IIC 184:  Assessing the Catholicity of Internal Family Systems

Measuring IFS by the gold standard of Catholicity for therapeutic approaches – that’s what Catholic psychologists Christian Amalu, Peter Martin, and Peter Malinoski are exploring today.  The Catholic Christian Meta-Model of the Person (CCMMP) by Dr. Paul Vitz, Dr. William Nordling, and Dr. Craig Titus systematizes the 11 essential dimensions of a person that need to be respected in seeking to heal and change.  How does IFS stack up to those dimensions? How must it be adapted to be fully Catholic?  And how can IFS even inform the CCMMP in some important ways?  Join us and find out.

[00:00:00] Dr. Peter: “Much will be gained if we succeed in transforming your hysterical misery into common unhappiness.” Who wrote that? Sigmund Freud. Sigmund Freud and Josef Breuer in their 1895 book titled Studies on Hysteria. “Much will be gained if we succeed in transforming your hysterical misery into common unhappiness.” . Yeah. Well, we want to get beyond even common unhappiness, and so does psychologist Martin Seligman. He’s the founder of positive psychology, and he said, “Psychology is not just the study of disease, weakness, and damage. It is also the study of strength and virtue.” And we are taking our cue from Aristotle that recovery or rehabilitation is the correction of deficits. It’s curing something that is ill, something’s gone wrong, whereas flourishing or thriving is fulfilling our capacities. “To be flourishing is to be filled with positive emotion and to be functioning well psychologically and socially,” so says sociologist Corey Keyes in his 2002 article, “The Mental Health Continuum: From Languishing to Flourishing in Life.”

[00:01:32] Dr. Peter: In Catholicism, we call this a telos, fulfilling our capacities, following the pull toward our particular good. And this podcast, Interior Integration for Catholics, it is all about flourishing. You know, our outreach, Souls and Hearts, it’s all about flourishing. It’s all about thriving and how to get there, specifics, means. Not just to get to the common unhappiness as Freud discussed. We think Internal Family Systems can help us in that journey to thriving. So since January of 2025, we have brought you 28 episodes, from numbers 157 to 184, all about grounding IFS, parts and systems approaches to flourishing and thriving. We’ve grounded all of that in a Catholic understanding of the human person. We have brought you just a litany of topics, the innermost self, parts, systems thinking, attachment needs, integrity needs, identity questions, unity, multiplicity, your body, Plato, Aristotle, virtue, eudaimonia, the Old Testament, the New Testament, the early church fathers, Evagrius, St. Augustine, St. Maximus the Confessor, St. Bonaventure, St. Thomas Aquinas, ordered self-love, the Catholic Catechism, conscience, moral questions, sexuality, deification, interior peace, all of these topics we have addressed.

[00:03:00] Dr. Peter: And we have been providing you all these opportunities in these 28 episodes, about 40 hours in all of content, it’s all to help you answer the question, what leads to flourishing in life? How can we thrive as human persons, as human beings, as men, as women? How can we love God and how can we love our neighbor with all our being? How can we move from self-awareness to self-possession to self-gift? That’s the natural process of the unfolding of human formation according to the US Catholic bishops. How do we do that? In this episode, we wrap up this series on grounding IFS in a Catholic understanding of the human person. We’re taking this series to a new level, really getting into the details of how Internal Family Systems can be harmonized with Catholic faith, basing on the work of 20 years of thought and research by the faculty of Divine Mercy University, spearheaded by Catholic psychologists Dr. Paul Vitz and Dr. William Nordling, and Catholic philosopher Dr. Craig Titus. In 2020, these authors published a Catholic Christian Meta-Model of the Person after two decades of development. We call this the CCMMP for short.

[00:04:20] Dr. Peter: And according to the DMU website, the CCMMP is “a foundational text, demonstrating a more systematic, integrative, and non-reductionist vision of the person, marriage, family, and society. The Meta-Model is a unifying framework for the integration of already existing personality theories and therapeutic models. In addition, it enhances assessment, diagnosis, case conceptualization, and treatment planning by addressing eleven essential dimensions of the person needed in mental health practice aimed at healing and flourishing.” Now, in my opinion as a Catholic psychologist, the CCMMP is the gold standard for looking at different approaches to healing and flourishing to see how consistent those approaches are with a Catholic understanding of the human person. And today, we are going to look at how well IFS, Internal Family Systems, conforms to the gold standard of the Catholic Christian Meta-Model of the Human Person. So let’s do this together.

[00:05:34] Dr. Peter: I am Dr. Peter Malinoski, also known as Dr. Peter. I am your host and guide in this Interior Integration for Catholics podcast. I am so glad to be with you. I am a clinical psychologist, a trauma therapist, a podcaster, a writer, the co-founder and president of Souls and Hearts. But most of all, 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 warmth and the light of the love of God, especially God your Father, but also Mary your mother, your spiritual parents, your primary parents. I am here to help you embrace your identity as a beloved little son or a beloved little daughter of God and Mary. And many of you know that all of last year, 2025, and much of this year in 2026, we have been taking a deep dive into Internal Family Systems, IFS, parts work, and Catholicism. We are bringing in the insights from Internal Family Systems developed by Dr. Richard Schwartz, other parts and systems models as well. We’re harmonizing them with the truths of the Catholic faith. Why? To help you live out the three great loves and the two great commandments: to love God, your neighbor, and yourself. That is what this is all about.

[00:06:47] Dr. Peter: And this is episode 184 of the Interior Integration for Catholics podcast, which releases on July 6th, 2026, and it’s titled Assessing the Catholicity of Internal Family Systems. Now, as we have in the past, we have Dr. Peter Martin as our co-host and expert. He is back by popular demand. He is a psychologist in the great state of Nebraska. He’s also an IFS therapist whose work focuses on faith-integrated and trauma-informed approaches to not only recovery, but to flourishing. He’s the internship director of the Integrated Training and Formation Program at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Counseling Center in Lincoln, and he has been with us in episodes 154, 155, 156, 158, 160, 171, and 178. So I’ve introduced him many times before. He’s familiar to many of you that have been following along in this deep dive into Catholic parts work. His areas of interest include supervising therapists in faith-integrated and trauma-informed treatments, marital therapy, forgiveness therapy, and really working with attachment-focused implicit God image issues. And so it is just most excellent to have you with us, Dr. Peter Martin, once again.

[00:08:13] Dr. Peter Martin: Thanks for having me. Always great to be back.

[00:08:15] Dr. Peter: We also have as our guest expert, Dr. Christian Amalu. Now, Dr. Christian Amalu graduated from the Institute for the Psychological Sciences at Divine Mercy University in 2024. He obtained his doctorate in clinical psychology. And this is the critical thing, this is why he’s here. His dissertation explored the intersection of Internal Family Systems and a Catholic anthropology, proposing ways to reconcile and integrate the IFS model with Catholicism. He has done some of the most advanced cutting-edge work in this area, and he is a licensed clinical psychologist in the Commonwealth of Virginia, and he just launched his private practice. It’s named Deep Renewal Psychotherapy, and it’s at deeprenewalpsychotherapy.com. He’s an IFS therapist, and he values bringing different theoretical orientations together. He draws from Internal Family Systems, but also interpersonal psychology and more psychodynamic and attachment-focused approaches. He likes working with college students, young adults, service members, and veterans, and he seeks to integrate faith and spirituality into working with trauma, attachment issues, relational issues, and all kinds of other things, including grief and loss and OCD and scrupulosity. He has been with us for episodes 166, 167, 168, 169, and 170 of this Interior Integration for Catholics podcast. And it is such a pleasure to have you back with us, dear Dr. Christian Amalu.

[00:09:57] Dr. Christian Amalu: It’s wonderful to be here, Peter. Always a pleasure. 

[00:10:00] Dr. Peter: Well, let’s just jump into this. Most people, they don’t randomly just put IFS and the Catholic Christian Meta-Model of the Person together. Like, how did you get interested in this at all? Like, I’m just really curious about how this came to be such a focus of your graduate education.

[00:10:24] Dr. Christian Amalu: Yeah. So kind of thinking back to the roots. I think grad school, even though it wasn’t too long ago, still feels like a bit of giant blur. So remembering which year was, like, the year that I made these discoveries, it’s a little hazy, but we’ll say somewhere around year three or so. Up to that point, I’d had a desire, what had drawn me initially into my graduate education was wanting to sit with those who have experienced trauma and those who want to integrate their faith into their therapy work, those who were suffering from pornography addictions and so on. There were a few special areas that I was like, “I want to get these areas right.” And as I’d started to learn more about trauma, I learned about some of the more classic styles like cognitive processing therapy and prolonged exposure, etc. While I was interested in those, there was other things that I started to come across in the literature, things like inner child work. That was one that really caught my attention, and there was something in that that really resonated for me.

[00:11:25] Dr. Christian Amalu: There were some kind of personal elements of my journey that that really spoke to. And so I started looking into that, and then one thing kind of led to another. As I explored inner child work, this idea of parts came up, and then I found the IFS model and just started reading about it. There were a few things that kind of made my antenna wiggle, so to speak, and made me wonder, this is interesting. I see some of the validity to this, but I’m wondering if there’s a Catholic take on that. And about the time I was really trying to seek that out, I was a student member of the Catholic Psychotherapy Association, and I got notifications of the webinars, and a webinar that you were hosting, I want to say it was February of 2021, might have been 2022, where it was talking about parts work. And so I attended that. And my wife and I actually were watching it live. And when you got to the question and answer section, it just came to mind to me. I’m like, “You know what? I don’t really like my current dissertation topic, and I’m thinking about changing it.” And so I put in the chat box, I was like, “I’m interested in making this a dissertation. I’m a current grad student. Can we chat?”

[00:12:36] Dr. Christian Amalu: And I remember, you were all game for it. And so you got in contact with me, and we started email correspondence. We talked over the phone. We had a video meeting. And I remember you really directing me. This really stood out to me, this idea that I can have all the academic knowledge in the world about parts work and about IFS in particular, but all of that is gonna fall short if I don’t experience it firsthand. And that led me into what was then the Interior Therapist community, now the Formation for Formators community, and doing the foundational experiential groups with Peter Martin, actually. So I’ve got the full circle people right here. And I think that just solidified me on this journey because this model spoke to me in a way that no other model was. My education was mostly based in attachment-based interventions and psychodynamic, little EFT thrown in there, with some other ancillary models kind of added as needed. So most of it’s psychodynamically-based, which I still love, and I still use a lot of it. But IFS, if all of the other models that I was being trained in sated all of my intellectual curiosity and like made things neat and orderly, it felt like IFS pierced through and hit me right in the heart in a way that none of the others did. And it seemed to really pull it all together and make it make more sense, if that resonates. 

[00:13:57] Dr. Peter: Yeah. That totally makes sense. Now, Peter, you back in the day were around when this whole Catholic Christian Meta-Model of the Person fit on, like, one page, right? Were you around when it fit on one page?

[00:14:15] Dr. Peter Martin: It’s funny, Peter. I actually was around when it fit in, like, three sentences. So it’s so funny. The background is, I was a student at IPS, now DMU, and I think it was around 2005, give or take, and I was approached by Dr. Christian Bruegger, who was a theologian integrationist on staff at the time. And so I was a research assistant of his, and he said, “Hey, Paul Vitz and I have been discussing with other people about the possibility of developing this new model.” And, you know, I thought they were gonna develop, like, the next CBT or the next whatever, and I totally misunderstood what he was getting at. And he wanted me to think broader, right, and larger. And he said, “No, we’re actually developing a type of meta model that could be utilized as an anthropological template to understand the other things.” So I recall back when they had it broken down just into created, you know, good and fallen and redeemed, and that was, like, the first three categories. And then eventually they would flesh that out into, I think, the 11 premises that they have now. So it was good to be back there. I remember my first experience of it was he had me go through the first 23 audiences of St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body and to draw out key anthropological premises that might be helpful for this particular project. And I remember I was about four hours in, and I think I had been paraphrasing the Theology of the Body when I was writing things down in my notes. I’m like, “They really don’t care what I think. They want to hear it from the man himself.” So I had to go back and get all the actual quotes and so forth explicitly for them, and then they used that into part of the project anyway. So it was a good time. 

[00:16:00] Dr. Peter: Well, this is really fascinating to have a history. So that’s 20 years ago, more than years ago now, that that started out. And then it became the 864-page book that it is now. ‘Cause I do remember the one-page version, and I remember there was, like, a 12-page version, and then it seemed to leap up into the book-length version,

[00:16:20] Dr. Peter Martin: That’s right. Once it got down to eight font on that one-pager, they decided that was enough and let’s move into more pages.

[00:16:28] Dr. Peter: What is, you sort of began to tell us a little bit about it. What’s the value of the Catholic Christian Meta-Model of the Person? Like, what was it supposed to offer to the world? Either one of you, you know. 

[00:16:43] Dr. Christian Amalu: If I could reduce it, which is, if you know the Meta-Model enough, you know that term is frowned upon. But if I could reduce it down to a single phrase of what it is, it is an attempt at a non-reductionistic normative framework for the human person. So just kind of unpacking that a little bit, the idea that first it’s non-reductionistic. So it’s trying not to miss anything. It’s trying to make sure that there is a true and authentic representation of all of the elements that, when put together, is the human person. And so trying to do that justice, which, say what you will, I’d say in human terms, it’s pretty impossible to do that in a perfect manner, but we can at least try. And I do think that this is a really good try at doing that. The next element I would say is a normative framework. So the thing that really stuck to me when I was at DMU is the idea that there is no such thing as a valueless statement or a valueless position. Everything is informed by at least our implicit beliefs, if not our explicit beliefs. And from that flows our behavior, the way we treat others, etc.

[00:18:00] Dr. Christian Amalu: And the difficulty in the psychological sciences is that there is this attempt from a very material scientific point of view to try and be neutral, like a true neutral. And you can’t really do that. And the problem is if you do try to come up with a true neutral, you turn into relativism. And if you turn into relativism, then you can’t even answer basic questions like, what is health? What is suffering? What is normal? What is abnormal? You can’t answer any of that when you descend into that problematic framework. And so the idea of it’s non-reductionistic, the Meta-Model, but it’s also providing a normative framework. So we’re not only trying to properly capture and present the human person, but then based on that, we can say, “Here is what the human being ought to be. Here is what flourishing looks like. Here is the human person in their fullness.” And from that, you can then start to very quickly determine, well, here are the ways in which that can be imperfect, or there can be languishing, or there can be deficits, because there is an idea of what it is, what the human person is. You know, can’t really answer any other questions if you don’t know that. 

[00:19:18] Dr. Peter Martin: It’s an excellent response, Christian. I think the only thing I would say is I think back to a quote that Mortimer Adler cited Aristotle on in the beginning of his book, I think, Ten Philosophical Mistakes. And basically, Aristotle said that an error in the beginning translates a thousandfold in the end. And so what this model provides is it looks at philosophy, theology, and psychology, trying to integrate those three. And it looks at a way of understanding the human person from the beginning, in their proper constituents, in the person’s proper constituents. And so what you have is if you get one of those wrong, or if you neglect something like freedom, or you neglect something like rationality, well, what kind of conclusions hundreds of years later, or even a year later, or a day later, are you going to come up with that are not 100% valid?

[00:20:19] Dr. Peter Martin: And so you have to have your starting points in the right place. The other thing is most psychology is secular humanistic. And so what that means is they’re trying to understand intrapsychic, interpersonal functioning without any context of the divine, from the divine perspective. And so if theology is the mother of the sciences, sometimes they call it the mistress of the sciences, but if it’s the mother of the sciences and we’re missing mom at the very beginning, we’re going to have some challenges in the long run. And I think some of the challenges that Christian pointed out quite well.

[00:20:57] Dr. Peter: So we’re taking advantage of what we know to be true by divine revelation, by the definitive and authoritative teachings of the Church, the perennial teachings of the Church, and we’re starting with that. But then it’s also informed by psychology, you said, right? So, okay. And it’s designed then to be a kind of template or a model that we could take different therapeutic approaches, for example, and compare to.

[00:21:36] Dr. Christian Amalu: Yeah, absolutely. There are plenty of examples, and we did this at Divine Mercy University all the time with case vignettes, and we would take a look at situations and say, okay, what are, you know, from the psychological position, you know, choose a theory. How are seeing what’s going on in this particular situation? And you can do that, and that’s what every good graduate school in psychology is gonna teach you how to do. But what then happens is that there is that layer, of the other components like the vocationality of the person, what virtues are at play or that would be reparative in the situation, understanding the fact that they don’t exist in a vacuum. There’s relationality that’s going on. And so understanding their family context, their social circles, their faith life, all of the different attributes that could be a bolster to them in their own care, and maybe some areas of deficit that are outside of the proper psychological theories but are still very much relevant to health.

[00:22:31] Dr. Christian Amalu: And in doing that, this broader approach is getting at the fullness of the human person but still applying the sound psychological principles. And you can do that at the case conceptualization level. You could do it at the treatment planning level. And we would practice doing that, say, “Okay, how would you conceptualize this? How would you bolster the psychological theory, essentially, with these other considerations?” And then we get down to the treatment level process. Okay, how do you address these things then? And doing so from a psychologically sound perspective, because you don’t wanna shoehorn in, just some kind of non-proven, non-evidence-based, you know, idea that doesn’t have any holding, but putting it under the guise of psychology. But more how do we apply what we know is important and doing it in a sound manner. And so that was very much a very core part of the curriculum and what we were doing.

[00:23:26] Dr. Peter Martin: You know, I agree, and I think one of the areas that stood out to me as I was looking at the way that secular psychology tends to look at the human person, there seemed to be, you know, if you read theology and if you read the Church’s spiritual tradition, there’s such a strong emphasis on vocation, such a strong emphasis on virtue and character strengths. How long did it take psychology to start entering into positive psychology? You know, just entering into things like character strengths or virtues. And so what I sometimes will play with in my mind is what would have happened at the beginning of, let’s say, modern psychology if we would have had this template to operate from. What are the different areas of research we’d be focusing on? Like the beautiful research that’s going on right now in forgiveness therapy. Latest study that I saw, over two hundred thousand subjects. It was developed by Harvard University and in, I think, twenty-three countries is this study on forgiveness.

[00:24:26] Dr. Peter Martin: And so just the remarkable findings and making it part of public policy even, like that’s how powerful. But I feel like we’re kind of behind the game because the anthropology that a lot of contemporary psychology operated from, implicitly or explicitly, did not even acknowledge agency, you know, did not acknowledge some of these key things. And so I feel like we’re just now kind of starting to get caught up, and one of the areas we’re finding in secular psychology is that, you know, they’re missing key elements or key premises that are laid out in this model. And so it provides for us an opportunity to use it as an interpretive template to see where certain models are going astray, but also maybe as we’re looking at integration, what are the key areas that we need to focus on? What are the key areas that can guide total human flourishing in what we do?

[00:25:20] Dr. Peter: Well, that kind of gets us to what your dissertation was about, right, Christian? I mean, this is what I found so fascinating about this. So tell us a little bit about like, yeah, what this body of work that you created, what it offers us.

[00:25:40] Dr. Christian Amalu: Yeah. My goodness. So I think what it offers is a chance to have a thorough dialogue between IFS and the Catholic faith. That was something that, you know, I was kind of hungry for it myself, and coming in and doing the work with Souls and Hearts, I think that really sated a lot of things, and it helped to speak to other people like yourself and Peter Martin too, who have been doing this work, and bringing these ideas, fleshing them out a little bit more. And in doing that, I think it got the creative juices flowing, and I couldn’t help but think back and say, you know what? I wonder if this has existed in the tradition in a different way. And so I tend to think about things chronologically, and so I actually did that with my first draft of my dissertation, and I remember sending it to you, and I know you were excited about it. I was excited about it too. And it gives away a number of things about my own personality. I think I tend to err a little bit more on the philosophical and the theological side.

[00:26:49] Dr. Christian Amalu: And so psychology was something I had to enter into with more intentionality, ’cause that was the feedback I got from my dissertation chair. It was, this is very theology forward. I think you can take that and convert it more so into the psychological. And I do believe I did that successfully. I still miss the first draft of my dissertation and want to do something with that later. I still had that chronological idea of, has this existed in the Church already, but in a different way? And I came to find, yes, it very much did. You can see some earlier episodes based on that, that we did record in this earlier year. and I think a lot of that brought out the fruit of that first draft of the dissertation. But kinda looking at what my dissertation does offer right now. There’s a few different dissertations that are, have been kind of coming out, that came out around the same time, that are taking specific models of therapy and running them through the gauntlet of the CCMMP, so to speak. And so kind of taking it and putting it through that filter to say, “Okay, how do we put this in dialogue with the Catholic tradition, and how do we elevate this?”

[00:28:01] Dr. Christian Amalu: Because if the CCMMP is, you know, operating within the Catholic tradition, I cannot help but think about the operations of grace. And what do we know from Thomas Aquinas? Grace does not nullify nature, it perfects it. So if there is something that can be offered from the CCMMP, it is almost a perfective action on those models that do exist. We can elevate them and bring them into greater fullness. So I think that was one of the components that I think my dissertation tries to do. It takes what exists in IFS, it names the good, it puts it in dialogue with the Catholic faith, and it offers some considerations for, here are some other pieces that can really bring it into fullness, while also kind of pointing out that, you know, it’s not a perfect model. It’s got some things that on its face are contrary to the Catholic faith. But I think the guiding light throughout the whole dissertation was something that you had reminded me of, which was from St. Augustine in his Treatise on the Christian Faith, that we plunder the Egyptians and we find the good where it is.

[00:29:11] Dr. Christian Amalu: And hearing that, I think, set me on the track of that’s the whole point of the dissertation, is to do that, to plunder, to find the good, which St. Augustine said it first. I had already been operating from a similar principle, but from a very different thinker, Bruce Lee, who said, “Take what’s necessary, discard the rest, and develop what’s uniquely your own.” It’s kind of like a very different repackaging of what St. Augustine said. But that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to find what was useful and good and discard the rest and really present something that was full. And I do that in, I think, a few different ways. First, with the actual kind of combining and doing that dialogue between the CCMMP premises and IFS, but then also offering, in light of that, what kind of new presentation, like a Catholicized IFS, what could that look like? And that’s kind of what I do at the end. 

[00:30:04] Dr. Peter Martin: You know, Christian, with those two kind of figures, how could you disagree, right? You know, Bruce Lee and St. Augustine, you gotta concur. I’m reminded of a quote from Pope Benedict in his book, Jesus of Nazareth, he says, “Healing is an essential dimension of the apostolic mission and of Christianity, and when understood at a sufficiently deep level, this expresses the entire content of redemption.” And I wanted to kind of float that to you and just get your thoughts on, for instance, so if we say that the sacraments don’t include healing, then we have a limited understanding of sacraments. So can you say a bit more about how the Church’s understanding that we gain from divine revelation and, you know, that is communicated in the CCMMP, how that helps to bring about healing in the whole-est way, possibly through IFS? 

[00:31:01] Dr. Christian Amalu: So I think I might be a little bit lost in the precise thing you’re asking for. Sorry, that might just be me missing but is there any way you can rephrase that? 

[00:31:12] Dr. Peter Martin: Yeah, just thinking about, so if our focus as humans is to be healed, from deficits, from deficiencies, from evil really, physical evils, spiritual evils, and if the goal of Christianity is to bring about healing in the fullest sense, how does IFS play a role in that healing process, especially as you look at it through the CCMMP? 

[00:31:39] Dr. Christian Amalu: Wonderful. Thank you. Yes, that was very clear. Yeah. So how does IFS engage in the Christian project of healing? 

[00:31:47] Dr. Peter Martin: Perfect. That’s a great way to phrase it.

[00:31:50] Dr. Christian Amalu: I think about it at multiple levels because something that was pointed out to me a long time ago. I have this bad habit of, I can’t remember the priest who said this to me so I wanna give him credit. But there was a priest I was listening to that said, “When we pray for healing, we often miss the fact that the vast majority of our prayers are answered through natural means.” For instance, you get a cut on your hand, and it heals. Well, God designed your body to do that. That is God operating through your body. It’s a natural means, but we don’t usually look at it through a supernatural lens. But the project of healing in and of itself is directly tied to God. And so, I would look at IFS and say that at a natural level, but also at the level of the soul, it is engaging in that work of healing because it’s trying to bring about the harmony from the fracturing that happened during the Fall.

[00:32:51] Dr. Christian Amalu: I think that one of the great advantages of IFS that I saw, and that I was seeing all over in the Early Church Fathers, in documents from the Church, in many key saints, is that the common understanding of what had happened to the human person was a fracturing and a disintegration at the Fall. And every model of psychological intervention has some degree of understanding that internal conflict within us. And, you know, you can kinda come to a bit of a parts understanding that way. But what I find in IFS, and in the other parts models that exist, is an explicit usage of that paradigm, which I think matters. How you tell the story matters. If we were to take the story of Christ, and we know many people in the world that do this, was he a great teacher? Absolutely. Was he a paradigm-shifting character who changed history? Absolutely. You can say all those things, but if you do not say He is the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, you are missing something. That the bigger deal that is going on.

[00:34:00] Dr. Christian Amalu: And so in the project of healing, I think that what IFS offers is, I think, a deeply ancient Christian understanding of healing. I think it helps to bridge the whole of our history from the Fall through the revelation of Christ all the way up to now. I think that there is something that lends itself within IFS to the continuity of what it is exactly that we’re doing. And I think the image that came up for me and I think I mentioned this in an earlier podcast with the three of us here, the image of the Good Shepherd comes to mind. The image of the Good Shepherd has just blazoned itself on my heart when I think about IFS because Christ saying that parable was paradigm-changing. Because, from a common sense point of view, why do you go after the one when you have 99? You kind of cut your losses. That’s generally what you would do. You’re not gonna sacrifice the 99 for the potential of getting the one sheep that got away. But the point, is that Christ is like, “No, even that one sheep matters.” And looking at IFS, every other model takes a look at your negative behaviors to some degree, and I don’t wanna overstate it, I don’t wanna say is totally condemnatory or absolutely negative, but it leans itself more that way in most other models. “Oh, that’s a problem. We gotta fix the problem.”

[00:35:33] Dr. Christian Amalu: Whereas IFS doesn’t negate that, but it asks a different question. It wants to enter in with those darkest areas and bring some light into the area. It wants to find the lost sheep. And so, once I started making that connection, I realized, okay, no, this is a deeply Christian model, ’cause it is approaching this in a very different way. The person’s not the problem. The parts are not the problem. Something has come in and scattered the sheep, and the sheep need to be brought back together. And that’s what we’re doing internally with IFS. And I’m really hoping that has actually answered in full what your question was, Peter. I hope I didn’t miss anything. You tell me.

[00:36:17] Dr. Peter Martin: You know, I thought that was a excellent response, and I think the parable of the Good Shepherd is a wonderful way, I think, to describe what IFS does, and the heart of the self is to find those sheep that have been scattered. So I think that’s a great way to describe it.

[00:36:35] Dr. Peter: So what do you think would be most helpful for our audience to understand? We can’t review the entire dissertation, although I’ll mention this again at the end, it’s available. One of the wonderful things is that, you know, Dr. Christian Amalu has made this available, and so it’ll be in the description. You can download it if you’d like to read all 130 pages of it. But I’m curious about, like, well, let me just say this. What I found really great about it, and in going through the process of having the the honor of being your third reader, is it just pulled together so many resources to help especially spiritual managers of people, who are concerned about staying on the straight and narrow, who are really concerned about whether IFS was too woo-woo, or whether it was too new agey, or whether it was, you know, somehow going to lead people astray. I think the real value of it is to say, “Look, here we’re laying it out, and we’re laying it out in terms of, yes, the historical record and what, you know, popes and saints and Early Church Fathers have said, but also what the CCMMP says about what a good therapy ought to look like and do.” And then it also adds the whole part about, how do we adjust IFS? How do we modify it? How do we harmonize it with what we know to be true by divine revelation, what we know to be true by faith?

[00:38:15] Dr. Christian Amalu: Yeah, I would agree with that. I would add in that element of, you said something along the lines of, you know, some people might feel like this is woo woo, and so the implicitness in what you were saying was they need something they can trust. And that really was what I wanted to provide, something that could provide an anchor point of trust. Not trying to brush away things. I mean, I address the issues with self. I mean, I think many people are going to do that without justifiably doing it, but also looking at it and saying, “Look, even if there are things that maybe look a little bit questionable at the face of it, we don’t need to necessarily proceed with fear.” And if we’re open enough to it, and especially using the CCMMP, which is a very trustworthy anchor point, we can put that in dialogue and do the work of, you know, this is part of evangelization as well. It’s finding the good in the culture.

[00:39:12] Dr. Christian Amalu: It’s finding the good in what exists in the sciences. I mean, we see that mandate from the Church over and over again. And so it felt like it was time to do that with IFS. And so, my hope is that it operates not only as a trustworthy framework to kind of poke at IFS, so to speak, and kind of test it, but also it’s a starting point. I really do just see my dissertation as a starting point, because even the areas that I do open up, the end section, which is probably, in my opinion, okay, it’s the second most interesting section. The most interesting section was from the first draft of the dissertation that didn’t get published. Just being honest. I mean, I think that’s the most interesting part of the dissertation. But that synthesis area is still very rich. And I do believe that what I put on the page that is available for people to read is a starting point that needs expansion, especially in the area of vocations and virtue.

[00:40:13] Dr. Christian Amalu: I really do think that, like, in the entirety of the CCMMP, I think that those two points and how they are put into dialogue with the psychological sciences is probably the most rich and most helpful area of the CCMMP. And so I really spent time with that and tried to kind of bear that out of, okay, what could this look like in the actual work of IFS? And I don’t know. Maybe there’s an article series in that. Maybe there’s a book in there somewhere. I don’t know. But I do think that this is a starting point, and I think I say so at the end of the dissertation, that my hope is that other people will use this as a launching point to further the work. I want other minds to start expanding on those things, ’cause they’re probably in their infancy right now.

[00:41:00] Dr. Peter: Well, and that’s what we’ve been trying to do, you know, since the beginning of 2025 to this one, which as I said in the intro, this is bookending. This is the end of our series, at least for now, on our efforts to harmonize, you know, IFS with a Catholic understanding of the human person, with a Catholic anthropology, Catholic metaphysics. You know, in a lot of ways, I feel like we saved the best for last. You know? Like, ’cause this is the most sort of complete effort to do that. And so in that sense, your dissertation in a lot of ways inspired this whole series. And so I owe a huge debt of gratitude to you on this, Christian, for such really wonderful work. And I know it came at a high cost. I know that this dissertation was not something that was just, you know, birthed without any labor pains, right, so to speak.

[00:41:54] Dr. Christian Amalu: I mean, grad school just kind of goes that way. But yeah, I will say sitting with and actually writing the individual sections and having the thoughts come to fruition was very rewarding. Getting the whole dissertation written and organized was a behemoth. Yeah, I’m still trying to figure out if I have sat down and once again tried to read from beginning to end. I come back and I read sections and stuff like that. It’s just, I still think there’s a lot to unpack. But very glad for what it’s been able to offer others.

[00:42:23] Dr. Peter Martin: You know, it’s quite an accolade or quite a compliment from Peter there. That says a lot about the good work that you did and put into it.

[00:42:30] Dr. Christian Amalu: I’m gonna emotionally process that later.

[00:42:31] Dr. Peter Martin: That’s right. You know, speaking of unpacking things, I think one area that I’m really interested in, and I’m assuming the audience is as well, is that section on virtue. Would you be able to say a few words about IFS and virtue, and what does that look like from a parts perspective? Just some ideas there.

[00:42:50] Dr. Christian Amalu: Oh my goodness. All right.

[00:42:52] Dr. Peter Martin: I’ve opened up a big can of worms on this one.

[00:42:56] Dr. Christian Amalu: Yeah, but they’re gummy worms, so we can accept them. 

[00:42:58] Dr. Peter Martin: That’s right.

[00:43:00] Dr. Christian Amalu: All right. That’s right. Yeah. I mean, wow, I’m trying to hone in where I would start because right now I’ve got a vision passing around in my head rent-free from the recent work that Peter had done, in that one blog post, pretty recently, where you kind of reconciled the eight Cs with kind of the Thomistic visions of the virtues. And I feel like that went to a next level with what I did in my dissertation. But I still would start from that position of the eight Cs. To my fault, I probably didn’t mention the five Ps enough in my dissertation, which I think, if you bring them together, gives a better full presentation of what virtue looks like within IFS. Because lo and behold, I mean, I’ve read a lot of material within the IFS literature, and first of all, you’re not gonna hear the word vocation even once. Virtue, I still haven’t found it. I can’t say I’ve read everything on IFS, but I really just have not been able to find even the word virtue in there, which I think is, you know, a bit of a shame.

[00:44:02] Dr. Christian Amalu: But I think with IFS, because of what it is doing and the qualities of self that are present, there is at least an implicit usage and an implicit call for the need of virtue. Because I think the place where it lies is in the fact that Schwartz himself has talked about that the parts develop, and the parts are growing. They are learning from their environment. And even if you, according to the IFS theory, you have everything you need within you, and it’s a constraint release model. It’s not trying to take something from outside necessarily to change what’s going on within. If we run with that, and we look at that from a Christian angle, even if you have everything within you that you need, how does that get where it needs to go? Something still needs to be learned, something needs to be introduced, and something needs to be practiced. We do that within IFS therapy when we sit with clients. Sometimes, okay, the client is maybe a little bit hesitant to enter into a given space, and they need some of the courage that can come from self, whether it’s from their own self or from the self of the therapist.

[00:45:19] Dr. Christian Amalu: But being able to, when the clinician is acting like a hope merchant, which is part of what our role is in the IFS model, can that be modeled in such a way that the client learns from that? Their parts maybe give us a sideways look and like, “Huh, maybe I can try something different.” And there’s an inculcation of, “Hey, maybe change can happen.” And they learn that, and then when they do that and they’re able to unblend more, then their own self can offer more of those qualities. And in doing that, I think that it opens the possibility for greater change, and the parts, as they are immersed more in self-energy, especially in the self of the client themselves, I think that the offering of virtue from the meta-model can give you targets, target points within treatment. That was the kind of the first thing that I thought of when looking at how does virtue work into this? Because the virtues, they’re baked into the qualities of self. You have courage, which is an explicit virtue, but you also have, like, patience and persistence, going to the five Ps, and persistence is basically another word for fortitude, which is another one of the cardinal virtues.

[00:46:35] Dr. Christian Amalu: These qualities are being presented, and those qualities are being presented as necessary for the parts to flourish. So why not take the Meta-Model and explicitly use this idea of virtue development and put that into how we approach the parts and understanding what qualities they need or what qualities they have an opportunity to grow in. There’s a really cool opportunity within IFS to offer parts and the whole systems of clients to be something aspirational, something wonderful, and what could that look like? And in order for you to become that, what are the qualities you need to embody to be that? I think that the virtues offers that kind of in-between stage of here’s where you are, here’s where you would like to be. And we can fall into the temptation of, well, you just have to be passively exposed to self-energy and you’re just gonna change. I think this adds another component of, here’s how you can participate in becoming self-led and becoming, you know, that new creation, which is essentially what we’re calling parts into. We’re calling them into a new creation. Maybe not as foundationally changing as that sounds, but calling them into a new role that they would prefer, and that means exercising different qualities, and that’s virtue building as far as I’m concerned.

[00:48:04] Dr. Peter Martin: Well stated. Yeah, this kind of new creation of sorts. I always often think about, that virtue at some level does require a type of conversion of the parts. This kinda transformation of the parts into a kind of the higher level of what they were called to be, but because of fears and traumas or wounds, they haven’t been able to access that fully. And so yeah, very, very well stated.

[00:48:28] Dr. Christian Amalu: Yeah. I mean, another word I would also use for that is redemption. And here’s the fun part. We see that as a Christian word, but even Schwartz in the book IFS Therapy 2nd Edition, I have this quote highlighted in the book, it’s my favorite quote probably, is that the parts are crying out for redemption. And redemption and conversion are the same thing. Different angle, different side of the same coin, but that project of healing, redemption, conversion, repentance, all of those are basically, they’re not exactly synonyms, but they’re, well, at that point, it’s four-sided, so we’re getting close to a dice. But it’s all part of the same project, and I think the fact that they put in the word redemption, I think gives us a foothold in the door for these things.

[00:49:14] Dr. Peter Martin: Yeah. Beautiful.

[00:49:22] Dr. Peter: Well, one of the things that really struck me about Internal Family Systems very early on was that it wasn’t just meant to be a therapy. You know, it started out as a therapy in the late ’80s, early ’90s, but that it’s sort of like an approach to living, in a sense. And then in later years, you know, Schwartz has continued to expand the definition. He’s even called it a spirituality. He called it a spiritual practice for a while, then he called it a spirituality, I think. And so it’s broader than, you know, a therapeutic modality. I don’t see a lot of, like, emotional focus therapy being applied to classroom settings, you know, for example. It might be. But, you know, Internal Family Systems has been, like, applied in a lot of different areas and has, I think, been really amenable to this whole idea of flourishing or thriving. It’s not just about getting to what Freud said psychoanalysis could do. Freud said that the best psychoanalysis could do is bring a person to a normal level of human misery. That was his, you know, that was his limits, you know? 

[00:50:35] Dr. Peter Martin: So moving to hear that. 

[00:50:37] Dr. Christian Amalu: Real positive guy.

[00:50:38] Dr. Peter: Right. So the idea like, can we bring this together, how do we bring this together, so it doesn’t have to be constrained to the therapy room, which is, you know, really positive. That’s part of the reason why we started the Resilient Catholics Community is to say, “You know what? We can use these ideas. We can bring them together in a Catholic way, grounded in a Catholic anthropology, to help people with flourishing and thriving.” Same thing in the Formation for Formators Community. We’re not doing therapy in either of these communities, but we’re able to use these ideas, these principles, these ways of understanding, and these ways of working inside so that we can move towards that flourishing without having to use therapy. 

[00:51:22] Dr. Christian Amalu: Yeah. Yeah, it is a very, very broad model and it’s been far-reaching for a long time. Yeah, I think some of those developments around the spirituality, I think that was another thing that kind of came to mind for me when writing the dissertation. It’s like, okay, it’s starting to venture into that area, which I wasn’t perfectly opposed to because of something you said, Peter. It was actually, I believe you said that what Schwartz has done was that he stumbled onto a naturalistic religion. And I know I’m paraphrasing that probably, but it really stuck with me because it kinda reminded me that, you know, truth is truth, wherever you find it. And yes, you can still run with it in the wrong direction. And I would be very wary of all the spiritual components of IFS that are not actually anchored in the religious tradition, especially in the Catholic tradition. But if there are things that are true, and they are true because it’s actually part of the fabric of reality, then it would make sense that it has more far-reaching implications than the therapy room. And I do think there’s still a limit to that. You don’t want to take IFS and say, “Okay, that’s just all of reality then.

[00:52:39] Dr. Peter: That’s all of reality. 

[00:52:41] Dr. Christian Amalu: Yeah, you probably don’t wanna do that. But it can be helpful. And I think that applies to any area where there is a foundational truth. We see this all the time in, oh my goodness. There are some social media things that I’m a sucker for, and one of those is watching particular mentors from disciplines like sports or martial arts when they’re teaching young kids. And they’re using the medium of what they’re doing. And I’m a sucker for the martial arts ones in particular because they’re using it to get a lesson across, and they’re teaching them something fundamental about how to face reality. But they’re doing it through this medium. And that’s not wrong. I think that’s very valuable. I think you can then actually derive some very profound lessons from that. Again, you don’t want to make it your whole philosophy. You’re gonna miss a lot of things. But I think IFS can do a very similar thing, whereas other therapy models are maybe a little skittish to go outside the therapy room, for various reasons. But yeah, I really admire the fact that IFS reaches beyond the therapy room and it sees healing in a broader way.

[00:53:17] Dr. Peter Martin: Yeah, and kinda going along with that. One of the things I really value about IFS is it’s not just helping the person to learn to love themselves and their parts. It’s like it helps them to learn how to like their parts. You know, I can grit my way into loving another person, like an enemy, but I do think the internal world is probably better when I don’t see my internal parts as enemies that I have to love, right? And vice versa, that these parts inside of me hate the self, but they’re trying to love the self, right? So it does tend toward, you know, that compassion, it tends toward the curiosity, it tends toward the connection. Like it tends toward these, let’s make this, if I’m fully in self, let’s make this easy. Let’s make this process of doing the right thing that’s conducive to my growth, a process that isn’t arduous, that isn’t like I’m constantly running up against obstacles. But I enjoy what I’m doing. I love myself, and I actually like myself too, for that added bonus there. And IFS does that in spades. Like it seems like it’s moving toward that you know, when God saw creation, at the end of creation, and He saw it very good. You know, not just good, this is nice, but He really delighted in it. And I feel like IFS has at least inclinations toward that, if not fully, you know, going in that direction.

[00:55:20] Dr. Christian Amalu: Yeah. Just to quickly jump in on that. One of the five Ps is playfulness. And playfulness for me directly ties into delight. And that delight I think is really, again, pierced through the heart, that’s what happens. It’s like, okay, great. I can have things like self-esteem, wellbeing, you know, a manner of contentment. And I do think like various psychotherapies are going for that. They’re going for this baseline level of no more pain and, you know, you’re at least content. But this one brings up playfulness, which is really delight. It’s going in and, to quote you, Peter Martin, which is quoting also, I believe it was Joseph Pieper, “It’s good that you exist.”

[00:56:10] Dr. Peter Martin: It’s wonderful.

[00:56:12] Dr. Christian Amalu: It’s wonderful that you exist. That’s right. I feel like IFS does that explicitly.

[00:56:19] Dr. Peter Martin: Yeah, so important. Yeah, it’s not just a symptom reduction model. It’s very much kinda tapping into those core needs of being delighted in. I mean, I do feel like that is a core need that we have, to be delighted in. And at the highest level that, I mean, in heaven, that’s what the experience will be. It’s like being delighted in by the Father, you know, for all eternity. And IFS is making steps toward that, even if it doesn’t know it.

[00:56:46] Dr. Peter: Well, and that’s Brown and Elliott in their 2016 book, Attachment Disturbances in Adults, their fourth condition for secure attachment was to be delighted in.

[00:56:57] Dr. Christian Amalu: That is where I got that from.

[00:57:00] Dr. Peter: So that’s really, really important. And that’s not something that I’ve run across in a lot of other therapies. You know, starting out with cognitive behavioral therapy when I was but a wee graduate student back, you know, many many decades ago. And then kind of moving through all these other models, to be delighted in. So there’s this sort of synchronicity. And what’s striking to me is that we’ve had hundreds of people in the Formation for Formators community, hundreds of therapists, and they’ve sort of clicked. It’s like it clicks with a Catholic understanding. You know, this idea of like, wow, there is something really Catholic about this. And so, but we want to do this rigorous work, which is why I was so excited when you did say in that webinar, ’cause I remember it, you know, like, “I think I might wanna do my dissertation on this.” I’m like, “Yes! Yes!” You know, ’cause I don’t have time to write another dissertation on this. And so it was beautiful to see that come to fruition, you know, and to start pulling together these different elements and going through it very systematically.

[00:58:05] Dr. Peter: So for any of you listeners that have questions, concerns, where you want a very systematic laying out of how IFS can map onto a model of the human person that’s been developed over the last 20-plus years by the staff over at Divine Mercy University, it’s in the dissertation. You can find it there. You can see that. And you can see how that has been part of what we’ve been doing for the last year and a half on this podcast as well, all the episodes. And it’s really been in part about, you know, trying to show that, yeah, there can be something really magical about this. One of the things that in some ways is kinda tragic is that when you go to the IFS conference, you see so many former Catholics there, so many people who have one way or another left the church. And one of the beautiful things about this work, and this wasn’t that long ago, I had a clinician call me, an IFS therapist call me, who was excited to find that, and she was considering reversion. She was considering coming back to the faith. But she didn’t wanna give up IFS, you know?

[00:59:19] Dr. Peter: And so here now we have this way that we can embrace the good that she’s found in IFS and how we can sort of combine that, how we can, you know, offer that along with the rest of the truths, you know, that we have our Catholic faith. And so that was, like, one really clear example of the benefit of this kind of work. Because I think so many people leave the Catholic Church because they don’t believe it has the answers to the human formation things they struggle with. It doesn’t have the answers, they believe, to the questions that they struggle with, to the problems that they face. And one of the really beautiful things about IFS grounded in a Catholic understanding of the human person is that I think it provides those answers things at a level that, you know, you won’t necessarily find in the Catechism. I’m fond of saying, you know, it’s hard to find a good treatment approach for bulimia in the Early Church Fathers. You know, it’s just very difficult. You know, we’ve got to bring in these natural level resources so that we can also address those needs, but in a way that’s fully Catholic.

[01:00:38] Dr. Peter Martin: You know, Peter, that’s a really good point. And I wanted to float this question out ’cause I think it relates. You know, we’ve discussed IFS theory, and, you know, it’s a secular model, but we can bring the gold out of Egypt and try to integrate it with the Catholic Christian Meta-Model. We talked about the Catholic Christian Meta-Model and so forth. I wanted to float out, and I say this with all due respect. The Catholic Christian Meta-Model I use every year while giving a talk to all new interns at our internship site. I just think it really answers a lot of the questions that people have, especially if you’ve never been in a Catholic integrated program. But I wanted to kind of float this. Does IFS nuance any of the premises of the CCMMP? And to explore that a little bit, in a manner that, I think maybe extends or expands what the CCMMP is saying in that particular area. Just wanted to float that to both of you guys.

[01:01:42] Dr. Christian Amalu: The gears are grinding. 

[01:01:45] Dr. Peter: Well, I’ve got three ready answers for that.

[01:01:48] Dr. Peter Martin: He came prepared.

[01:01:49] Dr. Peter: Yeah. This is something that I have been really thinking about with the CCMMP. Again, it wasn’t part of my sort of upbringing because I went to graduate school long before DMU, Divine Mercy University, or the Institute for Psychological Sciences existed, right? There was no Catholic doctoral programs in psychology when I went through. And so I think there’s a lot of things to really appreciate about it. What I struggle with the CCMMP about is that there’s no mention of the unconscious, there’s no mention of trauma, and there’s an assumption of a relatively kind of homogenous personality. In other words, there’s a sort of assumption, this is the standard assumption that most people operate from. And so as a depth psychologist who’s come from many years of practicing more psychoanalytically, you know, I’m thinking, okay, I don’t believe that there’s not, like more conflict in here, you know? Like it seems like something philosophers would write, you know, that are really attempting to grab onto the phenomenological experience of the human person, and I think there’s great value in it, and I like it a lot.

[01:03:02] Dr. Peter: But I think it’s hard to translate into good clinical practice. You need to have an intermediate sort of like model of doing the work, to kinda click onto it, right? And so, it’s not the complete bridge between the practice of psychology and philosophy, theology, you know, anthropology more broadly concerned, especially all the metaphysical aspects of it. So when I think about IFS, IFS brings in the multiplicity of self and systemic thinking, right? Thinking about ourselves as a system. Brings in the unconscious, because parts could either be in awareness or not. They can be upfront, you know, kind of very present or not. And I think it very much lends itself to describing what the impact of trauma is. And so in that sense, I do think that there is a reciprocal possibility of, you know, both of these models informing each other. Does that make sense? Like, yeah, and refining each other.

[01:03:59] Dr. Christian Amalu: Absolutely, I would very much echo all of that. One of my biggest gripes with the Meta-Model is, I think the operative word is meta, which is trying to get at, like, the metaphysical. It’s trying to get at all of the categorical philosophical underpinnings of things. That’s nice, and that’s well and good, but it’s the problem of describing in every single facet what a rose is but never having smelled one. And I think that the CCMMP, when you read it, at least for me, and I do have a mind more philosophically inclined, and I read it, and it’s like, “Oh, this is good, this is good, this is good. What do I do with it? And that’s where it’s like the education of DMU actually does a lot of the applied work. The book itself does not really lend itself to the application. Yeah, so it’s a nice theoretical place. And I’m pretty sure that DMU is actually working on trying to do an applied version, essentially, which I don’t know if it’s like a number of like case vignettes and stuff like that, or applying to categorical areas of treatment, which would be fascinating and very valuable.

[01:05:10] Dr. Christian Amalu: I do think that IFS would lend, especially for the trauma. Trauma is very underrepresented in the understanding in the CCMMP, which, and again, since that was so much of my inspiration for coming into psychology and doing the work, I feel it was a bit of an oversight, that it wasn’t addressed to the degree that probably would’ve been satisfactory. ‘Cause I do know that, again, because it’s so much of the philosophical underpinning, there are things that get missed, like the experience of some people who have experienced trauma, where even their existence is not really viewed as a good. And I think that that idea is completely foreign to the CCMMP. I think that having that lens, that trauma-informed lens, is something that would be incredibly helpful for the Meta-Model. As far as another element that I think is really helpful that IFS would lend to the CCMMP is that idea of the relation to oneself and self-love.

[01:06:06] Dr. Peter: Oh boy.

[01:06:08] Dr. Christian Amalu: And you know how I feel about self-love, Peter. I mean, that’s a pretty big one right there.

[01:06:11] Dr. Peter: Yeah, absolutely. Ordered self-love.

[01:06:14] Dr. Christian Amalu: Exactly. And I think that self-love and relationality to oneself is at best cursorily acknowledged in the Meta-Model. And I think it’s an area that is more and more needed to be, you know, expanded upon and talked about in clinical praxis. 

[01:06:35] Dr. Peter Martin: It’s heartening to hear that they’re planning on developing some kind of an applied book, you know, related to the premises, anthropological premises. I’m assuming that they never designed the anthropological premises to be applied per se, but it was more kind of a dialogue with philosophical psychology and some of the research and things like that, which is definitely needed.

[01:06:58] Dr. Peter: Yeah. And I feel like maybe I was a little unfair in some of what I was saying there because yeah, I mean, they’re asking and answering different questions than what clinicians would be immediately concerned about, I think, as far as, how do I do the work? You know, so we want to acknowledge that.

[01:07:14] Dr. Peter Martin: No. But I don’t disagree with your points though, Peter. I think that the element of trauma could have been fleshed out more, you know, theoretically. What does it do to the intellect, to the will? How does it compromise virtue in some level? I mean, there’s many ways that it could have been included in there. I also think the unconscious or the non-conscious kind of functioning, that could have been added to it. I think the self-love, it’s interesting. I have read that book probably almost word for word, except for the references. I’m not reading the reference section. Almost word for word, probably about seven-eighths of it. But it’s a good text. There’s some excellent chapters. I tell people, like if you were to get that book, the second chapter is worth getting the book for. Like, that’s where it lays out the premises, and then the integration chapter by Paul Vitz, I think it’s on, the resonating laminate, I think he used to call it.

[01:08:04] Dr. Christian Amalu: Integrated laminate. Yeah.

[01:08:06] Dr. Peter Martin: He calls it integrated. He used to call it resonate. But yeah, so that I think is an excellent chapter. But I did find that, you know, when we look at Scripture, it’s the two great commandments and the three loves. But in the CCMMP, it’s more like the two great commandments and the two loves. And you’ll see this over and over. And I’m not really, well, I guess I kind of am making a critique here, but it’s usually a focus on love of God and neighbor. And most always, they don’t include love of self. And I think they’re following in that concern that self-love in a disordered way or a disproportionate way was very unhealthy from a mental health standpoint, let alone spiritual or moral. But I think what they’re missing out on is ordered self-love, as we know, is the template, provides the template and the disposition for the others. And so I, you know, I do think that could be fleshed out. I feel like I want to give you know, Anthony Flood’s number to the editors. And to really had flesh that component out a bit more.

[01:09:08] Dr. Christian Amalu: Absolutely. And to your point, I mean, to be fair, if you look at the majority of the tradition, especially in the early Church and a lot of the foundational theology, they do speak more about love of God and love of neighbor. But I will always be quick to point out because it was assumed that self-love was a given. Because, and we see this in St. Paul, because what man hates his own flesh? Well, obviously, Paul never met a person with deep-seated developmental trauma. I mean, that’s a foreign idea. And so I think with different understanding, with different words, and we see this in the Church, because that idea of proper self-love is developed. It comes out, and it is there. It’s just maybe not as mainstream as the preference of love of God and love of neighbor dialogue. I feel like that gets a lot more attention, and we’re in a new era now where we’re talking about it way more. 

[01:10:01] Dr. Peter: Well, and if folks are interested in that, Dr. Anthony Flood, who you both have brought up, at North Dakota State University, has dedicated his career to explicating ordered self-love as understood by St. Thomas Aquinas. And we’ve got a couple of books of his that we’ll put in the description for this podcast episode so folks can track that down if you want. But I find that to be absolutely essential. I can appreciate the connection to the virtues. You mentioned Dr. Monty de la Torre’s semi-monthly reflection, that was from January 15th of this year, the eight C’s of IFS and their connection to the virtues. I tend to be, ’cause I am more Carmelite in my spirituality, I tend to be really relational with this stuff. And I had experiences in my own history of the virtues really being a self-absorbed self-improvement program, you know, that lacked a kind of relationality, so I have a particular thing I’m still working through with that.

[01:11:05] Dr. Peter: But I really wanna bring out the relationality both within our own systems, you know, our relationships to ourselves, you know, where we are to love and how that’s so necessary. Because if we don’t value ourselves, if we don’t love ourselves, how will we make a gift of ourselves? You know, that whole progression that the U.S. Catholic bishops have given us in the Program for Priestly Formation 6th Edition, that progression from self-awareness to self-possession to self-gift. And if I look at, like, what of all of the things I’ve learned in these decades of being a clinician and studying and learning, in terms of where the rubber meets the road, IFS has been by far the most helpful in self-awareness, self-possession, and self-gift. So yeah. Well, I’m curious, like, if there’s one thing that you would like a reader of your dissertation, right, to remember from it, if there were one takeaway, dear Dr. Christian, if there was one thing that you would like them to be able to have or to hold after they were done, you know, with their perusing of it, what would it be?

[01:12:28] Dr. Christian Amalu: Skip to page 51. That’s where it gets good. Oh, gosh darn it. Anyway, it feels like all the takeaways are things that I haven’t actually said in the dissertation.

[01:12:39] Dr. Peter: Okay. We can say them here. Yeah, absolutely. Wow, this is gonna be like an episode that’s like an addendum to the dissertation, you know.

[01:12:49] Dr. Peter Martin: You heard it here first.

[01:12:52] Dr. Christian Amalu: Yeah. St. Maximus the Confessor, in his whole synthesis of the faith up to that point, and he had done so much integrating the theology of the East and the West and in the overall understanding of what it means to be human. And when he describes the human person as a microcosm of the cosmos, a small, a little cosmos that reflects the entirety of all creation, he explicitly places humankind as the nexus point of the contact between the created reality and the divine. And that comes to its fulfillment in Christ himself. What man did at the fall was introducing cacophony of chaos into the created order that, by design, he was meant to put in order and to give back to God. Christ came, he died for us, and he defeated death and rose again to reignite that project of ordering the cosmos anew. And under his leadership, so we talk about self-leadership in IFS all the time, which I think ultimately finds its fullness in Christ’s leadership, we are supposed to carry on the mission of Adam in ordering the cosmos. But it starts in here. It starts in your own heart. It starts in your own system.

[01:14:44] Dr. Christian Amalu: Jacques Philippe quotes in Searching For and Maintaining Peace, he quotes St. Seraphim of Sarov saying that if you paraphrase, ’cause I still haven’t memorized this, but if you find inner peace, thousands around you will be saved. The peace that you foster in your own heart, once you bring order into your own self, that is going to resonate out of your system and into the systems that you are a part of. The healing project that you begin in yourself is going to resonate into the world and change it. And it is going to bring creation into the greater order and expand the garden as it was meant to be. That was the whole point of taking this dissertation and giving some integration point for this is what that work can look like. I think in my heart of hearts that IFS, when done within a Catholic framework, is exactly participating in the work of Maximus the Confessor, of being fully human. That’s my takeaway. 

[01:16:01] Dr. Peter: Oh man, that’s so good. That’s so good. And you can find out more about that in episode 169 of this podcast, St. Maximus the Confessor and Catholic Parts Work. Such a great episode. You were here for that one, Dr. Christian. Dr. Gerry was with us, ’cause he is, you know, the maximal fan of St. Maximus, introduced me to St. Maximus the Confessor. And I’m sort of reminded of that hymn, right? “Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me,” right? Like, this is really where we can make an impact on the entire mystical body of Christ. Because if we do our own internal work, it’s gonna lift everybody else up in the body, and it’s gonna have this positive impact on the rest of the cosmos. And I just think that’s so powerful to remember. So I am really impressed and gratified that you brought that out so clearly. Wow.

[01:17:00] Dr. Christian Amalu: The Holy Spirit gets credit on that. But thank you. Thank you. 

[01:17:10] Dr. Peter Martin: Yeah. It’s hard to follow that. I will take a breath and do my best. You know, one thing that came to mind, and I think it’s not unrelated to, you know, Christian’s point about doing the work of Adam, to integrate and so forth. what came to my mind as we were thinking about IFS and CCMMP is whatever model you use, you know, we’re focusing on the the IFS model, whatever. What I might suggest is that to be more God-like is that whatever leads you to be more merciful towards self and neighbor, whatever leads you to follow in the footsteps of Mercy himself, and to be the face of mercy to your parts, the face of mercy to others. You know, I’m fond of that phrase, “Misery attracts mercy more than just about anything else does, even more than virtue, some would say, attracts mercy. So misery attracts mercy, and misery’s primary object is evil. It could be the evil of suffering. It could be, you know, Christ’s mercy came in to stomp out evil and open the gates to Paradise. But whatever model that you use, ensure that it somehow gets you closer to becoming mercy. And I think IFS does a fine job at a natural level in doing that. I think it does a fine job on the inward turn and the outward turn, and it helps to be more like Him when we go, you know, do the upward turn as well. 

[01:18:53] Dr. Peter: So I am not often at a loss for words. I’m not often at a loss for ideas, but I find myself kind of there now. I do wanna say that when we consider approaches to flourishing, I do wanna say that when we consider what helps all of me to flourish, all of you. Not just the manager parts. I happen to think that most spiritual books are written by spiritual manager parts for the spiritual manager parts of readers. I think many of the self-help books out there, many of the books that are in one way or another related to human formation, they’re written by the author’s most prominent parts, and they’re read by the parts that are interested in that sort of stuff. And so a lot of times the books miss it. You know, they miss what the exiles really need. They’re operating on a more superficial level. What I’m gonna encourage folks to do is to think about what does all of me need, including, yes, that part, right? That part that is really neglected, that part that has been really abandoned, that has really been devalued, that’s been condemned.

[01:20:16] Dr. Peter: Because I think that integration is gonna happen either here on Earth or it’s part of the work of purgatory. And nothing disordered is gonna enter into heaven. We’ve had some semi-monthly reflections about this. Even Father Boniface, just, you know, commented in one of them about like, is that part of the role of purgatory? And I just think that we need to be more holistic. I think so often there is so much spiritualizing, spiritual bypassing, the attempt to use spiritual means to resolve problems that are really in the natural realm, human formation issues. And I think that if we can bring love to all of us, then we’re gonna be able to turn outward to our neighbor and upward toward God with all of us, with all of me, you know? And to love wholeheartedly, right? Not just with these three parts that are deemed acceptable to God in our minds, but with all of our being. And so that emphasis on integration, which is why we call this podcast Interior Integration for Catholics, the emphasis on integration and inner harmony, this emphasis on wholeness, on flourishing, I think is just so important.

[01:21:37] Dr. Peter: And I think unlike the vast majority of dissertations, mine included, yours, Christian, really made an impact on like people’s lives in a very material way, a very tangible way. I’ve heard so many compliments of it. And so, so grateful for you to have done that work. Excited to be able to collaborate as we continue. And, you know, and just an invitation to those of you that are more conceptually minded to, yeah, to participate in one way or another in this effort to further deepen our understanding of how we can ground the applied aspects of this in our lives in a sound theoretical conceptual framework. You know, and I think so much is coming together around that. It’s so exciting to be a part of it. So a lot of gratitude to you both for that because we are speculating in some ways. We are out on a limb in some ways, you know, taking some risks here to share this stuff.

[01:22:42] Dr. Peter: And if we do stray from something that is authentically Catholic, if we do get off the rails in one way or another, really encourage being corrected. You know, know, reach out to us. Let me know. crisis@soulsandhearts.com, 317-567-9594. That’s my personal cell phone number. You can let me know and we’ll take that stuff into consideration. We really do want to have this be a self-correcting endeavor, and it’s helpful to see more and more people who are interested in this, not just from an applied standpoint, but also from that conceptual work, bringing it all together. So just a blessing. So any final thoughts? I know we kind of had a key takeaway, but any one-liners or anything, you know, that summarizes anything that you’d like to share before we draw this to a close for today?

[01:23:40] Dr. Peter Martin: I think I would just go back to Pope Benedict’s statement that, you know, healing is an essential dimension of the mission of Christianity. And so our job is to see that redemption is this whole person’s transformation and healing. You know, and to find ways to do that, I think is so essential. And I think the good work that you’re doing, Peter, with the Souls and Hearts community, with this podcast and everything is really bringing about some aspects of the content of redemption.

[01:24:14] Dr. Christian Amalu: Yeah. That’s wonderful. I guess two kind of final parting thoughts is healing is holiness. Healing is holiness. To come before God is to be complete and whole. And so anybody who’s interested in the project of holiness, I think, should be interested in the project of healing. And to bring that together, I found a way, I slipped it into the dissertation. It’s a little nugget in there, so maybe some motivation to go read it. I tried to slip in as many quotes from Early Church Fathers and theologians as I could get away with in the dissertation, and one of those is from who Pope Benedict XVI called the Doctor of Unity. And that was St. Ignatius of Antioch. And this, I think, kind of wraps up what you were saying, Dr. Peter, earlier, before you asked for our reflections. He said, “Love one another from an undivided heart.” That is one of the earliest mandates that we have from the Church Fathers which hints at that. And I would say more than hints, but kind of very explicitly, like work on that dividedness, make yourself whole so that you can love from your whole self.

[01:25:33] Dr. Peter Martin: Right, excellent.

[01:25:35] Dr. Peter: I just wanna close by giving a little shout-out to Richard Schwartz of gratitude and all those who were there kinda early on and throughout the years in terms of helping to develop that model. Yeah, just a lot of gratitude in my heart for that. Not that we necessarily agree on everything anthropological or metaphysical or spiritual or whatever, but just gratitude there. And gratitude that we have an invitation from St. Augustine, from St. Thomas Aquinas, from so many of the leading lights, the doctors of the church, right up through Vatican II and into the Catechism, to be able to have an invitation to bring all of this together in a way that furthers yes, the mystical body of Christ, the kingdom of God, but also just furthers the wellbeing of every individual on this earth. So I’m grateful to my Church for that.

[01:26:31] Dr. Peter: So, if you would like to get a copy of Dr. Amalu’s dissertation, Dr. Christian Amalu’s dissertation, one of the most popular dissertations I’m sure in the history of the world, with now, we’re into thousands of downloads of that dissertation, just go to the podcast episode description at YouTube for this episode 184, or it’s in the show notes if you are tuning in on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. You can also check out his psychotherapy practice at deeprenewalpsychotherapy.com. There’s also a link to the Immaculate Heart of Mary Counseling Center, where Dr. Peter Martin is at, and just some other links that might be relevant to this episode. Now, for more about Internal Family Systems and parts work grounded in a Catholic understanding of the human person, check out our previous episodes. Episodes 157, 158, 159 are a great introduction just to IFS, the major concepts. Episodes 160 all the way through 183 and now 184, grounded in a Catholic understanding of the human person.

[01:27:38] Dr. Peter: Also, we have a sister podcast, Scripture for Your Inner Outcasts, and it comes out every day, 365 days a year. It’s a daily podcast where we bring Jesus’ love, his ministry inside to all parts of us. Just as Jesus reached out to all the outcasts of society, in this podcast, we reach out to your inner outcasts, the exiled parts of you that may feel unworthy or unlovable, and we invite them in to seeing Scripture through a new lens. We want to bring Scripture alive for those parts of you that may have experienced spiritual neglect. This podcast helps listeners to integrate inside, to flourish in accepting being loved, and in loving yourself in an ordered way. So each day we reflect on a verse or two from sacred scripture taken from the daily Catholic Mass readings, and it’s all informed by Internal Family Systems and other parts work.

[01:28:36] Dr. Peter: Now, for you Catholic formators, I’m gonna switch gears here. I want to tell you about the Formation for Formators community. You can find this at soulsandhearts.com/fff. It’s all about your personal human formation. This is for counselors, therapists, coaches, spiritual directors, priests, and religious, those who help others in their formation, who accompany others in their personal formation. We have a retreat that is just for you Catholic formators. It is August 10th to the 13th, 2026, at the Mother of the Redeemer Retreat Center in Bloomington, Indiana, and the theme is Authentic Being and Authentic Relating. This retreat helps you to connect with, to find and connect with, and to love your parts, especially your exiled parts, parts that you might not have been in relationship with yet. We also have some small groups that are starting for Catholic formators in August and September, our foundations experiential groups. Mine will begin on August 31st and meet on Mondays from 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM Eastern Time. You can find out more about that at soulsandhearts.com/fff. David Edwards has a small group starting on September 14th and meeting on Monday evenings from 6:15 PM to 7:45 PM Eastern Time, and Bridget Adams has one meeting on Wednesday mornings from 9:00 AM to 10:30 AM Eastern Time.

[01:30:04] Dr. Peter: We also have some advanced groups. I will be doing a related Wholeheartedly with God in Prayer group, where we will be looking at Father Thomas Acklin, Father Boniface Hicks, their book, Personal Prayer: A Guide for Receiving the Father’s Love. We’ll be looking at that through a parts lens. And for all Catholic adults who are interested in parts and systems thinking, we just closed our registration for our St. Mary Magdalene cohort. You can get on the list though by going to soulsandhearts.com/rcc. You can get on the interest list for the St. Nicholas cohort, which will be our next one. That cohort will open for applications in October. We take new members every February, June, and October.

[01:30:48] Dr. Peter: And the Resilient Catholics Community, this is where we have this extremely focused approach, where we bring everything together to help you flourish. It’s all informed by Internal Family Systems. It’s all grounded in a Catholic anthropology and metaphysics. It is really the core of Souls and Hearts. This is where the most cutting-edge personal human formation work is being done, and that’s available to all adult Catholics, 18 and over who believe what the Church teaches in faith and morals and really want to do their own personal work in their human formation informed by IFS and, like I said, in the most Catholic way. So we’ll now draw this to a close by invoking 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.