University of Florida Levin College of Law UF Law Scholarship Repository Faculty Publications Faculty Scholarship 1-1-2013 Managing Inner and Outer Conflict: Selves, Subpersonalities, and Internal Family Systems Leonard L. Riskin University of Florida Levin College of Law, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/facultypub Part of the Dispute Resolution and Arbitration Commons, and the Psychology and Psychiatry Commons Recommended Citation Leonard L. Riskin, Managing Inner and Outer Conflict: Selves, Subpersonalities, and Internal Family Systems, 18 Harv. Negot. L. Rev. 1 (2013), available at http://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/facultypub/323 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at UF Law Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of UF Law Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Managing Inner and Outer Conflict: Selves, Subpersonalities, and Internal Family Systems Leonard L. Riskin* ABSTRACT This Article describes potential benefits of considering certain processes within an individual that take place in connection * Copyright © 2013 Leonard L. Riskin. Leonard L. Riskin is Chesterfield Smith Professor of Law, University of Florida Levin College of Law, and Visiting Professor, Northwestern University School of Law. This Article grew out of a presentation at a symposium entitled "The Negotiation Within," sponsored by the Harvard Negotiation Law Review in February 2010. I am grateful to the HNLR editors for inviting me, to its faculty advisor, Professor Robert Bordone, who suggested the topic and deliberately limited his explanation of what he meant by it, and to other participants in that symposium. I also appreciate the com- ments I received in connection with presentations at Northwestern University School of Law (Internal Faculty Workshop) and Kellogg School of Management (Dispute Res- olution Research Center); UCLA School of Law; the University of Colorado School of Law; and the 2011 Annual Conference of the Center for Self-Leadership. Students in classes I taught at the University of Florida College of Law and Northwestern Univer- sity School of Law also made many valuable suggestions. I am grateful to Gary Fried- man and Jack Himmelstein, for introducing me-in 1981-to Roberto Assagioli's work on Psychosynthesis; to David Hoffnan, for introducing me-at the HNLR sym- posium-to the Internal Family Systems model, and to David's wife, Beth Andrews, for introducing it to David. Thanks to the following friends and colleagues for their thoughtful comments on drafts: Lisle Baker, Robert Burns, Lynn Cohn, Erica Daiell, Catherine Damme, John Elson, Daniel Gandert, Jeffrey Harrison, Jack Himmelstein, David Hoffman, Joshua Kleinfeld, James Lupo, Woody Mosten, Michael Nathanson, Richard Reuben, Leonard Rubinowitz, Dan Shapiro, Leo Smyth, and Charles Wig- gins. Special thanks to Richard C. Schwartz, for his encouragement, counsel, pa- tience, and comments on a draft of this Article. Thanks to other friends and colleagues for their comments and suggestions on particular issues: Ron Allen, Jeanne Brett, Lynne Cohn, Zev Eigen, Eduardo Mordujovich, Jennifer Morrow, Joe Holtgrieve, Pe- ter Huang, Ran Kuttner, Jay Koehler, Andy Koppelman, Jennifer Morrow, Janice Nadler, Joe Pantaliano, Jennifer Robbennolt, and Steve Goldberg. I am grateful to Edward Hart and Marcia Lehr, of the University of Florida and Northwestern Uni- versity law libraries, respectively, for enthusiastically finding many pages and bytes of materials. Thanks, too, to Marissa Liebling, J.D., 2010; Kelly Winslow, J.D., 2011; and Lindsey Simon, J.D., 2012, Northwestern University School of Law, for their ex- cellent research assistance. My gratitude also goes to Christina Lee, Norman Green- berg, and their colleagues on the HNLR for getting this ready to print. And finally, I thank Stuart Cohn for suggesting that law review authors tend to acknowledge too many people in initial footnotes. HarvardNegotiation Law Review [Vol. 18:1 with external conflict as if they might be negotiations or other processes that are routinely used to address external disputes, such as mediation or adjudication. In order to think about in- ternal processes in this way, it is necessary to employ a model of the mind that includes entities capable of engaging in such processes. The Internal Family Systems (IFS) model, developed by Richard C. Schwartz, works well for this purpose. The IFS model is grounded on the construct that the mind is composed of two kinds of entities that interact systematically: "Parts" of the personality (or "Subpersonalities") and the Self. The Article in- tegrates the IFS model with conflict resolution theory and prac- tice. It proposes a combined perspective, which it argues can give us access to certain internal processes and help us: Understand certain potentially conscious internal processes and their relationship to external conflict; Assess such processes; and Manage (and hopefully improve) such processes, which should lead to more appropriate external conflict-related behavior and to less suffering in connection with conflict. CONTENTS I. Introduction .......................................... 3 II. Meanings of the "The Negotiation Within" (TNW) .... 7 III. Multiplicity of Selves, Minds or Personalities ......... 11 A. A Brief Survey ................................... 12 B. Psychology and The Internal Family Systems (IFS) M odel ....................................... 15 1. IFS: Background, Context and General N ature ........................................ 16 2. IFS: The Components and their Interactions .. 19 a. The Parts (or Subpersonalities) ............ 21 b. The Self and Its Relationship with the Parts ...................................... 25 IV. Understanding, Assessing, and Improving Conflict- Related Behavior through Established Models of N egotiation ........................................... 28 A. Hiring a Carriage in Luxor, Egypt (1992) ......... 29 B. Understanding, Assessing, and Managing/ Improving the Luxor Carriage Negotiation Using a Unitary Model of the Self and Established Approaches to Negotiation ........... 30 1. Basic Negotiation Theory ..................... 30 Spring 20131 Managing Inner and Outer Conflict 2. The Three Conversations Model ............... 33 3. The Core Concerns Model ..................... 35 C. Fast and Slow Thinking .......................... 38 V. Understanding, Assessing, and Managing/ Improving Internal (and then External) Conflict- Related Processes Using a Multiplicity of Personality Model: the CINeMA-IFS Perspective 39 A. Understanding Internal Conflict-Related Processes and their Relationships to External Conflict-Related Processes: The Luxor Carriage N egotiation ....................................... 40 B. Assessing Internal and External Conflict- Related Processes: The Luxor Carriage N egotiation ....................................... 46 1. The Nature and Quality of the Internal (and Resulting External) Processes ............ 46 2. The Nature and Quality of the Outcomes ..... 46 C. Understanding and Assessing Internal and External Conflict-Related Processes: The Manila Table-Runner Negotiation ................. 47 D. Managing/Improving Internal and Related External Processes through the CINeMA-IFS Perspective: The Luxor Carriage Negotiation ..... 50 1. Reviewing the Situation ...................... 51 2. Preparing for this or Similar Situations ....... 52 3. Addressing the Situation ...................... 56 VI. A Bigger Picture: Applications of the CINeMA-IFS Perspectives in Other Contexts ....................... 61 VII. Summary and Conclusion ............................ 65 Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.) Walt Whitman, Song of Myself' I. INTRODUCTION In the early 1990s, I participated in two negotiations about which I have long felt guilty and ashamed. The first, in Luxor, Egypt in 1992, arose in the midst of a vacation with my wife and 12-year-old son. I engaged in hard bargaining with a carriage driver who told me 1. LEAVES OF GRASS 22, 72 (Bantam Books 1983) (1892). HarvardNegotiation Law Review [Vol. 18:1 he struggled to support his wife and six children. A menacing pres- ence, I thought, he threatened me subtly and then blatantly cheated me out of almost five dollars. As a result, I dropped into an anger- and-desire-for-revenge-infused funk that ruined the last evening in Egypt for my wife and son, and of course, for me. A year later, I found myself in Manila, after co-conducting a me- diation training program for the Philippine Bar Association, for which I received ample compensation. Once again, I engaged in ad- versarial negotiation-this time over the price of a blanket and a ta- ble runner-with a lovely woman who worked in a theme park. I saved about two dollars. Later, I learned that the woman had been on the verge of losing her store, as she had made no sales for two weeks. She thought that God had sent my colleagues and me to save her business and her children. I wrote an essay about these two negotiations, in which I con- cluded that my need for self-esteem had gotten in the way of appro- priate negotiation behavior, and then solicited comments on the manuscript. "I don't think you should publish this," a close friend said emphatically. "It makes you look like such ajerk!" I published it nonetheless. 2 And for nearly 20 years,