IIC 176: The Catholic Catechism Guides Our Parts Work

A sure norm for teaching the faith – that’s what the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) is, according to St. John Paul II.  Today, Elizabeth Galanti, Dr. Gerry, and Dr. Peter look at what the CCC has to say about parts work,  human formation, divided hearts, healthy multiplicity vs. inner fragmentation, self-knowledge, self-governance, self-love, inner unity, sexual sins, the body, and hope.  And all of this in our effort to ground Internal Family Systems and other parts and systems approaches in an authentically Catholic understanding of the human person, informed by the Catechism. Why? So you can flourish.

For the full video experience with all our visuals, gestures, and graphics, and for conversation and sharing in the comments section, check us out on our YouTube channel here:  www.youtube.com/@InteriorIntegration4Catholics

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[00:00:00] Dr. Peter: We here at Souls and Hearts are committed to absolute fidelity to the Catholic Church, 100%, no exceptions. We start with the perennial truths of the Catholic faith as the bedrock foundation of all of our work. One of the tragedies of the 20th century was documented in Robert Kugelmann’s 2011 book Psychology and Catholicism: Contested Boundaries, and he details in that book the history of the 20th century, when so many Catholic psychologists, so many Catholic psychiatrists left the faith. Many, many, most of the leading Catholic thinkers in the field abandoned the church between 1900 and 1962. By my count, more than 80%, close to 90%, of the leading Catholic thinkers in psychology, apostatized. Now, there were many reasons for that, but it really struck a chill in my heart.

[00:01:06] Dr. Peter: Now on my day of particular judgment, I will be responsible to God for every word I speak. I will be accountable for every word I write, everything I teach or share through Souls and Hearts. I will stand before the throne of God and all my actions will be laid bare, everything I did and everything I didn’t do. Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, a bishop in the fourth century said, “The Church is called Catholic because it teaches fully and unfailingly all the doctrines which ought to be brought to men’s knowledge, whether concerned with visible or invisible things, with the realities of heaven or the things of earth.” And that’s why centuries later, Saint Ignatius of Loyola could say, “We must put aside all judgment of our own and keep the mind ever ready and prompt to obey in all things the true spouse of Christ our Lord, our holy mother, the hierarchical church.”

[00:02:10] Dr. Peter: Alright, now let’s play Jeopardy. Alex, I’ll take church documents for $400. And then Alex Trebek says, “In 1992, Pope John Paul II referred to this document as, 1) a statement of the Church’s faith and of Catholic doctrine, attested to or illumined by sacred scripture, apostolic tradition, and the church’s magisterium, 2) A valid and legitimate instrument for ecclesial communion, and 3) a sure norm for teaching the faith. Now, if you respond, “what is the Catechism of the Catholic Church?” You are correct. These descriptions of the Catechism of the Catholic Church as a statement of the church’s faith and of Catholic doctrine, a valid and legitimate instrument for ecclesial communion, and a sure norm for teaching the faith, that’s from St. John Paul II. He wrote that in paragraph four of Fidei Depositum, the apostolic constitution that promulgated the Catechism.

[00:03:17] Dr. Peter: St. John Paul II went on to say that, “The Catechism of the Catholic Church is offered to every individual who wants to know what the Catholic Church believes.” I want to know what the Catholic Church believes. I want a sure norm for teaching the faith. I want a text which contains the fundamental Catholic truths formulated in a way that facilitates their understanding, as the US Catholic Bishops describe. I want a comprehensive summary of Catholic teaching, a guidebook of Catholic beliefs. And so the Catechism of the Catholic Church is a tremendous gift to me. It’s a tremendous gift to all of us at Souls and Hearts. We are doing so much, here at Souls and Hearts, so much innovative work to bring the best of both Catholic and non-Catholic human formation resources together for you, sifting out the wheat from the chaff of secular sources from the last 4,000 years, from the earliest writings to modern times, to the present day. And we ground all of those resources in an authentic Catholic understanding of the human person. That’s what we do. And we do it with a great love for the Catholic Church.

[00:04:24] Dr. Peter: Saint Cyprian in section six of his third century book De Ecclesiae Catholicae Unitate, which translates to, On the Unity of the Church, he said, “You cannot have God as your father unless you have the Church for your mother.” And we love the Church as our mother. We embrace the teaching authority of the Catholic Church. And so let’s do this. I’m Dr. Peter Malinoski, also known as Dr. Peter. I am your host and guide in this Interior Integration for Catholics podcast. I’m so glad to be with you. I’m a clinical psychologist, a trauma therapist, a podcaster, a writer, the co-founder and president of Souls and Hearts. But most of all, I am a beloved little son of God, a passionate Catholic who wants to help you to taste and see the height and depth and breadth and the warmth and the light of the love of God, especially God, your father, and also Mary your mother, your spiritual parents, your primary parents. I am here to help you embrace your identity as a beloved little child of God, as a beloved little son or daughter of Mary, and a beloved little child, a beloved little son or daughter of mother Church.

[00:05:57] Dr. Peter: And all this year in 2025, we are doing a deep dive into Internal Family Systems, IFS, parts work, and Catholicism. We are bringing the insights from IFS, developed by Richard Schwartz, and we’re also bringing in things from other parts and systems models, and we’re harmonizing them with the truths of the Catholic faith. Why? Because I want to help you live out the three great loves in the two great commandments: to love God, to love your neighbor, and to love yourself. That’s what this is all about. And this is episode 176 of the Interior Integration for Catholics podcast. It releases on November 3rd, 2025, and it’s titled The Catholic Catechism and Parts Work.

[00:06:42] Dr. Peter: And I’m excited to have back for this episode of the Interior Integration for Catholics podcast, my colleague, my dear friend, Dr. Gerry Crete. He’s a licensed marriage and family therapist in Atlanta, Georgia. He’s the founder and owner of Transfiguration Counseling, and he and I, in 2019, we co-founded Souls and Hearts. It’s been going strong for years now. Dr. Gerry is the author of the book, Litanies of the Heart. He’s a leading Catholic thinker. He’s a synthesizer in this whole area of Catholic parts work. It is so good to have you with us, Dr. Gerry. I am just so pleased that we’re gonna be able to spend some time talking about the Catechism together today.

[00:07:26] Dr. Gerry: Yeah, I am excited to be here. Great topic. I happen to have my original first Catechism I ever got, which was printed by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops back in 19, I think 89. So I still use it and I like it.

[00:07:44] Dr. Peter: And I have this one, with the theological commentary, which I happen to really like, which is a little bit newer. So we’re gonna be able to experiment with this and so forth. And I’m so glad to announce the debut of Elizabeth Galanti on this podcast. Elizabeth is a licensed mental health counselor in Florida. She earned her MBA at age 24, and she worked in corporate America for 20 years. Then in 2005, Elizabeth started to see a Catholic IFS therapist for an issue she was having. And she fell in love with the IFS model as a client. And then Elizabeth was surprised to hear God calling her, go back to graduate school and become a Catholic IFS therapist. So in 2008, Elizabeth joyfully started her new journey by returning to graduate school and attending an IFS Level 1 training. And she has spent the last 20 years, integrating IFS, harmonizing IFS with the Catholic faith. She went to level 2 training, level 3 training, and now she’s living out how IFS can be a powerful, transformational and redemptive experience in healing for her clients. She is now a certified IFS therapist and an approved IFS clinical consultant.

[00:09:02] Dr. Peter: Elizabeth and her husband Joseph and Cozy, their 30 pound Australian labradoodle, they’ve called Buffalo, New York, their home for the last 15 years, but they’ve just moved to Ave Maria, Florida, and she’s living there full time. She maintains licenses in both New York and Florida, sees her clients via telehealth. And Elizabeth believes that to be a good Catholic therapist, it must come from inside. She’s a devout Catholic. Her worldview is shaped by the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Her Catholic faith is the bedrock of her personal and professional life. And with all of that, it is so good to have you with us, Elizabeth. What an honor, what a pleasure to have you on here.

[00:09:42] Elizabeth Galanti: Thank you. That’s my honor.

[00:09:46] Dr. Peter: Let’s just start off with, why have a whole episode on the Catechism and that might be obvious to some of us, but kind of thinking about this and not everybody may know why the Catechism would be important for us to bring in at this point. So I’m just curious for both of you, what does the Catechism mean? Why is it important? Why should we be talking about it in an episode?

[00:10:14] Dr. Gerry: Well, I would just say, I feel like it was a good fruit of Vatican II, and it was a good fruit of St. John Paul II’s whole ministry. And I think that even though we spend a lot of time, you know, and in Souls and Hearts and so on, with the right side of the brain, like to understand, you know, go deeper into the interior life and to understand our parts and all that. The Catechism is a left brain activity, which is important because you need to have them grounded. And so the fact that there’s this more modern, accessible, understandable compilation of what we believe as Catholics that’s accessible and helpful, I think is imperative. So it’s an incredible gift to the church.

[00:11:01] Elizabeth Galanti: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I would agree with that. And the other thing that comes to mind too, is what I find when people call me, they wanna talk to me a little bit about who I am as a therapist and what type of therapy that I do. I find that it’s exceptionally important to Catholics, it seems, these days, to have a therapist themselves who’s grounded in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, as well as to use a modality that aligns with the Church, that more and more people are a little bit leery. They don’t wanna get into anything that’s new age that’s gonna violate their beliefs or thinking. So in addition to what Gerry said, it’s just this grounding force as a therapist for clients, for the community, that we’re all operating from something that has been approved by the Catholic Church.

[00:12:04] Dr. Peter: Mm-hmm. It’s a great gift. It’s a great gift. And one more thing that I like about it is that it contains these references too. If you wanna learn more, there’s all these quotes. There’s I don’t know how many thousand footnotes in it, if you want to find out more from Scripture, from the Early Church Fathers, from St. Thomas Aquinas, from St. Augustine. It’s like a launch pad for all kinds of future exploration. And then I also really like the fourth part of it on prayer. It’s one of my favorite resources on prayer actually. And so that was a particular gift to me when the Catechism came out in the early nineties.

[00:12:41] Dr. Gerry: One thing to say about it too is that the Catechism has parts. There’s a whole section on liturgy, like there’s a whole section on the moral life. There’s a section, like you say, on prayer. So I mean, it’s divided, in a way I feel like that is useful and helpful in multiple parts of our lives and so it really is just an amazing resource, rich resource.

[00:13:11] Elizabeth Galanti: Yeah.

[00:13:13] Dr. Peter: So I’m gonna just invite each of you, and it might be the same paragraph, I don’t know, but just each of you to kind of launch us with one paragraph or one even line of a paragraph that you see as really relevant to this question around parts and systems thinking, Internal Family Systems, a way of understanding how we can do parts work, that, as you were saying, Elizabeth, is really grounded in a Catholic anthropology, a Catholic understanding of the human person, a Catholic worldview. And so just what might be there? Or if there’s anything there that seems to contradict it, that contraindicates it? You know, so our viewers can kind of like get into like, where are we thinking about this? How are we thinking about this?

[00:14:02] Dr. Gerry: I have one.

[00:14:06] Elizabeth Galanti: Oh, good.

[00:14:08] Dr. Gerry: Well, and it’s in the whole section on chastity, right. And I think we’re gonna probably spend a lot of time there. But if I could read 2340, I think that one is probably the most powerful one. And it’s where they’re actually quoting Saint Augustine, which we have covered in our show and seen it. But the passage is, “Whoever wants to remain faithful to his baptismal promises and resist temptations will want to adopt the means for doing so.” So we mentioned self-knowledge, practice of asceticism adapted to the situation that confronts him, obedience to God’s commands, exercise of the moral virtue, and fidelity to prayer. So there’s all those, and it quotes, “Indeed it is through chastity.” Here’s the biggie. “We are gathered together and led back to the unity from which we were fragmented into multiplicity.” And there’s a lot there. And even just to break down what is meant by a fragmentation? What does it mean to go back to unity? Is multiplicity a good or a bad in this passage? Like there’s just a lot there to unpack.

[00:15:19] Dr. Peter: Obviously that’s landing with you, too, Elizabeth, so I’m just curious like what’s up for you with this particular paragraph, 2340?

[00:15:26] Elizabeth Galanti: Yeah, and what I was thinking as you were reading that, Gerry, and you’re right, it’s probably one of the best single entities that really starts to get into the heart of parts work. And I think that when people are reaching out for help, when they’re saying something’s not going on in my life, even though they might not describe it necessarily with these words, in a way they’re talking about something that’s fragmented. I’m drinking too much, I’m eating too much. I’m angry too much. I’m people pleasing too much. I’m gambling too much. That they realize that they’re a bit distorted and fragmented in the way that they’re leading their life.

[00:16:12] Elizabeth Galanti: And they reach out for help because they say, I know that there’s something going on inside of me that’s not quite right, and maybe even after I drink too much, then the next day I’m shaming myself. I’m telling myself what a bad person I am, and they feel further fragmented. And the big question that people typically have when they’re feeling this way of, I know I’m feeling this way, but now what? How do I get back to feeling in a more integrated way in my body, my heart, my soul?

[00:16:47] Dr. Gerry: I love that. I love that because multiplicity in our understanding is not necessarily a battle by itself. But there’s an interesting harmony between our multiplicity, our inner multiplicity, and our unity. You know, they’re united, if you will. Like, they’re not in opposition. Whereas what you’re talking about with all these impulses and all these things that are fragmenting us, it’s a multiplicity, yeah. But it’s fragmented. It’s disconnected, in disharmony, and the person feels that. And then, like you said, I love what you just said about shame. Like, you know, after doing whatever you do that’s based on this fragmentation, then there’s other parts that are shaming. There’s other parts that are dysregulated as a result. And so, you know, creates all this inner chaos.

[00:17:33] Dr. Gerry: And so this whole section on chastity and I hope we get back to it. I wanna talk about chastity because why is the chastity that is the thing that integrates, you know? But nevertheless, this passage, and I think what you’re saying is, how do we get there, is about integration. And this passage literally says, you know, it’s through self-knowledge. It’s through, they say ascesis or ascetic kind of, so discipline, self-discipline, self-knowledge, obedience, and moral virtue, and prayer are the ways to get there.

[00:18:05] Elizabeth Galanti: Yeah.

[00:18:06] Dr. Gerry: Of course, there’s lots of questions around exactly what that looks like, but they’re giving us the roadmap in this very passage. It’s amazing. And we’ll just keep going even though Peter’s not here. So what are your thoughts on that?

[00:18:19] Elizabeth Galanti: Yeah, absolutely. And where that also takes me, as Peter asked a question a moment ago, kind of what my favorite passage is. It’s right before, let’s see, you said 2340. I love 2339, and that importance of self-governance. And I also love, there’s so many words in here that I love, and I’ll just read a portion of it. “Chastity includes an apprenticeship in self- mastery.” So I love that word, self-mastery. “Which is a training in human freedom.” Oh, love the word freedom.

[00:18:58] Dr. Gerry: Yeah.

[00:19:00] Elizabeth Galanti: “The alternative is clear. Either man governs his passions and finds peace.” So let’s put that in one bucket. Let’s see, do I wanna govern my passions and find peace? “Or he lets himself be dominated by them and becomes unhappy.” Hmm.

[00:19:20] Dr. Gerry: Yeah.

[00:19:21] Elizabeth Galanti: Which would I rather have?

[00:19:24] Dr. Gerry: It’s so obvious and yet people stay stuck in the latter, right? They stay stuck in, you know, being dominated by those passions. And you just listed a whole bunch of them earlier, you know, whether it’s alcohol use or drugs or some other thing that is driving, you know, this disintegration. I mean, they use these sort of more Church terms, like govern your passions, but really, when you think about IFS, like it’s about connecting with your parts, unburdening them. So there’s a freedom. The whole person’s not enslaved by a burdened part.

[00:19:59] Elizabeth Galanti: Exactly.

[00:20:00] Dr. Gerry: Yeah. So freedom is when you unburden the part and the part is able to be what it’s supposed to be, and the system is working together in harmony for the good, then you will have this human freedom. It’s beautiful.

[00:20:12] Elizabeth Galanti: Absolutely. And it ties into that definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. But it can be such a quandary for people of, okay, I get that, but how do I get off the hamster wheel?

[00:20:29] Dr. Gerry: Yeah.

[00:20:30] Elizabeth Galanti: How do I stop doing what I’m doing so that I can start to experience some of this freedom that you’re talking about? You know, the happy, joyous freedom, that most people want in life. But it just seems so elusive when we’re caught up in these behaviors and thinking.

[00:20:50] Dr. Gerry: And you know, my experience with this, which is interesting, which is what I think a parts work or IFS approach brings that we don’t always get from the Church necessarily, or it’s not as obvious, would be the sense in which we take these parts that are sometimes blended, that are burdened. Maybe it’s a firefighter-type part that is acting out in some way. And instead of exiling it, condemning it, and shaming it, we bring it in, we bring it in closer, and we work with it and we love that part, which is really what Jesus did. But for some reason in our tradition, sometimes we have a tendency to just go, oh, I have to like condemn, you know, whatever’s bad in me and just like send it away. And I get that, but it’s actually counterproductive.

[00:21:38] Elizabeth Galanti: Exactly. Yeah. It doesn’t work.

[00:21:43] Dr. Gerry: It backfires. It may work, it may feel like it works temporarily for a little while, briefly, but it backfires.

[00:21:51] Elizabeth Galanti: It backfires. Absolutely.

[00:21:53] Dr. Gerry: And so the two things, I don’t know if you wanna keep reading ’cause it’s so profound, 2339.

[00:21:59] Elizabeth Galanti: Actually let me keep reading. So, ” Man’s dignity, therefore requires him to act out of conscious and free choice, as moved and drawn in a personal way from within, and not by blind impulses in himself or by mere external constraint. Man gains such dignity, when, ridding himself of all slavery to the passions, he presses forward to his goal by freely choosing what is good, and by his diligence and skill, effectively secures for himself the means suited to the end.”

[00:22:40] Dr. Gerry: Hmm. That is profound. And it’s using certain language, Catechism language, but it maps beautifully with an IFS perspective because, you know, I love, first of all, not by blind impulses. So, I mean, you could read it a little negatively, but if you look at parts when they are burdened, they act out of blind impulses, especially firefighters, right? But what is it saying though? Rid yourself of slavery to passions. So it shouldn’t be a violent thing to the part, right? You might be tempted to think that. No, it’s to rid of the blind passions. IFS provides a way to do that, that is nonviolent and really effective.

[00:23:26] Elizabeth Galanti: Yes. And going off of that, what I like so much too is, people need help. They say, I have this behavior, or I’m doing this thing, or I’m thinking in this way. It’s not serving me well and I don’t know how to stop. And then some of that freedom starts to become more aware to the person when yes, we do put some focus on the behavior because we wanna understand that part, whether it’s a manager or a firefighter, we wanna get a better understanding. But as soon as we start to get more insight and better understanding of, why this part does what it does, what is the vulnerability? Typically, when I’m talk to clients, I talk about kind of protectors being up here, and I tend to refer to kind of this deeper part of our body, more of the belly area, where there’s some weakness there, there’s some fear there, there’s burdened beliefs there. And that’s what’s driving, that’s like the flame in the test tube that’s causing those protectors to work so hard and to be able to negotiate with those protectors that people might not like. I don’t like the fact that I drink too much. Yeah, I get that. And what if we could actually do something to heal that fear of failure so that this didn’t have to happen so much? And all of a sudden you start seeing those light bulb moments, the what? We heal this and this starts to dissipate? Yeah.

[00:25:01] Dr. Gerry: Well, you’re working with the part when you access the inmost self. When you access that, you’re opening up a communication between this part, like you’re talking about, say this part that is drinking too much and you’re opening up a communication where all of a sudden they’re connecting, and you’re not pushing it away. You’re connecting with it. And so you’re giving it options and you’re opening up and saying, you know, I think what I’m hearing in you, like this part of me, is that you don’t want to continue this way. This is just the only way you know how. And so all of a sudden there’s this option to be able to say, what if we could find a new way? And what if that way, as the Catechism puts it, is choosing the good?

[00:25:48] Elizabeth Galanti: Yeah.

[00:25:49] Dr. Gerry: So you’re really transforming this part of you, which is what this Catechism is ultimately saying in other places, like in 2337, the inner unity of men, you’re bringing about inner unity in this healing process, not more disintegration where parts are being shoved away. So yeah, I love what you’re saying. 

[00:26:12] Elizabeth Galanti: Yeah. And it really does turn into a win-win. You know, when we talk about the freedom and being able to pursue happiness, it’s a win-win for us as human beings, as well as our parts, as they’re becoming more integrated and they realize. So often I’ll hear from clients, from their parts, and it says, “I don’t wanna be in charge anymore. I don’t wanna be in the driver’s seat.” And the fact that you, from this innermost place, this inmost self, that there can be healing there in this deeper level, so I don’t have to work so hard. I, the protector don’t have to work so hard. Bring it on.

[00:26:56] Dr. Gerry: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. I love it. I think we’re in total agreement. And what I think is interesting is, I mean, the Church has this document, right, this Catechism, and other places, where it says, this is what you need to do. But it doesn’t, to be honest, like it doesn’t always tell you how to get there. Like just to say, go pray, have self-knowledge, self-mastery, and go pray, right? Like, and I love it and it’s all true, but how? And I do think that this process, and I’m not saying that IFS or ego state therapy or any of this parts work is the only way to do it. It’s the only possible way to do it. But I do think it gives a little roadmap and it gives you tools to actually get there.

[00:27:39] Elizabeth Galanti: Absolutely.

[00:27:40] Dr. Gerry: So the marriage of these two things, our faith and these psychological methods is a gift. We shouldn’t be afraid of it. We should actually, like if it’s been tested and vetted, it’s a gift to the Church.

[00:27:53] Elizabeth Galanti: Absolutely. And that also makes me think, and it ties back to something that, Peter, you had asked at the very beginning in terms of the importance of the Catechism. And how I look at IFS, is that Dr. Richard Schwartz did an absolutely beautiful and brilliant job of developing this model. Of course, as Catholics, we look differently at the definition of self as opposed to the one that he put forward. And Gerry, I like the way that you describe it in your book, imost self. I probably have started to use that term more frequently now that I’ve heard you describe it.

[00:28:33] Dr. Gerry: Nice.

[00:28:34] Elizabeth Galanti: So thank you for that. And at the same time, so IFS is this beautiful model that he developed and how I think of it is there’s a plugin, like there’s a hole there for the spirituality to be plugged in. So what are we going to plug in as Catholic therapists? What are we going to plug into here? Well, I’m gonna plug in the Catechism and I’m gonna bring in Christian concepts and Jesus and Our Lady because the IFS model is waiting for it. It’s like I almost think of that as the energizer pack that’s going to take us further and help this person in their journey of healing.

[00:29:20] Dr. Gerry: Yeah. Oh, I love that. I love that. Well, because even something like the question of original sin. You know, in my book, I coined the term original trauma because I think it’s a helpful one to reimagine that. But there’s still the truth of original sin. And in IFS, you might start thinking, oh, there is no sin. I think there is a reality to sin and evil that we need to contend with, and we can’t just, you know, pretend it’s not there. But I think that when you marry these concepts, you start to understand, ooh, well, this inmost self, I love the way that the Greek fathers and some of the Eastern Christian perspective on the nous, this inner knowing, this inner knowing of love, kind of thing, the nous is covered up or darkened. They say the darkened nous. Ooh, well, that blends so beautifully, right? Because if the nous is darkened, then that’s where burdened parts land, right? So there’s no access to this deep spiritual center. And so, if the process of illumination, which is a wonderful term in our mystical Catholic tradition, illumination is un-darkening this nous, opening it up. So the inmost self, you know, I love that you’re using the term now, inmost self is available. It’s running, it’s the center of it all. It is the center of who I am as a person. And the more that that’s un-darkened, the more that that’s available, the more beautiful person I become.

[00:30:53] Elizabeth Galanti: That’s right. I love that. And I use a very similar analogy where everyone has an inmost self. And what happens as, original sin, as we go through life and we’re sinning, we’re picking up bad behaviors, bad habits, things were modeled for us in un-Christ-like ways, all these different ways that trauma can impact us as a child and adolescents, that I think of these protectors as kind of crowding in, these protectors and our vulnerabilities, crowding in. And just like on a cloudy day, we know that the sun is up there, but we don’t have access to it because the clouds have gotten in the way, in the same way with our inmost self, just as you were describing those clouds or that darkness, that starts to cover, well, Internal Family Systems, IFS, it gives us a way to part those clouds, part the darkness, so that we do have the ability to access it, and it’s absolutely beautiful to experience and to see.

[00:31:59] Dr. Gerry: Yeah. And we shouldn’t be afraid of it. Like I know some, for some people, some Christians have a difficulty with psychology and they’re like, Ooh, it’s all, you know, comes out of a bad place or whatever. And I get that because I do think there are real issues with some areas of psychology. But psychology in its purest sense is about understanding the human psyche and understanding the human person. And what could be good in that science, what can be found to be true and good in that science, should be used in a positive way to understand our spirituality and understand our interiority. And I think that’s where these two things can come together, like you’re saying, to help part those clouds to help access it. It’s the how. Theology tells you what it should be sometimes, but effective sciences that are proven and they’re, you know, tested against faith, can be useful in the how. And so I get so excited, you know.

[00:33:00] Elizabeth Galanti: Absolutely.

[00:33:01] Dr. Peter: Well, and I would say this too, sometimes I think people look up IFS maybe on YouTube or Google and they find some really different anthropologies or understandings of the human person. There’s a lot of sort of Buddhism, for example, that gets blended in with IFS and a lot of different quarters. And so yes, absolutely, we want to make sure that we’re grounding this in a Catholic understanding of the human person, which is why the Catechism, you know, is obviously a go-to resource. But I would also say that, yeah, for any of these human formation approaches, we should be doing the same thing. It shouldn’t just be for IFS, you know? Yes, of course we wanna do that. We spend a lot of time doing that in Souls and Hearts. But for any of these approaches, you know, we should be doing that. And I don’t think it’s the church’s, the institutional church or the hierarchical church’s responsibility to do the human formation work, like to actually lay all that out. In fact, Vatican II is very clear. There’s other places where this is very clear that Catholic laypeople are to be helping with that. You know, just like it’s not the church’s responsibility to figure out all the finer points of economics or the finer points of how you study history or other things.

[00:34:17] Dr. Peter: You know, what I encourage people to do is to find something that helps you with self-knowledge, you know, with self-governance, right, which implies all this relationship amongst different parts of the self and especially self-love, ordered self-love, because that’s part of that second great commandment, to love your neighbor as yourself. And so whatever human formation you’re looking at, let’s make sure that it’s getting to that progression of human formation that the bishops talk about in the Program for Priestly Formation 6th Edition: self knowledge, self possession, self gift. That’s the progression that they talk about. And so, but Gerry, I know you got something.

[00:35:02] Dr. Gerry: I’m dying to say. it’s a great segue to 2346, which says that “Charity is the form of all the virtues. But under its influence, chastity appears as a school of the gift of the person.” And so what I love in this is that to say charity or love is the form of all the virtues means that, it’s so fascinating because this is a theological kind of a statement, which you could go, oh, theoretically, I guess that’s true, must be true, they’re saying it in the Catechism. But in practice, in clinical practice, whenever you are connecting with a part, when you have accessed the self and you are connecting with a part, what do you often ask? Can you extend compassion to that part? Can you extend charity or love to that part? It’s more than the other seven Cs. They’re all important too, but it’s compassion that comes back over and over again. It’s loving the part. And so there’s literally a way to do that in this method, in this methodology is to like say, Hey, can you extend compassion? And I love the answers I get. People will tell you how they extend. Sometimes it’s physical, like holding that part or hugging that part, or holding their hand or whatever. And sometimes it’s more emotional, like it’s about what they want to share or say to that part. It doesn’t matter. It’s so beautiful because it gives them a way to love themselves in an ordered way. Isn’t that amazing? And then it’s here in the Catechism.

[00:36:33] Elizabeth Galanti: Yeah. And going off of what you’ve both said, the way that I like to say it is I talk about that when we can access this inmost self in relation to these parts, what happens is there’s this unconditional, and this is what you were saying, Peter, this is unconditional love for myself and what you were saying, Gerry, and for other people, that it’s this flow inside of myself that then starts to flow out to other people. And if that’s not Christlike, I don’t know what is.

[00:37:11] Dr. Gerry: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that takes us back to that theme, right? If we don’t have ordered self-love for ourselves, how on earth can we, in a healthy way, love others? I mean, we can in some measure, I’m sure, but it’s never gonna be as perfect as when we have this inner harmony, this inner self-love. And so the choice to love someone else flows from that purity and that unity. Then it’s like, it’s more of a pure love to others and that, you know, that fulfills that commandment of Christ. It’s unbelievable the way that all works together. I,

[00:37:45] Elizabeth Galanti: Yeah.

[00:37:45] Dr. Peter: Well, in this interior integration or this inner unity that we’re seeking, it’s required for us to be able to have union with God or union with another person. If we go back to that very first one, we were talking about, you know, the unity from which we were fragmented into multiplicity. That fragmentation, if we can bring all of these parts together under the leadership and guidance of the inmost self, then we can love wholeheartedly, which gets us back to the first great commandment, right? To love of the Lord thy God with thy whole heart. And you know, in your book you have this diagram on page 59. I come to it over and over again, page 300, I think it’s repeated, where all of the parts are in the heart. And so this successful integration that’s referred to in 2337, the integrity of the powers of life that’s referred to in paragraph 2338, you know, governance of the passions that we find in 2339, the self-mastery that we find in 2342. All of these themes that are coming out over and over again in the Catechism. 

[00:38:52] Dr. Peter: We have, as you were saying, a roadmap. We have like a guidance about what does it mean? And yes, it didn’t come from Richard Schwartz’s, you know, union with God. It didn’t come from his deep understanding of the philosophical and theological and spiritual traditions of the church. But just like Watson and Crick, who discovered the double helix structure of DNA. And these were men who were very bigoted in their anti-Catholicism. They hated Catholics. They were in the record. You know, we don’t reject the idea of the double helix structure of DNA because the discoverers of it weren’t operating from a purely Catholic perspective. But this is the best thing I found. And I know you have been too, Elizabeth, we’ve been searching for decades, collectively, you know, for what actually most helps our clients. And I’ll be really blunt about this, what’s been in my life most helpful to me in overcoming this sort of thing? Like it wasn’t the other models that I had, cognitive behavioral therapy, you know, the psychodynamic stuff. That stuff was helpful, but this was much more so when it came to specifically the three great loves and the two great commandments.

[00:40:02] Dr. Gerry: I love it. And you mentioned in 2338, the chaste person maintains the integrity of the powers of life and love.

[00:40:13] Dr. Peter: And love.

[00:40:15] Dr. Gerry: Placed in him.” Like, I don’t know, like that needs to be unpacked because that’s fascinating to me. Okay, powers of life, I think I get, but the integrity of the powers of love. You know, because it kind of comes back to this thing, like if you keep going in this section, they talk about offenses against chastity, which most people are aware of. Like, you know, whether it’s masturbation, lust, fornication, pornography, prostitution, all these things, they’re problems, right? But sometimes people will be like, well, why is the Church hung up on that? Most people are gonna agree rape is bad, right? But people are gonna say, well, why is it so bad to masturbate? And some people will even say, why is it so bad to look at pornography?

[00:40:56] Dr. Gerry: But the core of it is in what we are talking about is in this inner unity and in this sense of understanding what it really means to be searching for the good and searching for inner unity and harmony. And I think when you grasp that, these other offenses start to make more sense because without that basic foundational understanding of what it means to search for the good and then you would get a disintegration, you would get this sense in which, oh, the church has hung up on these sexual issues. Well, they’re not hung up on the sexual issues just because they’re sexual issues. They’re hung up because it really speaks to the inner integrity of the human person and what is the essence of love.

[00:41:41] Elizabeth Galanti: Yeah, exactly. And I’m gonna finish reading that 2338 that you started reading, because I’d love also the tail end of it because it brings together what you’re saying. “This integrity ensures the unity of the person.” So there’s the answer right there. It brings me more in a unified way. “It is opposed to any behavior that would impair it.” So those type of activities, it impairs us from being in a kind of a tic recollected, unified state. “It tolerates neither a double life,” I love this word, “nor duplicity.” I like saying that word duplicity.

[00:42:26] Dr. Gerry: Yeah. Yeah. No, thank you for finishing that, ’cause I think that is important. It does make what I have to say even make more sense. Thank you. Because I think like, I don’t know any guys that have never struggled with sexuality or looked at porn. I don’t know any guy that has never looked at pornography or never been enticed by that. And, you know, I don’t go around asking every guy, but I’m pretty certain. And so that is essentially a double life. Like you are separating out your sexuality and making it a private affair and you are disintegrating then something that’s internal in some way. And I think that once you start understanding in this context, it starts to make a lot more sense.

[00:43:08] Dr. Gerry: And you’re starting to go, oh, okay, well, what is actually the good? And then, you know, things like Humanae Vitae, where they’re saying like, sex is about two things, right? The unitive and the procreative. And all of a sudden, oh, I get it now. Like, that makes sense because that informs who you are as an integrated person, and it speaks to your telos, it speaks to your purpose and what you’re doing, and you start to realize, oh, what are the things in my life that go against that? Like, so I love it. Yeah, that impair that as the Catechism here says, that creates a double life. And we’re so comfortable living double lives or triple lives.

[00:43:49] Dr. Peter: That’s a bigger idea of unity, ’cause sometimes I think people, when they think about the unity of the human person, they’ll think about, okay, well, we’re a body and soul composite. Okay? So there’s a unity of the body and the soul. But if you read this. You know, it’s the integrity of the powers in life and love placed in a person that ensures the unity of the person. The integrity of the powers of life and love placed in a person isn’t necessary to keep the body and soul together. Like, that’s not what they’re talking about with that kind of unity. The unity here is much bigger. And what I like about this approach and why the Catechism leads with this in the section on chastity is that I think so often when we think about virtues, we’re thinking about like resisting temptations and not sinning.

[00:44:38] Dr. Peter: But what the Catechism is advocating here is that we be pursuing the good, that we be like seeking what our highest good is, and it involves this integrity of the powers of life. It involves the integrity of the powers of love. It involves this interior integration, this unity. It involves this governing of the passions in an ordered way. You know, and again, these passions, there’s this idea of multiplicity here, even with the passions. And we would think about this as, not so much as the part being a passion, but the part like engaged with a passion. You know, that the passion is, you know, being carried by a part or it’s being advocated by a part or increased by a part, you know? So there’s this way that parts thinking also helps us to appreciate that there’s a whole constellation involved with a passion.

[00:45:37] Dr. Peter: It’s not just resisting lust, for example, but what is a part that is seeking a sexual relationship with, you know, some other person or pornography or whatever. What is the good that they’re seeking? And can we go back to seeking the good with that part in a way that is ordered, using means that are healthy and that are morally beautiful instead of trying to take shortcuts or with parts’ limited vision, getting derailed and further into disintegration, further into fragmentation, further into sin, further into distance from our God and from other people.

[00:46:20] Elizabeth Galanti: And Gerry, I’m gonna ask you, because I was watching one of your podcasts from a while ago and you were talking about such an interesting concept and it made me think of it, Peter, with what you were just saying. And that concept was about the three eyes. Can you just talk a little bit about that? Because it just made me think, Peter, with what you were just saying. Can you explain that a little? Do you have any idea what I’m talking about?

[00:46:55] Dr. Gerry: I do. The problem is my brain’s not in that category at this moment, so I probably need to, whoa, jump over here. Can you remind me a little more of what I was saying? ‘Cause I do know about the Three Eyes. That was from like, I think Hugh of St. Victor or William. 

[00:47:10] Elizabeth Galanti: Yeah, and I wanna say maybe you are talking about the inmost self and it gives us the ability to intellectually understand things. Also the self-awareness that’s going on in here, and then the knowledge and the wisdom in our relationship with God. Alright. Maybe we just bypass that whole thing. ‘Cause I just gave you a pop quiz.

[00:47:31] Dr. Gerry: You did, and no, but you’re saying something profound and sometimes I say profound things and I forget that I say them. So I was worried where you were going. But I do think like there’s a spiritual eye, right? Like there’s a spiritual vision, right? Well, there’s a spiritual hearing and there’s a spiritual smell, even, there’s a spiritual touch. Like we have these spiritual senses and we don’t always realize, right? And so, you know, I have to think a little bit of how it connects here, but where we can see things in a whole new way with maybe a deeper level of wisdom, right?

[00:48:05] Elizabeth Galanti: Yes, that’s what I was thinking.

[00:48:07] Dr. Gerry: Yeah. Okay. Okay. So I think that when that is accessed, then this whole thing of governing our passions shifts. Because sometimes if I think of governing my passions, I’m thinking of like, how am I an authority? And I’m just gonna rein these guys in, right? Which is really different from, I think, where we’re going here with this perspective of love. And where, you know, we suddenly see it in the beauty that’s there. So we suddenly see with this spiritual vision, what is this beauty in this thing we’re being called to. And it’s not just, don’t look at porn, don’t masturbate, don’t do this, don’t do that, right? Which is how we tend to see it. Instead, it’s like, oh, no, no. Like, see the beauty of the human person. See the beauty in every human person you encounter. See the beauty in every woman. See the beauty in every man, right? Like, see what is so good and beautiful there that you would honor that and be just like blown away by what God has created. And so how do I love, truly love someone? And it changes. It’s no longer this, like, I can’t do all these things. It’s more like I want to love and I want to learn how to love in a way that is true, right? So it sparks this inner desire for the good. So I don’t know.

[00:49:33] Dr. Peter: Well, I was thinking about this in terms of paragraph 368 where it says, “The spiritual tradition of the church also emphasizes the heart, in the biblical sense of the depths of one’s being.” The depths of one’s being, that’s the heart. “Where each person decides for or against God.”

[00:49:52] Dr. Gerry: Well, yeah.

[00:49:53] Dr. Peter: And so now I’m thinking about like our hearts, you know, and Saint Augustine, we talked about this a lot in the episode we did on Saint Augustine, like about the divided heart, you know, and these are our parts, right? These are our parts. St. Thomas Aquinas was always about, you know, seeking the perceived good, might not be an actual good. There may be misperceptions, often are. But how do we give our parts what they really need so that our hearts are no longer restless, right? So that we decide for God, but not just with the inmost self and you know, this part and this part and this part, but also that part, you know, the one I’m talking about, that one, you know, and also that one and that one too. You know, because I see when I get to walk with people in various ways and they open up, I see so much division in hearts, so much division in hearts because of, you know, parts who don’t really understand who God is, who they are themselves, and who their neighbor is. You know, as you were kind of talking about.

[00:50:57] Dr. Peter: If we really understood the beauty of that model in a pornographic magazine or on a pornographic website, we would be in awe. You know, we would be amazed and yet we’re reducing, you know, that person down to sensual gratification, you know, a means of sensual gratification, and there’s a part that’s perhaps trying to connect in some really distorted way. You know, often there is, I see that a lot, but if we can bring in the positive instead of like, you know, turn the computer off or burn the magazines or whatever.

[00:51:31] Dr. Gerry: Well, you’re actually touching on something, I love that you brought up that passage about the heart from earlier in the Catechism. Earlier on, it was a number of years ago, and I’m gonna forget his name. Monty, I think it was, who’s a Thomist.

[00:51:43] Dr. Peter: Yeah. Monty De La Torre.

[00:51:44] Dr. Gerry: Yeah. And I had a brief interaction with him about the inmost self and the heart. And he said the heart is more like the conscience. And there was a part of me that reacted to that. ’cause I felt like that was like reducing it in some way. But I’ve actually come around. Obviously, oh, he is a Thomist and he just wants to like whatever. But you know, it’s too narrow. But no, the inmost self is not just conscience, but I do see more and more how the inmost self is the conscience, because the inmost self is the closest thing to the image of God within, or the most access to it. And it is in the most contact with God himself than anything.

[00:52:26] Dr. Peter: Well, can I push back on that a little bit? Can I push back a little bit on that? Because I’m not sure I agree.

[00:52:32] Dr. Gerry: Oh, okay.

[00:52:33] Dr. Peter: And I think this may be a difference between you and me, Dr. Gerry. And this is actually really important because it does highlight that, first of all, we don’t have it all figured out, and second of all, we can have different opinions about it. I really wonder, and the reason I wonder about this, and the reason I’m more likely to locate the inmost self in the natural realm as opposed to having it be like, at the very core of the human person, is because I’ve seen so many things where there’s been amazing healing, amazing growth between folks that are not baptized. You know, we wouldn’t expect them to have sanctifying grace. You know, there’s things that are going on in the natural realm that are really, really critical, really amazing. And so I wonder, like, if there isn’t some of these things going on actually just in the natural realm.

[00:53:24] Dr. Peter: Now, maybe that’s not in disagreement at all. Maybe you would say, well, you know, people that are not in sanctifying grace have consciences too, you know, and so, okay. So maybe that’s a way that we bring this around. But I do really have to somehow make sense of like the amazing things that happen without sanctifying grace in the lives of people that are engaged with IFS that I’ve seen in my trainings, that I’ve seen in conferences when I’ve seen demos and so forth. So I don’t know quite how to square that circle. And I’m not just trying to be like difficult or, you know, contrary or anything like that, but yeah. But I mean, I just, I think there’s some room here for amazing things to happen in the natural realm that also sets up, because grace perfects nature, that also sets up, you know, just an amazing opening for things to happen in the spiritual realm as well.

[00:54:10] Dr. Gerry: Thank you. I think in the natural realm, right?, Like for a person who isn’t baptized, let’s say, there’s still so much access to the innermost self and there’s still access to the conscience and God is still at play. So it’s not like, I wouldn’t take it from like this sort of more Calvinist perspective, that it’s just a complete cutoff. Like I would say it’s darkened, like, it might be cloudy, but it’s not so cloudy that grace doesn’t work at all. You know, what kind of grace, how you wanna define it, fine. But I do think that like, to your point, people who are not Christians are not without conscience. And people who are not Christians are not without some access to their innermost self and they do access levels of spirituality that can sometimes be amazing. And however you want to organize it and say what kind of grace and what kind of this and that, fine, whatever. But I do think that when illuminated it should be really different, right? Like it should be when a person truly accepts Christ into their life and the nous is truly un-darkened, there should be a radical difference. And if there isn’t, there’s something wrong.

[00:55:21] Dr. Gerry: But for everyday people who are not even Christians. They have access to the self and access to conscience because I think there’s an aspect of conscience that is core and that is in the moral law. Everyone has access to, in a sense, what is the truth of the moral law? Like the 10 commandments are pretty much in every culture, in different ways. But I mean, there’s an objective truth to like right or wrong that’s in the natural realm, that’s available in the natural realm to like killing is, you know, killing people is wrong, or murder, I should say perhaps, but like is wrong. Like, and we know that innately. And I think Dick Schwartz discovered that in what he was doing, he discovered this self that is connected to conscience and that is connected to an objective moral truth. I don’t know if he would say it quite that way, but I think that’s what he did discover, right? And so people in their heart of hearts, regardless of whether they’re Christian, can know, oh, that was wrong, right, and that was really wrong, and can feel shame about that and feel bad about that and be called to some level of repentance.

[00:56:30] Dr. Peter: Beautiful. Well, you know, but I think this emphasizing the heart, this is where I think we have a lot of agreement among the different Catholics who are active and doing conceptual work in terms of, you know, IFS and harmonizing that with the Catholic faith and so forth, that the heart is just so, so critical. And it wasn’t until we were doing this work that I really started to pay attention to how much the heart comes up in Scripture, how much it comes up in the Catechism, for example, and the teachings of the church. And I like it because it also seems to have this embodied aspect to it. You know, like the heart is not just a spiritual concept or spiritual reality. It’s also like an organ in our bodies. And, you know, this is where we get into, you know, like 382, where it says, “Man, though made of body and soul, is a unity. The doctrine of the faith affirms that the spiritual and immortal soul is created immediately by God.” So there’s this unity and this involves our bodies.

[00:57:34] Dr. Peter: And one of the things about Internal Family Systems that I like so much is that it is a body based approach as well, and that you really bring in the body. That’s happened in some ways more recently with the theology of the body, you know, John Paul II, you know, is really emphasizing the body and the goodness of the body. It’s amazing how many heresies came up through the years, that denigrated or devalued the body. And so one of the things that we’ve talked about before, Gerry, is like the positive view of the body that comes out through IFS. And you bring that on in your book as well.

[00:58:13] Dr. Gerry: Yeah, no, I love that. And the connection, I think it’s very, what is the word, hylomorphic, right? Like this very Thomistic thing from the sense of the body and the soul being connected versus being too Platonic, where you separate the body and the soul as if the body was bad and the soul is this like thing trapped in the body. In that, you know, even when we do work, trying to like follow trailheads, I tend to start with the body. I tend to like the somatic trailheads. I almost always use somatic trailheads.

[00:58:43] Dr. Peter: Me too. 

[00:58:43] Dr. Gerry: Yeah. Because I feel like the body is storing whatever tension and tightness and whatever’s going on, you know, that reflects the burden of the part. And so when you connect with the body part, whatever the tension is, and move inward and connect with the part that’s holding that tension, you know the results. To me, you really can access deep levels of whatever the pain is, whatever’s going on. So the body-soul connection is so important in the work we do. And I think to ignore it is really a problem. And we’re seeing more and more, you know, in various kinds of experiential therapies that are emerging. You know, and I would even say like EMDR taught me this. I learned this, ’cause I was first trained in EMDR before I learned about parts work and it really taught me how to attend to and notice what’s going on in the person’s physical body. And even when you’re working with somebody and you’re doing some kind of healing work or letting go of burdens or whatever it is, like, you literally can see it in the human person. Like when they start off and you’re doing the initial, you know, whatever EMDR stuff you’re doing and you see in their body, like they’re tight or whatever it is. And then as the processing is happening, you literally watch their physical body change. Wow. The soul and the body are connected.

[01:00:02] Elizabeth Galanti: Yeah. I love that. And thank you for highlighting that, Gerry, and you are right. And so many times when I’m starting to work with someone somatically, having them notice their body, they’re so used to feeling the tightness, the tension, the constriction, that they’re so unaware of how deep it does go. And then once we start going into following the trailhead and start going to that deeper place that it’s so noticeable then, typically after a healing or during the storytelling, during the witnessing, that they just start to feel so much lighter. And I’ve had it happen. You guys have probably had it happen too, where someone walks into my office like after maybe we did a healing in the session before, and they’re walking in and it’s like their feet aren’t even touching the ground. They’re just like buoyant. Their whole personality has changed. I can see it so clearly when I’m doing telehealth with people, that change in their face. There’s actually like an illumination of a person’s face when they’re going through that healing process. It’s like, oh my gosh. It’s incredible to see and it’s real.

[01:01:22] Dr. Gerry: I love it. Can I ask, I know this might divert a little from the Catechism, but Elizabeth, I’m so happy to have you here. You’re so wonderful, and your perspective is so, so beautiful. But you were in Chicago right, in the early days of Dick Schwartz. 

[01:01:41] Elizabeth Galanti: I was.

[01:01:43] Dr. Gerry: I would love to hear any thoughts you have on what that experience was like and as a Catholic and a little bit about your journey. I don’t know if that’s okay, but.

[01:01:51] Elizabeth Galanti: Yeah. Absolutely. So my background, as Peter said at the beginning, I started in my adult life with an MBA and working in corporate America. And that’s where my mind and heart was and I was very happy there. And life threw me a curve ball. So I decided that I needed to see a therapist. I talked to a good Catholic friend of mine, she had seen a therapist the year before, and I saw how much she changed. And so I said, can you give me the name of your therapist? So I started to see her and she was a Catholic IFS therapist. So really started to open up my mind, my heart, my body in terms of Internal Family Systems. 

[01:02:42] Dr. Peter: What year roughly was this, Elizabeth? 2005. Okay. Yeah, 20 years ago.

[01:02:48] Elizabeth Galanti: 20 years ago. So I became so enamored with it. I was still working my corporate job, but I would take days off, for example, to attend the IFS National Conference that was always in Chicago. So I would be there and I’m like the only non-therapist there. And everyone else is walking around with all the initials behind their name, and I’m just like, “hi, my name’s Elizabeth. Nice to meet you. I’m a client. I’m not a therapist, but I love this model.” So, yeah, so I started learning it from the inside out and then I started to dovetail and I was signing up for the conference. I was signing up for workshops. I was just wanting to learn everything that I could about it from the inside out as a client. I didn’t know what I was gonna do with it. At that time God hadn’t yet called me to go back to graduate school and to become a therapist.

[01:03:45] Elizabeth Galanti: But yeah, I just started hanging around IFS people. And I went to my Level 1 in the same month that I started graduate school, and that was 2008 is when I started graduate school and my Level 1. And after that there was no turning back. So it was pretty remarkable because it really was the hub of where Dick was. Chicago was filled with IFS therapists. And the journey to bring about a more Catholic perspective in the IFS model, that was then a journey I kind of had to take on my own because there were no pioneers. There was no one else that I could of hook onto and learn from them. So that’s been probably the most difficult and long part of this process.

[01:04:37] Dr. Gerry: Wow. Well, thank you. I love it. Well, we’re pioneers in Catholic integration too.

[01:04:43] Elizabeth Galanti: You are.

[01:04:44] Dr. Gerry: We’re all connected. Yeah.

[01:04:47] Dr. Peter: Yeah. And you are one of the very earliest of the Catholic professionals to like really grip onto this. And I remember finding you, it might have been on catholictherapist.com. Maybe it was in the CPA directory. I can’t remember. And at the time I think you were Level 2 trained and I was like, wow, there is somebody like this. ‘Cause this was 2018 when I was like getting really excited about it. So it was great to know that it wasn’t entirely untrod ground. So, and it’s been great to connect with you.

[01:05:17] Elizabeth Galanti: What I think is so interesting too, Peter, if you remember when you called me some years back and we were having a conversation and what was so fascinating about that is our paths almost crossed in 2019 where I was signed up to do a Level 3 in Austin, Texas, and I had to end up pulling out at the last moment because I got a cancer diagnosis. And you attended that training.

[01:05:46] Dr. Peter: I was at that Level 3. 

[01:05:47] Elizabeth Galanti: Yeah. 

[01:05:48] Dr. Peter: Oh, it would’ve been wonderful to connect.

[01:05:49] Elizabeth Galanti: So we almost, we almost met six years ago.

[01:05:53] Dr. Peter: Yep.

[01:05:54] Elizabeth Galanti: Yeah.

[01:05:57] Dr. Gerry: Meanwhile, I was separating away and going over to Ego State Therapy because I was frustrated, but let’s move forward. I would like to point out Catechism 2343, and I have an ulterior motive, but it says, “Chastity has laws of growth, which progress through stages, marked by imperfection and too often by sin.” I’m working on a sequel to Litanies of the Heart that is based to some extent on developmental psychology and stages of growth. And so I actually had not looked at this until just recently. And so now my mind is just going, woo, I need to incorporate this because it says, “Man, day by day, builds himself up through as many free decisions. And so he knows, loves and accomplishes moral good by stages of growth.” And where is he drawing that from? That is from Galatians. And so, I’m really looking at stages of development.

[01:06:55] Dr. Gerry: And I decided to just go with Ericsson, ’cause everybody knows Ericsson and it’s kind of proven, and looking at each stage of development through Ericsson stages and what happens to our parts when they do or don’t fully kind of meet whatever the things they’re supposed to accomplish, right? Because nobody meets it all perfectly. And so we have parts that kind of get stuck along the way. And how do we go back if we’re looking for human formation, if we’re looking at human flourishing, how do we go back and like, meet every need, you know, kind of like fill those little gaps all the way along. And so, I was just amazed at this notion that chastity is the key, because I hadn’t been thinking about it that way, as laws of growth. Anyway, I’d love to hear any of, either one of you, your thoughts on that.

[01:07:42] Dr. Peter: Well, I think one of the reasons why chastity is so highlighted is that, you know, I started saying this very early in my career as a psychologist, that your sexuality, your sexual relating is the most sensitive barometer of your psychological health, of your wellbeing. Like I think if there’s disorder within, it shows up in sexuality really early. For some reason, and I don’t know all the ins and outs about this. And I dunno, maybe you agree, maybe you don’t. But like, man, it just seems like disorder in the natural realm somehow becomes really in sharp contrast, in sharp relief, when you start to hear about where a person is with their sexuality, with their sexual life. So maybe that’s why it comes out so clearly in this, because I think most of us would say it’s not just chastity that has laws of growth that progress through stages. Like there’s other ways that we progress through stages, but yeah, when I saw that one, 2343, I was like, yeah, this is really important for so many reasons. So just curious how that’s landing with you.

[01:08:53] Elizabeth Galanti: I wanna just jump in, Gerry, as you’re pondering that question, for one thing, I immediately got excited about your new book, so congratulations as you’re working on it.

[01:09:06] Dr. Gerry: I almost don’t wanna say anything ’cause it’s too soon to say anything, but

[01:09:09] Elizabeth Galanti: Alright, well, we’ll just pretend like you didn’t say it, but I’m still excited about it. And at the same time, what’s so interesting about that is that when you’re working with someone and you’re understanding whatever it is that they wanna change, that behavior or that thinking, and you start taking them back in time and you start hearing some of that earliest time in the foundation of their childhood, whatever it is that they wanna change, that earliest of where it started. Well, that started with me when I was six and then it happened again when I was 12. And then something more happened on top of that when I was 16. And then when I was going into college, this happened and it made it even worse. And you can almost hear and feel in that person the building of the weakness of that foundation and how it travels through childhood. Even something we might not start until we’re later, a little bit later in our adolescence, whether it’s 10 or 12 or 14, whether it be drinking or masturbation, still, how it can tie back to some of those earliest feelings of, well, my dad walked out when I was five and I’ve always felt that rejection and to realize how some of that pain and that sin builds through as we go through the different developmental cycles in childhood and in adolescent and into adulthood. So fascinating.

[01:10:42] Dr. Gerry: Yeah. This is like kind of rocking my world a little bit because I mean, my doctoral dissertation was on male survivors of childhood sexual abuse and healing in relationship. And I think that the issue of sexual abuse in our society is huge, right? Like it’s huge. Like one in three women, one in five men. And in different ways, and I just see early access to pornography is a form of sexual abuse that’s societal.

[01:11:09] Elizabeth Galanti: Oh yeah. 

[01:11:10] Dr. Gerry: So how on earth does this not affect chastity and therefore, how on earth does this not affect the unity of the human person? Right? And so this is like a huge issue. And I’m not immune to it, as a survivor, so I really want to understand this. You know, there might be parts of me that I’ve compartmentalized, right? And so I wanna understand what it means to be integrated. And I think so many people need that, ’cause I think it directly impacts your ability to have inner harmony and have inner unity and to flourish and to live abundantly. And so I think this is something, it’s being alluded to in this section of the Catechism, but I feel like neither the Church nor the field of psychology has truly addressed it. They’ve touched on it, but they haven’t addressed it.

[01:11:57] Dr. Peter: Right. Let me bring in Luke 2:52 in this conversation because there’s a part of me that just wants to say this is also part of our natural development. It’s not just about recovery from trauma, but Luke 2:52, you know, “And Jesus grew in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.” I see there’s a developmental process in his humanity in that. Like that is not just, you know, Jesus didn’t come down as a fully mature, in his humanity, human person. He chose to come as a baby. And because he’s like us in all things, but sin, we hear that, you know, in the fourth Eucharistic prayer, and he’s tried by temptations like the rest of us, as St. Paul says. Like, there’s a natural progression in these things. So that’s normal. You know, it’s not something that is foisted upon us because of original sin and trauma and so forth, but there’s also something there that’s separate, that we exist in time for these developmental processes to be able to happen.

[01:12:57] Dr. Gerry: Wow. I love that. Thank you. And I think that, yeah, that it’s a natural development. I also feel, there’s a part of me that wants to say to whoever’s listening, even if you’ve experienced severe trauma and even in the sexual area, like, and Elizabeth was kind of walking through different, to me when I was listening to you, Elizabeth, it was like, whoa, I could imagine like multiple experiences of the disintegration of the human person in the area of the virtue of chastity. And maybe imposed as opposed to chosen in many of those cases. It’s still amazing to me how God can work in our brokenness. Like, despite all this trauma and despite this brokenness and despite the way we fail in so many ways along these stages of developmental growth in multiple ways. Yet he’s there. We still thrive in so many ways despite. This resilience or whatever you wanna call it. And I think there’s a beauty there. And I definitely don’t wanna leave people feeling like, Ooh, you know, look at the ways in which I failed. I’d rather say, wow, look at the ways in which crisis worked in you despite all this brokenness.

[01:14:10] Dr. Peter: One of the analogies that I’ve used with folks that I’ve worked with that have experienced a lot of trauma and some folks that haven’t experienced maybe as much, but we all struggle with things, is this idea that so much of what parts are able to develop and often in relative isolation, maybe disconnected, really disconnected from the innermost self. It’s not lost when you integrate. I often say, I’ve used this example maybe with more engineering oriented clients, like all of the circuits are on the circuit board. You have all of your capacitors, all your resistors, all your transistors, you know, CPUs, GPUs, everything is on the board, but it’s just a matter of integrating. We’re just now doing a little soldering here. You know, we’re actually connecting these all in so that there’s a relationship there because I see there’s so much richness. I think sometimes there’s this idea within IFS circles that if we just get to the innermost self and all the parts unblend and the innermost self is free from, relatively free from being blended, then that’s it. That’s where we want to get, you know. Then the innermost self can do what the innermost self needs to do.

[01:15:16] Dr. Peter: But I’m saying the heart is more than the innermost self. The heart is more than the innermost self. We need these parts. These parts are essential to us loving wholeheartedly. They’re essential to our identity. And so it’s a beautiful thing when a person begins loving, not just with the innermost self, but also with the parts that are in right relationship with the innermost self and in right relationship with the other parts within that person’s system. Then it’s like all of the musicians in the jazz band can contribute to the music, and it doesn’t mean that everyone’s gonna be playing at the same time. There are times where some parts are gonna say, you know what, in emotional and sexual intimacy with my spouse, this little part, this former exile, might not be immediately present, you know, for all of that. But, you know, as far as the physical, you know, consummation of the sacrament. But I mean, like there’s a richness there. So that’s one of the things that makes this approach, you know, so different than so many other ways that I’ve practiced through the last, you know, 24 years of being a psychologist. And I can’t remember something you said, Gerry, or I can’t even remember, maybe you said it, Elizabeth, was like, kind of brought that up for me.

[01:16:23] Elizabeth Galanti: So Peter, thank you for that. I’m gonna steal that. So I’ve got inmost self, I’m stealing that from Gerry, and I’m gonna steal your circuit board analogy. I’m loving that.

[01:16:32] Dr. Gerry: St. Paul said it before me.

[01:16:34] Elizabeth Galanti: Well, we’ll give him the credit. But going off of what you said, Peter, one of the things that I like to say to, Peter, and tying in with what you said, Gerry, is I like to be able to give people hope. So yes, these things happened and things were done to you and things that you didn’t ask for, and you were exposed to certain things that no child should have ever been exposed to. And so, yes, that has happened. And at the same time, guess what? God designed a back door that we can come in as adults and we can do healing. We can re-engineer some of those circuits, re-plug things in. And just because things happened in the past, God designed a back door and we can do the healing today so that you can move forward in a better, more healed, integrated way. So I love giving people the hope so that, yeah, it’s just not that despair of this is what happened to me. Well, guess what? We can do something about that.

[01:17:43] Dr. Gerry: Amen. And hallelujah.

[01:17:45] Elizabeth Galanti: Yes.

[01:17:49] Dr. Gerry: I love that. You said that beautifully. I really appreciate that. That’s beautiful.

[01:17:56] Dr. Peter: Well, I wonder as we are coming towards the end, we’re not at the end, but we’re coming towards the end. So I’m wondering two things. One, in your reading of the Catechism, is there anything that you have come across that seems somehow at odds with parts and systems thinking or you know, that would contraindicate this kind of approach for Catholics who are wanting to be faithful, you know, is there anything that was troubling that you came across in the Catechism? Anything like that? Sort of, kind of playing devil’s advocate here a little bit.

[01:18:36] Elizabeth Galanti: Yeah, there’s one that comes up for me just a little bit and I wanna take what you just said and throw it out more as a more specific question. But this notion that we have in Internal Family Systems that there are no bad parts. Especially when it is a part that doesn’t just have to dial down its behavior, but the very behavior that it’s doing, like taking a person to masturbation or to porn, I oftentimes have to do some extra explaining around that concept. And I haven’t found anything that ties to the Catechism. So I’m just curious, is there something that ties us to the Catechism that all of our parts are good, they might be burdened with behaviors that take us to sin. So that’s just one area that has always been a bit of a question mark for me.

[01:19:39] Dr. Peter: Well, I know, Gerry, you actually do a critique of No Bad Parts, the book, No Bad Parts, in an appendix of your book, Litanies of the Heart. So yeah, just kind of how do you understand the idea that the IFS concept, that all parts are good.

[01:19:55] Dr. Gerry: Yeah, I mean, it’s an interesting thing. It’s a fine line, but I mean, what do you mean when you say someone is bad? Like maybe the idea that, you know, it’s the whole thing of, you know, I’m not a bad person, but I did a bad thing. I’m not a bad part, but I did a bad thing. And I think that we have to accept the fact that if a part is blended and if the part is instigating some bad thing, it’s still the human person or human will that chooses to do the bad thing. So we have to be responsible for our actions. And so we have to be able to say, yeah, I did a bad thing. Is it to say the part is bad or I’m a bad human being? Probably not. I wouldn’t say it that way, but I get uncomfortable with the language sometimes of no bad parts.

[01:20:44] Dr. Peter: Well, I think it can be unclear, like, is it because what does that mean? Like ontologically, we’re all good, right? Ontologically we’re all good ’cause we’re made in the image and likeness of God, and that would include our parts. But I think, yeah, I think, like we had alluded to before, IFS can seem to do away with the idea of sin or that there could be malice, for example. Like there’s no place in IFS that I can find where malice exists, you know, yet we see malice being pointed out in the Gospels. You know, we see it being described in, well, I don’t know if it’s described in the Catechism, I’m gonna have to look that up. But we see it as a reality within the human experience. And there’s no place that I can find in an IFS where that would be, except for the unattached burdens, you know, kind of somehow influencing.

[01:21:37] Dr. Gerry: I mean, I think it’s an interesting thing. I do a review of Triumph of the Heart, which should probably be out by the time this airs, so you can read it. It’s a movie that was made about, you know, St. Maximilian Kolbe and his days in that cell with a bunch of other men starving to death basically. So when I think about human cruelty, I think, you know, can you think of a better example than Nazis? Like, you know, and the incredible, you know, complete disregard for humanity and this incredible cruelty. You know, if you were to meet with a Nazi and do IFS therapy, maybe you would uncover what it is that led them to be so cruel. But the reality is they were cruel. They did participate in evil. I don’t know. And I think that happens around the world, not just among Nazis, right? And so you could work with a person to get out of that, potentially. But at the same time, in the story of Triumph of the Heart, there’s this like, beautiful presentation of the human person when stripped of everything that we would think of that makes us human or that makes us happy. And yet there’s still this beauty inherent in this human person. And Viktor Frankl gets at that in Man’s Search for Meaning, like it’s the same theme, that there’s this like amazing beauty in the human person, even when reduced to nothing, what seems like nothing. So there’s this odd paradox between man’s capability of being cruel and the inherent truth of this amazing beauty that is so inherent that can never be fully taken away. And that’s a paradox, and I think that’s a beautiful, like cool thing to reflect on. And so we don’t have easy answers for this.

[01:23:37] Dr. Peter: Well, as we draw to a close, I’m really curious if there’s one thing from this episode or one thing from the Catechism relevant to IFS, parts and systems thinking, Elizabeth, if there’s something, Gerry, if there’s something that you would like our audience, our listeners, our viewers, to really remember to take home, something that they could really hold onto, a little nugget that you would like to leave them with.

[01:24:12] Elizabeth Galanti: I guess what I would wanna say is that no matter what you’re struggling with, no matter what issue you have, or what’s really hard for you, that there absolutely is hope. You know, there’s a better way, there’s hope and it absolutely is out there, and it’s to look forward, to seek it, in the many ways that it might be available. But just to know that you don’t have to keep living your life the way that you’re living.

[01:24:49] Dr. Peter: Well, and to that end, I wanna mention that unlike in 2005, there are dozens and dozens of Catholic therapists who are IFS trained, who have taken on various things. We have a list of those therapists, of some of those therapists at soulsandhearts.com/therapists, and you can check that out if you are interested in finding a therapist that is both Catholic and IFS informed. So, yeah, and absolutely the hope, the hope is so critical.

[01:25:19] Elizabeth Galanti: Yeah.

[01:25:19] Dr. Peter: Dr. Gerry.

[01:25:20] Dr. Gerry: Yeah. I would say with that, you know, this notion of human freedom and being able to choose the good, and it naturally brings like a sense of fulfillment, a sense of joy, happiness, contentment, whatever. Whereas we know that when we’re stuck in some kind of trap of sin or this cycle of sin or whatnot, you know, even if we think we’re getting something we want out of it, we’re essentially, we’re like not happy. We’re in a state of discontent and, you know, dis-ease. And so really what the Catechism, in the section on chastity is getting at is, what does it mean to have integrity? It’s not just about doing the right things all the time, which it leads to that, but it’s about searching for the good. And the parts perspective, IFS perspective can give us some tools to be able to really work with our parts, to help them seek the good and then to bask in the good, and to allow ourselves to have that freedom, allow ourselves to have this time where we can actually go, like, sit with that and be like, this is good. This feels free. This is who I’m called to be. And I think we need to be reminded of that over and over again, myself included.

[01:26:43] Dr. Peter: And yeah, absolutely. None of us are immune from that for sure. And I’m reminded of paragraph 2339, which reads in part, “Either man governs his passions and finds peace, or he lets himself be dominated by them and becomes unhappy.”

[01:26:59] Dr. Gerry: Elizabeth read that earlier. Yes.

[01:27:01] Dr. Peter: Yes. And I’m like, yep, and I’m just reemphasizing that like this idea of self-governance, that we govern ourselves out of an ordered self-love is again here over and over again in the Catechism, as it has been in Vatican II, as it has been through so many of the Saints, Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas Aquinas. We’ve gone through so many of them this year in 2025 in this podcast. So again, my call is gonna be the same as it often is, right? To find a way, whether this is through, you know, Internal Family Systems, but harmonized to be consistent with the Catholic faith, parts and systems thinking or some other way. And if you have other ways of really understanding this self-love, self-governance, if there are other models that you have, I would love to hear about them. You know, send them to me at crisis@soulsandhearts.com. Get in touch with me at 317-567-9594. Especially during my conversation hours, which are every Tuesday and Thursday from 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM Eastern Time. I wanna know how people are doing this human formation work. ‘Cause you know, I’d love to be able to have Souls and Hearts be a hub for all of the best ways. But for those that are interested, for those of you that gravitate toward IFS, maybe have some concerns about it, we’re really hoping that this series is helping you and your parts to be able to say, I can draw the good from this. There might be something that God has for me in this. And so, just wanna encourage you on your journey to let you know that you’re not alone.

[01:28:40] Dr. Peter: Alright. If you liked this podcast episode, then like us on YouTube, like us on Apple Podcasts, subscribe to the IIC podcast. Join our conversation on our channel at Interior Integration 4 Catholics, that’s on YouTube. Share this podcast episode with your friends. We have so many more resources at Souls and Hearts. Go to soulsandhearts.com for more information. We’ve got courses, we’ve got other podcasts, written reflections, videos. We’ve got our communities, the Resilient Catholics Community, and the Formation for Formators Community. I want to tell you, again, I wanna remind some of you, and some of you may not have heard. We have a new podcast that’s come out, a daily podcast called Scripture for Your Inner Outcasts. Scripture for your Inner Outcasts. And why? Well, in the Gospels, Jesus reaches out to the outcasts, the most marginalized and rejected members of his society. And in this very brief podcast, usually only four or five minutes, we take Jesus’ approach inside to reach out to your inner outcasts, your exiles, the parts of you who are walking in darkness and gloom. We want those parts of you to listen in. We invite them to hear the good news. We invite them to invite the good news into your depths every day as we share the light of the daily and Sunday Mass readings, to shine on your inner lost sheep, your inner prodigals, your inner lepers, your lame, deaf and blind parts, your inner tax collectors, your inner prostitutes, all those parts of you that are deemed unworthy and unacceptable by your protector parts.

[01:30:18] Dr. Peter: So I wanna encourage you, you listen to this podcast, pick up the Scripture for your Inner Outcasts podcast on YouTube. You’ll find the link in the episode description. Or listen to it wherever you listen to your podcasts. We’re on all the major podcast platforms. We’re gonna invite you to make it a daily habit to connect with the liturgical life of Mother Church through the sacred Scripture of the daily Mass, bringing in IFS and parts work for all of you, including your exiled parts. And if you listen to the Scripture for your Inner Outcast podcast, please like and subscribe and share it with others. 

[01:30:56] Dr. Peter: So we’ll close by invoking our patroness and our patrons. And St. John the Baptist is a patron of ours because he prepared the way for the Lord. Just like this human formation work that we’re doing really is about preparing us for a deep union with the Three Persons of the Trinity, our God the Father, our Lord Jesus Christ, His Son, and the Holy Spirit. So that’s why we’re doing this. It’s not just so that we can become, you know, more whole and we can gaze at our navel and say how beautiful it is and how wonderful, you know, it is that we’ve got the aromatherapy candles going in the sort of psychological day spa. No, this is, this is really so that we can carry out, you know, this is really a kind of bootcamp to learn how to love ourselves, how to govern ourselves, how to know ourselves, how to connect with our parts so that we can carry out those two great commandments and the other two loves of loving God wholeheartedly, loving our neighbor as ourselves. So with that, we’ll invoke our patroness and our patrons. Our Lady, our Mother, Untier of Knots, pray for us. St. Joseph, pray for us. St. John the Baptist, pray for us.