© Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2021, Office 415, The Workstation, 15 Paternoster Row, Sheffield, S1 2BX IR 23.3 (2020) 293–304 Implicit Religion (print) ISSN 1463-9955 https://doi.org/10.1558/imre.41249 Implicit Religion (online) ISSN 1743-1697 Keywords: Religious Studies, political theology, methodology, family systems Religious Studies and Internal Family Systems Therapy MAXWELL KENNEL McMaster University max.kennel@gmail.com Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a psychotherapy modality that combines elements of systems theory with an experiential approach that rests on distinctions between Self and parts of self. Unlike more cognitive approaches such as Cognitive Behavioural Terapy (CBT) and psychodynamic ‘talk’ therapies, IFS challenges traditional divisions between mind and body that have endured in both the treatment of psychological trauma and in the study of religion. Tis essay provides a summary of IFS as it is conceptualized by Richard Schwartz, Martha Sweezy, and Frank Anderson, and then critically identifes several signifcant religious resonances in its approach to mediating between a stable ‘Self’ and parts of self that are partitioned by traumatic or overwhelming experiences. I conclude with the suggestion that the IFS approach to therapy and the discipline of Religious Studies mutually illuminate and challenge each other in their overlapping approaches to the problems of value-neutrality and normativity. Introduction Many psychotherapy modalities are currently available to help counselors and therapists conceptualize their work and plan their treatment of clients. Major western approaches include Cognitive Behavioural Terapy (CBT), Emotion Focused Terapy (EF T), Acceptance and Commitment Ter- apy (ACT), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Terapy (EMDR), Dialectical Behavioural Terapy (DBT), and various Psycho- dynamic techniques that continue the legacy of psychoanalysis. However, another approach has become increasingly popular in the feld since it was frst conceived by Richard C. Schwartz in the 1980s. Described as “integrative” and “nonpathological,” early Internal Family Systems therapy brought insights from Family Systems theory into the realm of the self by understanding the self as profoundly multiple (Engler 2013, xvii-xxvii; Minor 2016). One major and recent introduction to IFS therapy describes