Parts of the Self, Schema Modes, Alters, and Narrative and Pre-Narrative Selves: Understanding and Working With Multiplicity

Abstract

The account of Kelly's therapy (Edwards, 2022b), and the commentaries by Singer (2022) and Margolin (2022), each, in different ways, highlight the significance of multiplicity, and the importance of understanding it, for the practice of psychotherapy. For several decades, many approaches to therapy have recognized and provided guidelines working with this multiplicity (Hermans & DiMaggio, 2004; Kellogg & Young, 2006; Lazarus & Rafaeli, in press; Rowan & Cooper, 1999; Schwartz, 1997; Stiles, 2011; Teasdale, 1999; Watkins & Johnson, 1982). Schema therapy is an integrative therapy that draws freely on these historical traditions, while offering its own distinctive framework for using multiplicity in case conceptualization for a wide variety of clinical phenomena (Edwards, 2022a).  Examination of processes within cases treated within this framework provides the opportunity to further develop and synthesise clinically grounded theory, and, as Edwards (2022b) argued, it is increasingly possible for that practice to be grounded in a scientific understanding of the systems of memory and learning that underlie the client’s experience, drawing on the significant advances in our understanding of autobiographical memory systems. This article continues to explore this idea by responding to the commentaries on the case study of Kelly by Singer and Margolin.