Parts Work: An Illustrated Guide to Your Inner Life by Tom Holmes (2011) Paperback Paperback – September 1, 2007

This book was recommended to me after I had expressed interest in the Internal Family System work. It is indeed really worthwhile to read and reread it, because it contains so much information presented in an easily understandable way.The one quibble I have with this book compared to Jay Earley's Self-therapy is that Holmes keeps repeating that it is difficult and/or impossible to work on your own with this system while Earley obviously takes the position that it is very well possible to do this work on your own or with a buddy, not necessarily with an IFS therapist if the situation isn't too dramatic.Personally I am not really fond of Sharon Eckstein's drawing style, but the illustrations support the text in a wonderful way nevertheless.Reading Holmes and Earley both together gave me an even broader introduction to this wonderful parts work. It is my intention to keep studying in this direction.

This is a good opener for a Therapist to introduce Parts Work to her client. It may be beyond understanding for clients who have no therapy background.

a lot of things I have learned in my life especially through therapy. IFS seems to combine meditation, emotions, thoughts, behavior, relationships and so much more together to find your self. Wise mind as I have learned. I have always felt like something is missing in terms of therapy, like it separated me into different pthings or parts instead of being whole. Maybe the spiritual part is what is missing too. This seems to integrate that in as well no matter what one believes. I will want to read this again and do the exercises but I think it’s a very visual instruction to begin to understand IFS. (Integrated Family Systems) - I think it’s hard to go back to book once here in typing review and not loose what I typed lol.

I think this is probably one of the better layperson introductions to a complex field I have seen. The trade off for that ease of information flow is that the book never gets terribly deep or moves on to adding complexity to the idea. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in starting to look at the topic but I would also recommend looking for a subsequent text to go deeper. I don't think this works terribly well beyond purely acquainting someone with the concepts and how to think about them.There may also be a bias on my part due to my familiarity with guided imagery techniques. I do not trust the write ups in here to be safe enough or complex enough to get good results. So I may be being a harsher critic with my 4 stars than this text deserves given its purpose and its statement that you should use these techniques with a therapist anyway.As for IFS itself, I think I'm finding these ideas very useful. They mesh well with things I have already done and felt and I can see a lot of the sense in them. The Firemen in particular make it easy to codify a lot of the things I regularly do that are difficult for me to understand otherwise.

I had decided not to buy this due to the negative reviews, yet a friend encouraged me to buy anyway. Im so glad I did!!! This is a spectacular book. The visuals are amazing and very relatable. The easy to understand concepts are life changing!So glad I bought! I also bought the 73 card deck👍🏻

Easy to read and understand, super interesting and helpful for every person and every relationship. It’s nice to find a concise self help book!

A very visual, wonderful book that explains the basics of IFS work, and that is sometimes all we need to start. I held this in my Amazon Unlimited for months. Just buy it - my adolescents love it in therapy and we don’t need to go much ‘deeper’ than that.

I use this as a therapist and have my clients get it to do and work on parts. It is such a help!