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This article is the first written by Richard Schwartz about IFS theory, therefore it is considered the seminal publication on IFS prior to his original IFS book being published. In this article, Schwartz describes working with a 23-year-old woman being treated for bulimia and her family for an outcome study he was involved with. He discussed the family's systemic progress in treatment, though his client's symptoms of bulimia persisted. He decided to "violate the unwritten rule that forbids family therapists from considering the intrapsychic foundations of a problem" and began discussing his client's internal experience just before binging and purging. Schwartz describes his process of spending many sessions asking the client about the Parts in her internal system and their inner conversations. He found it logical as a family therapist to apply family systems concepts to internal processes that have such an impact on thoughts and emotions. Schwartz then explores the concept of "The Modular Brain" as a way of seeing people with fragmented, multiple sub-selves, sub-personalities, or Parts. Schwartz describes how these Parts operate inside people and how they maintain certain ways of feeling and behaving. Next, Schwartz confronts "the myth of the monolithic self" and how it hampers the family therapist from seeing the complexity in all family members and their interactions. He writes about how he languages this with clients by noting, "There is a part of Johnny that, when extreme, worries about being deserted and tells him to protect his parents' marriage." Schwartz asserts that family therapists need a clear idea of the inner world of the individuals in a family to see how incoherently organized we are. Schwartz discusses other intrapsychic models of psychotherapy to illustrate the insufficiencies they carry compared to his own emerging therory. He describes his own model (now known as IFS) as being based in experiential methods that help people access their sub-selves. He then describes the component of his theory called The Self, the one who runs the show in a person's internal system. Schwartz acknowledges the other theories and theorists who use the term Self and outlines the similarities and differences between his version of Self and theirs. He notes that Self should be an active leader in the person's internal system, one that takes care of the various Parts. He describes Self as having a non-judgemental, differentiated view of the internal and external systems that allows it to provide effective leadership. He describes the process by which Parts become polarized with each other in the internal system, and how Self can become enmeshed with Parts, thereby rendering itself ineffective in its leadership. Schwartz uses the metaphor of the orchestra to describe how Parts and Self operate in the internal system. Finally, he summarizes how the entire system operates with a fully functioning Self and less polarized Parts, and calls it the internal family system. He describes Self as the central executive in charge of a clan of members with various needs. Schwartz identifies the phases of his interventions using the original client case example. He also highlights the parallels between a person's internal and external systems, and how highly related they are. Schwartz asserts that "The key to change within this internal family is elevating the Self..." The more differentiated the Self becomes from the individual parts, the better able it is to provide effective Self Leadership. He mentions the way Parts can act in extreme ways, and how having Self in the lead can help Parts renegotiate their rules to be helpful rather than obstructive. This article may be important for researchers and others to cite in their writings as it is the seminal paper on IFS.