient to reach for the 'invisible other' and to imagine the supernatural as being responsible for events. This is why I enjoy getting away from people, sitting in nature looking at a beautiful vista. The forest doesn't believe in demonic trees; otters aren't haunted by Poltergeists; the grass blade doesn't look over its shoulder when the sun sets. And when you don't believe, the way nature doesn't believe, the notion of invisible entities having any power over you blows away in the wind.
"The truth does not require your participation in order to exist. Bullshit does."—Terence McKenna
Hm, I think that what I will take away from this is the need for informed and ongoing consent in the psychedelic process. Persons should be made aware that they may have an experience of energies/entities etc. If that is not what they ever want to experience then they can, in a fully informed way, say no to psychedelics or use this info to better choose their practitioner/guide.
Secondly, I noticed that you wrote about a poorly organized ayahuasca ceremony. This is again a warning to the populus that setting is key to the experience. Some shamans, guides that I know go to lengths to protect the psychedelic space (energetically).
I do agree that emperical studies of IFS is needed. Re navel gazing, however, that could be said of most therapy modalities: IFS, CBT, Somatics, psychoanalysis etc. Actually, I read an article by a psychoanalyst (sorry, cant remember reference) who critqued psychoanalysis for the danger of making patients, "better narcissists" unconcerned with the social, cultural and other contextual factors affecting everyone. Yet, I am sure psychoanalysts who practice with a cultural, relational or systemic lens would disagree. So, I think the problem, as with anything, is how something is practiced. My experience of working with my 'parts' as a client is that it makes me more compassionate with others because we all are struggling with parts of ourselves that are wounded and sometimes we act out of those parts. As a level 1 IFS trained therapist, I am able to better understand the impact of cultural and legacy burdens (racism, classism, gender discrimmination, intergenerational trauma etc) on my clients.
In Jamaica we have a way of saying, one mind says this and another mind says that. But it is all one mind.
I don't have any experience or training in UB and would never suggest that to someone I am working with. I noticed from a previous comment by someone more experienced in this area, that it is a rare phenomenon and that ethical practitioners proceed with caution. Ethical practitioners ought to know the limits of their practice. Therapists are human right, led by many motivations. Some may lead or guide from their own motivations (financial, ego, trauma led). This is a real danger of any therapy because clients are often in vulnerable places and so I appreciate any effort to empower the public about what to look for and what are red flags.
Just a note, I couldn't resist: if UBs are not 'parts' of us then the refrain 'no bad parts' still has merit.
On a cultural level, in Jamaica (where I was born, where I live and practice) many people believe in entities/demons/dark spirits and you can be 'possessed' anywhere not only in a psychedelic community. Sometimes, clergy exploit this belief system to the detriment of persons struggling with psychosis etc. So again, this type of exploitation of persons happens everywhere, which is beyond frustrating. How do we reduce harm in the field of psychedelics and in therapy? I guess that is what we are all here trying to better understand.
Just wanted to add my two cents.
Jules your writing is increasingly sensationalist and misleading. Bob Falconer does not make a habit of calling UBs ‘demons’ or evil nor do any reputable therapists trained in the IFS model of psychotherapy. The explanation is far more bland and non-pathologising just as is it is in most shamanic traditions. Usually practitioners are referring to intrusions of energy that happen to be in the wrong place and could be contributing to symptoms such as reduced energy, addictions etc. Bob takes a huge amount of care to stress how this is a rare phenomenon and details how to avoid harms when contemplating if something is a ‘part’ or a UB.
Interesting article, Jules, and very interesting to read the passionate defensive responses to it. I have minimal IFS training but I like its language sometimes (I use it in conjunction with a different modality for trauma work). I also have many reservations about it: seeing how evangelical people who train in it become about IFS makes me feel uneasy. I’ve also heard from someone who trained up to level 3 that in IFS there’s no such thing as transference and countertransference, that the therapist is always in Self, which is utterly ignorant, arrogant, and harmful to the client.
Apparently I had very bland IFS therapy, without demons or psychedelics, but during which I raised my sleeves to show recent bruises and cuts from domestic violence to my therapist, and she sighed with impatience and said “can we do some inner work now?” She couldn’t deal with real-world circumstances, couldn’t operate outside of IFS at all. This is the real demonic property to these completely theoretical therapeutic treatments: the bizarre and cultish was their practitioners follow them, blind to the actual client. Your piece brings that out perfectly.
https://akjournals.com/view/journals/2054/aop/article-10.1556-2054.2024.00265/article-10.1556-2054.2024.00265.xml
Please see the article Jules mentioned for details. I'm not trying to enrage anyone. I can't make the relevant arguments any clearer. --Mitch
Thank you for writing this. IFS presents itself as a normal, evidence based therapy but seems very culty in practice. Fine to engage with spirituality, religion etc. but don't do so while selling yourself as a scientific, evidence based therapy (pick a lane).
People are very suggestible when on psychedelics, and it poses difficulties from a number of perspectives. First, it can lead to influence - either intentional or inadvertent - upon the person on the journey from those around them. (Hence, the real concern about mind set and a safe setting.) Where that influence is useful is if someone is having a bad journey, and wants to 'change the channel'. The thing is, as a sitter it is important to not cause harm through projection. (The last thing I would want to do is distort someone's already vulnerable state by implanting an idea that could easily take root in their psyche.) What I would encourage before a session is that someone bring an item with which they have uniformly positive associations to the session to act as a stimulus to change the channel to very positive associations. This method gets around the sitter projecting and gives the person on a psychedelic journey a tool which they already have. I hate to use a popular film to express this idea, but think of the film "Inception", and how each of the team had to create a personal totem that they crafted for themselves and which they did not share with anyone else as a way to discern if they were dreaming or awake. Giving that power of auto-suggestion to the person before they go on a psychedelic journey is the most ethical approach and it empowers.
I do have concerns with the inculcation of supernatural beliefs during psychedelic sessions, and examples abound of this in new religious movements and through fears being induced that are imaginary but become 'as real'. Grave harms have occurred through such things as false memory syndrome, and the Satanic Panic in the late 20th century. So, I think we need to acknowledge this human tendency and avoid infecting a person who is on a psychedelic journey with such a psychologically 'dark seed'.
Just keep in mind how suggestible and open a person on a psychedelic is, and cause no harm. And I think that having a preparatory sober session to discuss this with a person is essential so that they can be aware of the vulnerabiity and have a tool of their own creation to change the channel if they choose to use it.
lmao I had NO idea IFS was running this type of game - honestly I mostly avoided it because it seemed like boring podcast-bro midwittery, didn't realize it was channeling literal demonic entities like this. Anyway it seems like IFS like hypnotherapy and psychedelics is in the unfortunate position of having access to a *technique* that can be relatively impactful without being founded in a rigorous theoretical and ethical frame. In the case of IFS, the technique is an induced shared fantasy between therapist and patient into a world inhabited by 'parts' - personified crystallizations of otherwise pre-verbal behavioral patterns and tendencies. Once distilled into parts, these psychic complexes become much more malleable, which is helpful if you're trying to rid yourself of certain tendencies but also makes you highly suggestible. A therapist without proper training (not saying this is all of IFS, idk), can do some real damage - that video of Castlewood you shared is truly chilling and I really feel terrible for the victims.
Why are we talking so much about IFS? Because MAPS/Lykos decided to put it in their super special therapy protocol for MDMA-PAT and submit it to the FDA. Psychedelics are nonspecific amplifiers. They take all of the standard pitfalls of traditional therapy and crank them to 11. As such they must be studied more carefully than other modalities. All the therapists pushing psychedelics claiming to have empirical evidence for their therapeutic value need to buckle up. If you want science to give you its blessing you must first submit to the gauntlet of skepticism that every clinical practice must endure. This is going to be a rough ride for everyone who has a lengthy history of underground work in the field. Going for FDA approval is going to put a lot of practice under the microscope. Scientists are absolutely brutal when analyzing each others work. There are no rainbows and unicorns here.
It is clear you have NO DEPTH OF UNDERSTANDING of IFS or unattached burdens from your article. As you say, you've never had IFS and your description of it is far from reality. Yet you seem quite intent on weaving a biased narrative - a marker for somebody who has not done their own inner work. Perhaps you could take this to therapy rather than criticising it so unfairly. Or better, find something to write about that you have a depth of understanding about.
IFS, in my opinion, has way more basic problems then at one extreme, planting satanic parts. It's a way too concretized mode of working with self states. OR: you name your self states even if you do not have them. That is also a bit wack. Agree that naming what, let's say you "have" in rigid ways (firefighter, etc) feels unnecessary and a bit brain-washy, group think, hypnotic trance-ish (especially in a hyper suggestible non ordinary state of cscness) and as well, confuses the diagnosis of "true" dissociation--like DID. I have my guesses as to why IFS is so popular in psychedelic medicine, but a more sophisticated approach to this might be doing dissociative sx scoring OR using a more generic self state way of working. Best book for this is Haunted Self (no satan!!). I had never even thought of the implanting satanic parts. OMG.
Many thanks for posting this criticism of IFS and UBs! It's important not to loose our ability for critical thinking, especially for seemingly fantastical therapies or phenomenons.
About the evidence base, I believe there are now three RCTs showing positive results. That's not enough to call it evidence based (I'd say there must at least be a meta analysis) bit at least it's on its way. (Compare with PDT which has 300 RCTs or CBT that has thousands). Probably this will go the way of current therapy research and IFS will show to be as effective as every other evidence based therapy and common factors (ie effective therapists) will be more important.
Speaking about UBs I don't find it very sympathetic or impressive for it to be a secret teaching at higher levels in the training (although the cat is out of the bag now), providing no public examples of it (although they are coming now) and sneer at unspiritual people or the arrogance of not accepting traditional spiritual interpretations. It's all a bit cultey and I hope we can get away from this.
Speaking of interpretations. In the very similar Ego State Therapy there are things called "introjects" which are eg internal models of parents, friends etc which are not part of the system. Clients can speak from and with these introjects even though they're not parts and there are techniques of how to handle them. Isn't it reasonable that some introjects are fragmentary and not full personas, just like fragmentary memories in ptsd?
Now I've watched Falconer in the UB video and read half of his book and I must say that he's impressively gentle and light in handling these "non-parts". Probably introjects need their own techniques. But I also agree about the risk of imposing suggestions and ideas in the client, that brought us false memories and SRAs. Not being mindful of that means not learning from history and denying responsibility.
I know therapists have a huge work unblendong critical and analysing parts, but let's give them some appreciation for not wanting to repeat past mistakes!
I don’t personally know much about IFS but I’ve seen plenty of demons. IMHO they get a bad rap.