This post links to a recent podcast, where I join Dick Schwartz, the founder of Internal Family Systems (IFS), and Gabor Maté, a well-known commentator on addiction and its impact on marginalized communities. As I’ve blogged about lately, I rely on IFS as a ground-breaking therapeutic tool in my psychology practice. Here in this podcast, the three of us put our heads together to examine how parts psychology and self-compassion can ease the anguish of addiction and related difficulties.
The Weekend University disseminates progressive, evidence-based ideas and opinions about the workings of the human mind and the possibility of relieving suffering, worldwide, through sharing this knowledge in our work and our lives. This post is hosted by Niall McKeever, the founder and curator of the Weekend University podcast series. The series regularly features lectures in psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, evolutionary studies, and mindfulness approaches, as well as new ways to conceptualize pernicious social and geopolitical issues through the lens of these disciplines.
I was delighted when Niall invited me to share the mic (and camera) with Maté and Schwartz a few weeks ago. In a previous podcast in this series, I described how IFS enriches the reservoir of therapeutic techniques available for working with people in addiction. But this episode was a special treat for me. I’ve known Gabor Maté for some time, I often recommend his Hungry Ghosts book, and we spent a few hours walking around Vancouver and chatting years ago. But I’d never met Dick Schwartz. I’ve listened to scads of talks and interviews with him, taken online courses with him, I’ve truly immersed myself in his psychotherapeutic brainchild, but I’ve not had the pleasure to connect with him directly. Until this podcast.
So without further ado, here’s the episode: Rethinking Addiction.
I hope you’ll give it a listen. And before, during, or after that, take a look at the following point-form summary and relevant links posted on the podcast website:
In this meeting of the minds discussion, we’re joined by three of the world’s leading experts on addiction: Dr Gabor Maté, Dr Richard Schwartz, and Professor Marc Lewis.
Although their backgrounds vary widely, with Gabor initially training as a medical doctor, Richard as a family therapist, and Marc as a developmental psychologist and neuroscientist, all three of them have reached similar conclusions in their understanding of, and approach to treating addiction.
In a lively and wide ranging discussion, we explore:
- Why do we need to approach problems with addiction not by asking: “what’s wrong with it?”, but instead by asking, “what’s right with it?”
- Why both the ‘self-indulgent’ and ‘disease’ models of addiction are both fundamentally flawed and harmful (from a scientific point of view)
- The root causes
- How the internal family systems (IFS) model can improve our understanding of the mechanisms underlying addiction
- How Gabor Maté’s Compassionate Inquiry approach can help heal addictions by simply asking the right questions from a place of compassion and genuine curiosity
- Why IFS therapy may be one of the most effective approaches out there for working with addictions.
And more.
You can learn more about each speaker’s work via the selected links from this episode.
Selected Links from the Episode
- Marc’s website
- Marc’s blog post series on using IFS to treat addiction
- Memoirs of an Addicted Brain – Prof Marc Lewis
- The Biology of Desire – Prof Marc Lewis
- Gabor’s Compassionate Inquiry Training
- In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts – Dr. Gabor Maté
- The Wisdom of Trauma Documentary
- Gabor’s website
- IFS Institute Website
- IFS Institute Online Circle
- IFS Annual Conference
- Greater than the Sum of Our Parts – Dr. Richard Schwartz
- The Body Keeps the Score – Bessel van der Kolk
- What Happened to You – Oprah Winfrey & Dr . Bruce Perry
Postscript and retort:
Please forgive me for pooping out in the middle of the podcast. We had a power outage in my region of Toronto — a very rare occurrence — so I disappeared for about ten minutes and then returned when I was able to figure out (with my wife’s help) how to use my phone as a “personal hotspot.” Ironically, perhaps, it was during my personal blackout that Gabor aired his opinion that I saw “non-physiological” addictions as mental events disconnected from brain activity. Of course, that’s not what I think at all, as my book, Memoirs of an Addicted Brain, and many subsequent articles make clear. I think the brain is intrinsically, fundamentally involved in all mental and emotional activities, certainly including addiction. What I describe as “non-physiological” addictions in the podcast are simply those that don’t unleash massive physical withdrawal symptoms — e.g., addictions to cannabis or cocaine or, for that matter, gambling and porn. In my view, all addictions are psychological. But some, as epitomized by opiate addiction, tack on the additional agony of physiological rebound reactions, while neurophysiological supplies and demands get readjusted to life without the drug.
Gabor and I seemed to patch up our misunderstanding through a flurry of recent emails. But I’m still simmering, as you can see. Let it not be said that Lewis dismisses the brain’s role in addiction! And speaking more broadly, the notorious mind-body distinction needs to be thrown out — for once and for all — not merely recycled. Descartes has been dead for centuries.
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