Pathology Vs. Parts of personality in Deep Process Psychotherapy (DPP)

A pleural approach to mind

Approaches to psychotherapy that adopt the existence of a pleural mind at it’s core hold a non-pathologising approach to symptoms and the patterns of behaviour that we can experience. These approaches include facilitated Shadow Work & Deep Process Psychotherapy (DPP), Internal Family Systems therapy (IFS), and Voice Dialog amongst others.

Symptoms through the lens of parts

In these approaches, conventional (psychiatric) diagnoses are seen as various ways of describing the behaviours of activated parts of the personality. And rather than pathologising symptomatic behaviours, these behaviours are viewed as natural efforts to solve problems: to cope, to stay safe and to survive.

In these approaches symptoms are welcomed upfront as an introduction to protective aspects of the personality. We are invited to become curious about the relationships and motives within the internal system. This internal system is viewed through the lens of a predictable, commonly shared psychic structure in which protective aspects of the personality aim to hide the existence of vulnerability, and guard these vulnerable parts of the personality from being hurt again. This protection within the internal system is focused on past experience and the threat of future injury.

The way through is to become curious about our parts, exploring inner relationships, enquiring about protective motivation and the fears that are being carried, forming relationships with these parts of the internal system, befriending these aspects the personality through direct communication and inviting alternative solutions to the parts comprising the hard-working inner system.

Shadow work and opening to the unconscious

In shadow work, we also open into discovering and working with those more murky aspects of the personality, and the internal dynamics that lie on the edge of our awareness or in our unconscious, understanding that it is often the parts of us in shadow that are often the unconscious drivers behind the challenging symptoms that we experience. 

In shadow work we often work in an embodied way in order to maximise the opportunity for direct experience opening into unconscious content, and we employ various tools to bring these parts of us and the associated internal dynamics and drivers that might be on the edge of our consciousness or in our unconscious, into the light of awareness so that they can be worked with directly. 

In shadow work we make use of representation in order to symbolically externalise aspects of the personality in order to support the revelation of the hidden inner dynamics, allowing them to become visible. 

As we explore ourselves in this way, being curious about our parts and leaning into any discomfort in safety, with courage and willingness, what emerges are opportunities for deep healing.