September 4th, 2020
- Made a remark to Sarah McManus today that seemed worth writing up briefly. We were talking about shadow-work and unconscious drives, and I referred to some parts as "self-undermining" and she questioned my use of that phrase since we'd just been talking about a perspective from which all parts are considered to be doing something meaningful/important/valid etc.
- I pointed out that inasmuch as the "self" is a necessary organizing function, as eg it is construed in the context of Internal Family Systems, then any parts that require as part of their functioning that information be hidden from consciousness, necessarily undermine the Self
- this doesn't make those parts bad! it's a structural thing.
- ...and there may still be all sorts of reasons to not frame things as "self-undermining". this was just an exploration into the idea that maybe it's consistent with 100% coherence empathy
- sort of like how an individual could be doing something that makes total sense for them, AND is actually disrupting some aspect of the group