Subpersonalities can fight, talk, negotiate…
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The inner voice is the voice of our parents. Visual representation of subpersonalities Parents and their interactions with each other.
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If you work with a psychologist, you may at some point be asked to:
Talk to your inner Critic: how does he take care of you?
Ask your Wrecker: what does he want? Under what conditions will he leave?
Turn to your inner Sage: what will he tell you in this situation?
In these cases, you are offered to turn to your Subpersonalities. What it is?
A subpersonality is a popular psychological metaphor that says that inside your big personality there are many small living beings, many small personalities. Calling personal characteristics subpersonalities makes it possible to work with them as with living beings: fight with them, talk with them, negotiate … Subpersonalities are another name for personal characteristics, desires, aspirations and habits.
Personal roles usually describe the field of human capabilities, subpersonalities — the field of problems. Personal roles are discussed mainly in developmental psychology, subpersonalities — in the psychotherapeutic approach. The concept of subpersonality is actively used in Psychosynthesis and sometimes in NLP, usually in combination with trance techniques.
In practice, subpersonalities are usually endowed with abilities and virtues that far exceed those of the client. Namely, by the will of psychologists and psychotherapists, the subpersonality is a very lively, active and creative being, able to run into the Past, get deep into the Unconscious, establish informal and active contacts with other subpersonalities, able to know what the client himself does not know, able to take care of the client , which always has only positive intentions and is able (sometimes) to act according to the principle In order, and not Because …
May we always be so talented!
I am a terrible person — cunning, capricious, vindictive. And the worst part is, it’s not my fault! The ancestors are to blame — they behaved like the last pigs, and now I’m disentangling their past. And I myself am by nature kind and smart.
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If the client is in a trance, under the influence of the authority of the psychologist working with him, cannot object to him and accepts these assumptions, this opens up great opportunities for creativity inside his psyche. Now you can both solve the client’s problems and create them for him.
Where do subpersonalities come from, who creates them? Subpersonalities are created by psychologists and psychotherapists working with clients. If the client seemed convincing and liked it, then he creates subpersonalities for himself.
“The subpersonality is a convenient model that allows us to deal with the driving forces of the personality, but we must not forget that this is just a model that does not claim to be the original. When they talk about subpersonality, they mean a certain set of attitudes, behavioral stereotypes, beliefs, drives, etc., which takes on a holistic, distinguishable form only in our minds. Roberto Assagioli
The number and characteristics of subpersonalities can be different for different people, and it depends on how from actual personal characteristics, and from a person’s fantasy, a person’s readiness to assume one or another subpersonality.
The use of such a working metaphor as «subpersonality» has taken root in psychotherapeutic work. Such naming of habits and personality traits as subpersonalities for people with developed metaphorical thinking makes it possible to briefly and concisely describe a rich behavioral set in one word. A developed subpersonality has its own ethics and aesthetics, as well as peculiarities of physiology, posture, movements, intonations and facial expressions peculiar only to it. This forms a more serious attitude towards what is happening in the client and is more motivating. This is no longer just a habit, it is an enemy that must be fought! On the other hand, it is a convenient way to communicate with yourself and organize yourself: “Saboteur, I ask you not to interfere with me today!”
As for the cons, psychiatrists express concern — in their opinion, a person’s belief that many other living beings live in him can provoke schizophrenia. In addition, there are often cases when people begin to justify their actions by saying that it is not they themselves who are acting, but subpersonalities in them.
Remember the «Ordinary Miracle» …