Parts and Memory Therapy is the new name for Parts Psychology. We’ve chosen this name because it better represents the kind of counseling or psychotherapy that we do. The “Parts” in the name is necessary because the therapy recognizes that the mind is not a single, unified thing; rather, it is made up of many Parts or subpersonalities, each with its own submind. Therapy requires that we locate the emotional Parts or subpersonalities within the whole person that carry the problems. If a person has panic attacks, for example, we find the Part that has the panic attacks. Most likely, we don’t need to work with other Parts of the self, such as the romantic Part or the angry Part. “Memory” needs to be in the name because the healing of Parts, and therefore of the whole person, works through neutralizing the memories that are the foundation for the problem. For example, to heal the Part that has panic attacks, we need to seek out and then neutralize the memories that are the cause of the panic attacks. Quite often, these memories reach all the way back to childhood, but it’s possible for panic attacks to result from much more recent events recorded in memory. When we have neutralized the emotional memories connected to the relevant events, we have healed the Part and the person of panic attacks. The protocol for healing in counseling and psychotherapy within the framework of Parts and Memory Therapy has four major steps, easily stated, but often complex in application. I will talk a lot more about these steps in future blogs.
- Define the problem in simple terms, especially with emotion words.
- Locate the Part within the whole person that carries the problem for the person.
- Collect the (usually) disturbing memories that underlie a Part’s problem.
- Heal the problem by neutralizing the emotions connected to the disturbing memories.