Dear Readers,
We post our podcast, Interior Integration for Catholics, on YouTube, and we received a series of critiques from a listener, “MikeGrace-lk-7vp” on episodes 163, 165, 166, and 167. I’ve compiled his comments here and drafted a reply. We are actually very open to receiving critical feedback, and, working from the assumption that this listener responded in good faith, I’ve decided to craft a response.
Episode 165 Comment:
This all sounds like, "My name is Legion, for we are many." In the gospel account of a demoniac interrogated by Jesus. There can be no real good in a plurality of personalities in a single person. This whole system your peddling is not catholic, but appears to be encouraging people to develop some sort of alleged Dissociative Identity Disorder... Selling a sickness as a cure.
The following is in response to David Edwards’ reply in the Episode 165 comments:
First of all, a comment section is not spacious enough to thoroughly hash out the proof and reasons systematically. Secondly, technically you can't claim anything is catholic without the authority of the Church examining it by properly appointed theologians who have authority to declare an imprimatur or a nihil obstat. So, it is disingenuous to claim Catholicism as a basis for any of your claims. Thirdly, being Catholic myself, and familiar with the Church fathers, and Catholic sources you cite in other videos; it is obvious to me that you either do not comprehend their intended meaning, or you are intentionally misrepresenting them. Finally, I have someone close to me that is presently being taught thus IFS methodology in therapy. They have serious mental illness, and cognitive damage from recreational drug use among other issues. I can tell from interaction with them, that the therapy is making things worse, and driving them deeper into a delusional world. It also is fortifying their resistance to taking responsibility for their actions, and resistance to going to confession to deal with underlying real causes rooted in guilt. So, yes, I've seen first-hand the destructive effect of IFS.
This reminds me of the 1980's liberation theology. When atheistic Marxism highjacked social justice terminology from the Church to advocate for a socialism and communism that was hostile to the Church. Different topic... but same method. Steal language from Church tradition, redefine it with meanings outside the Church that have irreligious origins, then claim it's Catholic. I'm not in the therapy occupation, and it doesn't pay my bills, so I don't have the professional prosaic monotone demeanor in discussing this. I come at this from the discipline of theological study and epistemology. All ideas have origins. Founders of systems of thought are consequential. Who they are/were matters. For their character and spiritual state always leave a mark on the systems. IFS started outside the church. The notion that Schwartz rediscovered some ancient lost Church tradition that the theologians lost for centuries is absurd. If IFS was ever compatible with the Church tradition it would be commonplace in Catholic life from beginning to end... Nothing new undercover sun.
Episode 167 Comment:
Evagrius Ponticus and Internal Family Systems (IFS) theory are ultimately incompatible because they view the structural divisions of the human mind from radically different philosophical, theological, and functional standpoints. Evagrius Ponticus—a foundational 4th-century Christian monk and theologian—systematized an ascetic psychology designed to eradicate internal multiplicity to achieve union with God. In contrast, IFS therapy is built on the premise that multiplicity is a natural, healthy state, and the goal is to accept, unburden, and harmonize all internal "parts".
This is not an honest explanation of Church tradition. Evagrius did not teach anything remotely similar to IFS parts theory. His teaching emphasized a unifying of the soul, or being into a single harmonious person. The three primary parts he explained were nothing like sub-personalities, but different functions of the soul. Such as appetites, emotions, and the seat of the will, the intellect, imagination etc. None of these were distinct fractured personality fragments... or parts in the IFS sense. Moreover, his methodology, and that of monastic tradition was not promoting the notion of integrating and welcoming dysfunctional or destructive sub-personalities. Rather, based on St. Paul and other apostolic teaching, monastic tradition rejects destructive so-called parts as enemies of personal salvation. In scripture and monastic thought we are taught to mortify... meaning kill these negative aspects of the self. In baptism the old self dies, and a new self is created in the image and humanity of Christ. We are taught concepts like warring against the flesh, die to ourselves, deny ourselves daily... etc. Almost the opposite approach to IFS integration theory, embracing and welcoming things in us that Christianity teaches us to mortify. You are dabbling in dangerous stuff and hurting people by claiming this is Catholic.
I've personally communicated with Father Thomas Hopko years ago, while still alive. I don't think you are representing the Eastern Orthodox understanding correctly. What Father Hopko is not proposing IFS. The parts mentioned are not sub-personalities. They are thoughts, emotions, desires, passions of the flesh etc. I would suggest that you try to sell your IFS theory to the monks & abbots at Mt. Athos, and see what happens. I suspect, knowing some of the tradition of Eastern monasticism, that they would call you heretics doing the work of Satan.
Episode 166 Comment:
IFS concepts of sub-personalities as parts, has nothing in common with traditional/scriptural catholic anthropology. This gibberish your proposing is heretical. Human beings do have parts; such as body, imagination, senses, intellect, emotion, will, gender... and others. But human beings only have one personality, one true identity and soul. The idea you propose is like saying a single car has many steering wheels that steer the car, and that a car can drive in multiple directions in the same moment. Such an approach dies not heal mental/emotional illness, but rather provokes a delusional fracturing of identity. It creates false identities from memories, traumas, and perhaps even delusions. Thus giving these psychological disorders a sort of permission to be treated as equal partners with sanity. This system of pseudo-therapy is false and harmful.
My Response to MikeGrace-lk7vp
Dear Mike,
Thank you for taking the time to share your concerns so directly and with such evident passion for the Catholic faith. That passion is something I genuinely respect, and I want you to know that I take your objections seriously. You deserve a thoughtful response, not a dismissal.
Let me begin with what I believe is the most important thing you've said: you have someone close to you who is struggling deeply, and you are watching them suffer. That is a heavy burden to carry, and I am truly sorry. Whatever our disagreements about theory or theology, please know that my heart goes out to you and to that person. If IFS, or any therapeutic approach, is being applied carelessly or without proper clinical judgment to someone with serious mental illness and cognitive challenges, that is a legitimate concern that I share. No model, including IFS, is a cure-all, and every good therapist knows that applying any model must be carefully and wisely tailored to the person in front of them. That is not a defense of poor practice; it is simply true.
Now, to your theological arguments, which are serious and deserve a serious reply.
On the question of multiplicity and Catholic anthropology
You write that "human beings only have one personality, one true identity and soul," and that the concept of parts or sub-personalities is therefore heretical. I want to gently but clearly push back on this, not by dismissing Catholic tradition, but by appealing to it more deeply.
Consider first the Psalmist, who in Psalm 139 declares that God "formed my inward parts,” the Hebrew word there is kilyah, sometimes translated as "innermost being." The Psalmist speaks of his heart instructing him in the night (Psalm 16), of sorrow dwelling in his heart, of his soul crying out. These are not merely poetic flourishes. They reflect a rich, layered understanding of the inner life that the Church has always taken seriously.
Saint Paul himself, in Romans 7, describes an interior conflict with striking psychological precision: "I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate... I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind." Here is the Apostle to the Gentiles describing what sounds remarkably like an experience of interior multiplicity: a conflict between different aspects of himself, each pulling in a different direction. Is Saint Paul describing Dissociative Identity Disorder? Of course not. Is he describing something more complex than a single, undivided, harmoniously integrated will? Clearly, yes.
The Church Fathers you invoke are actually quite helpful here, though I believe they support a more nuanced position than you have suggested. The Cappadocian Fathers (Saint Basil the Great, Saint Gregory of Nyssa, and Saint Gregory of Nazianzus) describe human nature as bearing the image (eikon) of God, but also as being in a process of growing into God's likeness (homoiosis). That distinction matters enormously. The image is inherent; the likeness is a goal, a telos, a process. Saint Gregory of Nyssa writes that man "has been created as a participant in every good." He yet clearly recognizes that sanctification is a lifelong journey of transformation, not an accomplished fact.
What does this mean for our inner life? It means that the human person is not simply a finished, perfectly integrated whole, but a being in process, carrying wounds, conflicting desires, burdened memories, and competing loyalties. The work of sanctification, of becoming more fully the image and likeness of God, involves the redemption and transformation of all of these aspects of ourselves. As I wrote in Litanies of the Heart, it is not only the "core self" that needs redemption. The whole person, including all of our inner experiences, needs God's grace.
On Evagrius and the monastic tradition
You make a genuinely interesting point about Evagrius Ponticus, and I appreciate that you have engaged the tradition at this level. You are correct that Evagrius emphasized a unification of the soul and that his goal was apatheia which is a freedom from disordered passions. But I would ask you to consider whether the monastic tradition's goal of unification necessarily requires the denial of our interior complexity.
What the Desert Fathers, and Evagrius in particular, were responding to was not the existence of interior experience, but the domination of the person by disordered passions. The goal was not to pretend those passions didn't exist, but to transform and order them under the governance of the nous (the intellect or mind) which the Eastern tradition saw as the faculty oriented toward God. That is, in fact, quite close to what we describe in the integrated Catholic model of parts work: the inmost self, the seat of the person in their deepest God-given identity, exercising wise and compassionate leadership over the parts of the interior life that have been burdened or distorted by sin, trauma, and fear.
You write that the monastic tradition teaches us to mortify the negative parts of ourselves, i.e., to kill them. I do not deny that the language of mortification is deeply embedded in Christian tradition. But I would invite you to consider what mortification actually accomplishes. It does not destroy the person. It purifies them. The alcoholic who mortifies his craving for drink does not amputate that part of his soul; he redeems it, transforms it, and discovers that beneath the craving was often a real longing, perhaps for belonging, for peace, and for God. The goal of Christian anthropology has never been the destruction of the human person, but its transfiguration.
Saint Paul's "old self" that dies in baptism is not the person themselves; it is the burdened, exiled, sin-bound condition of the person. The new self that emerges in Christ is the same person, now free, now whole, and now moving toward their true identity. That is not so far from what the integrated Catholic model of parts work is trying to describe.
On the question of Church authority and the imprimatur
You make the fair point that claiming something is "Catholic" carries weight, and that such claims are properly subject to the judgment of the Church. You are right that no private individual or organization can unilaterally declare their work to be fully in conformity with Catholic teaching. We acknowledge that freely. What I would say is that we are engaged in an ongoing, serious, and genuinely humble conversation with Catholic theology, philosophy, and anthropology, not claiming a closed case, but inviting rigorous engagement. Dr. Peter Malinoski has hosted Catholic philosophers, theologians, and educators specifically to examine these questions. We welcome scrutiny. We are not asking anyone to accept our work uncritically.
I would also note that the absence of an imprimatur does not make something heretical. Many excellent works of Catholic theology, spirituality, and pastoral care carry no imprimatur. The imprimatur process exists primarily for works of doctrine and catechesis, not for works of applied psychology offered in conversation with the Catholic tradition.
On the comparison to Liberation Theology
This is a striking analogy, and I understand its rhetorical force, but I think it does not hold. Liberation Theology, as critiqued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was problematic primarily because it subordinated theological categories to a prior ideological commitment (specifically, Marxist class analysis) and allowed that ideology to redefine Christian concepts like salvation, sin, and the Kingdom of God. The concern was that the theological content was being hollowed out and replaced.
What we are doing is the opposite. We are taking a psychological framework, primarily Internal Family Systems, which Richard Schwartz developed from clinical observation, and we are subjecting it to theological scrutiny. Where IFS concepts are compatible with Catholic anthropology, we retain them. Where they are not, and I am quite explicit about this in my critique of Schwartz's own No Bad Parts, we correct or replace them. For example, I take direct issue with Schwartz's claim that the Self is the same substance as the divine "SELF." That is not Catholic teaching, and we say so clearly.
The question is not whether IFS originated outside the Church. Many things the Church has used and enriched did not originate within her walls. Aristotle was not a Christian. Much of the vocabulary of Trinitarian theology was borrowed from Greek philosophy and baptized into a new and deeper meaning. Saint Thomas Aquinas did not invent the wheel of philosophical reasoning, but he received it from a pagan tradition and sanctified it. The Church has always done this. As Saint Justin Martyr wrote of the logos spermatikos, the seeds of the Word scattered throughout human reason and culture, the Church has a long tradition of discerning what is true and good in human thought and bringing it into the light of Christ.
A few additional thoughts
You yourself acknowledge that human beings have parts: body, imagination, senses, intellect, emotion, and will. You list them right there in your comment. And in doing so, you have already conceded the foundational premise of parts work. The question then is not whether the human person has an interior complexity, but how we understand, name, and engage with it. That is a much more nuanced question than "heresy or not."
Now, to your car analogy. I appreciate the creativity, but I think it actually illuminates a misunderstanding of what we mean by parts. We are not saying the human person has multiple steering wheels pulling in opposite directions as a healthy or desired state. Quite the opposite. We are saying that when a person has experienced trauma, neglect, shame, or wounding, parts of their interior life can become burdened, reactive, and disconnected from the governance of the inmost self, and that is precisely the disordered condition that needs healing. The goal of parts work is not to celebrate fragmentation. The goal is integration, which the Catechism itself calls "the inner harmony of the human person" (CCC 376). We are aiming at the same destination you are pointing toward.
You write that we are "creating false identities from memories and traumas." But Mike, this gets things exactly backwards. The burdened parts that carry traumatic memories and distorted beliefs are not created by parts work. They already exist in the wounded person. They are the reason people struggle, dissociate, act out, feel shame, and find it so difficult to sustain interior peace or even to pray. Parts work does not invent these inner experiences. It names them, brings them into the light, and invites the healing grace of God to reach them. As I mentioned before, Saint Paul himself described this interior conflict with remarkable precision: "I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate... I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind" (Romans 7:15, 23). Was Saint Paul describing a disordered, delusional fracturing of identity? Or was he honestly naming the lived reality of the wounded human heart?
You raise a concern I take very seriously: that giving attention to burdened or disordered aspects of the interior life somehow grants them an illegitimate equality with the healthy self. But consider how the Good Shepherd operates. He does not stay with the ninety-nine who are well and simply ignore the one who is lost. He goes after the lost one: the frightened part, the shamed part, the angry part that has been wounded and driven into exile, and he brings it home. That is not permission for disorder. That is redemption.
The inmost self, which I correlate with the "core self" or the "eye of the soul" in our tradition, is not dethroned by this process. It is restored to its rightful place of loving leadership over the whole interior life. As Saint Basil the Great wrote, we possess rational being by means of the image, and we become the likeness through the Christian life. That becoming is a process. It involves the whole person, every part, being transformed by grace. As I have written: "As the whole self-system works together in harmony, it begins to reflect God's likeness more and more."
This is not a fracturing of identity. It is the slow, grace-filled work of integration and of becoming, as Saint Thomas Aquinas would say, more fully what we were created to be. Grace perfects nature. It does not bypass it.
A final word
Mike, I hear beneath your words a genuine love for the Church and a real fear that people are being misled or harmed. That fear is not unreasonable, and I would not want to dismiss it. The integration of psychology and faith is a serious undertaking and one that requires ongoing vigilance, humility, and accountability.
What I would ask of you is what David already invited you to consider: look at the fruit. Not the fruit of a poorly applied therapy in a complex clinical case, but the fruit of people who have, through this work, come to know themselves more deeply, to bring more of themselves to God in prayer, and to go to confession with greater honesty and less shame, to love their neighbors with less reactivity and more compassion. That fruit exists, and I have seen it in my years of clinical work, and many members of the Resilient Catholic Community have attested to it.
The tree is known by its fruit. I invite you to look carefully before rendering your verdict.
With genuine respect and gratitude for the conversation,
Dr. Gerry Crete
Author of Litanies of the Heart
Co-founder of Souls and Hearts
MikeGrace, if you would like to reply or have other concerns, please feel free to reach out to me at gerry.soulsandhearts@gmail.com