Have you ever felt like part of you was ready to step forward, but another part hesitated or held back? Maybe one part longs to say yes, while another screams no. These moments of inner conflict reveal a fundamental truth – we are not just one voice. Inside each of us lives a rich inner cast of characters, each with its own memories, motives, and meanings.
Over the past century, therapists have been listening more deeply to those voices within. The evolution of parts-based therapies reflects a growing understanding: healing isn’t about eliminating parts of ourselves. It’s about integrating them. Let’s take a journey through the key approaches that have shaped this field, ending with Resource Therapy – a modern model offering clarity, compassion, and clinically precise healing.
The Roots Of Parts Therapy: Ego State Theory
Our voyage begins with Paul Federn, an early psychoanalyst and contemporary of Freud, who first introduced the idea that the personality is made up of distinct states. His student Edoardo Weiss continued this exploration, and later John and Helen Watkins developed Ego State Therapy. This model posited that our psyche is composed of parts – or “ego states” – that can operate independently. These parts could be functional or frozen in trauma, and they could be accessed through hypnosis or dialogue.
What was revolutionary here? Rather than treating the person as a monolithic self, therapists began working directly with the state that held the pain, fear, or stuck behaviour.
Systemic Echoes: Family Constellations
While not a parts model in the traditional sense, Bert Hellinger’s Family Constellations added a powerful layer. His work focused on the idea that unresolved systemic trauma could live on in the internal world of descendants. Parts of us may carry the burdens of others, ancestors, lost siblings, and family secrets.
Constellations externalised these inner dynamics in space, offering clients the chance to see how loyalty to suffering may be embedded in a part of them. These insights paved the way for greater compassion and awareness of the unconscious loyalties that parts may carry.
The Dialoguers: Voice Dialogue
Enter Hal and Sidra Stone, who invited us to meet our inner voices with intention. Their method, Voice Dialogue, gave form to familiar parts – the Inner Critic, the Pleaser, the Vulnerable Child, and encouraged clients to speak as the part. No fixing. No fusing. Just listening.
Their approach normalised multiplicity and championed the idea that every part has value. Even the saboteur is protecting something. Their legacy lies in the permission they gave us to dialogue with complexity, not just simplify it.
The Inner Family: Internal Family Systems (IFS)
Richard Schwartz took these ideas mainstream with Internal Family Systems (IFS). His model framed the psyche as an inner family of “parts,” with a central Self that is calm, compassionate, and confident. The goal of IFS is to heal wounded “exiles” and transform protective “managers” and “firefighters” so the Self can lead.
IFS became incredibly popular because of its non-pathologising language and its accessible way of working. However, it can sometimes lean heavily into spiritual concepts, rely on Self, which isn’t always accessible, and doesn’t always offer therapists a clear treatment path for trauma-driven behaviours.
Enter Resource Therapy: The Clinical Compass
Resource Therapy (RT), developed by Dr Gordon Emmerson in Australia, brings together the depth of Ego State Therapy with the precision of clinical intervention. It’s the next generation in parts-based therapy – trauma-informed, client-centred, and neurologically attuned.
Here’s what makes Resource Therapy unique:
- Parts are called Resource States, and they are physiological, not just symbolic. That means they’re real, distinct states with specific neural pathways.
- RT works only with the part that holds the issue. We don’t just talk about the anxious part – we bring it out and speak directly with it. With deep respect and compassion.
- Knows we can have the best part suited to the occasion at the helm. Captain Conscious pilots the way with the appropriate skills and abilities.
- The model offers a detailed diagnostic system with eight types of Resource pathologies, including:
- Vaded with Fear (e.g. panic, phobias, PTSD)
- Vaded with Rejection (e.g. low self-worth, perfectionism)
- Retro Avoiding (e.g. addictions, avoidance behaviours)
- Conflicted States (inner tension and paralysis)
- RT uses 15 specific therapeutic actions – including Vivify Specific, Bridging, Expression, Introject Speak, Relief, and Resource Finding – giving clinicians a clear roadmap for deep, lasting change.
- And it all rests on the brilliant ship metaphor. Each person is a ship with many crew members. When the right part is at the helm, we sail smoothly. When a wounded or outdated state grabs the wheel at the wrong time, we veer off course. RT helps clients restore internal harmony so the most skilled captain can steer.
Integration, Not Elimination
From Federn’s clinical focus to Hellinger’s ancestral insight, from Voice Dialogue’s inner conversations to IFS’s compassionate Self, each model has gifted us a new way to see the inner world. They remind us that healing is not about silencing parts, but about hearing them, honouring them, and helping them come back into relationship with the whole.
Resource Therapy builds on this legacy, providing a sophisticated, trauma-attuned approach that empowers therapists to work directly with the state that needs healing. It doesn’t ask, “What’s wrong with you?” – it asks, “Which part of you is hurting, and how can we help you?”
When we stop seeing ourselves as broken and start recognising the parts of us trying their best to survive, we open the door to real healing.
And when the right part is at the helm, the whole ship can sail towards freedom.
