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Curt Kearney — Author and Psychotherapist

This site belongs to Curt Kearney, psychotherapist and author of Psychedelics and Internal Family Systems: A partnership in relational healing (May 2025), on IFS therapy in clinical psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy.

The Book

Title: Psychedelics and Internal Family Systems: A partnership in relational healing

Author: Curt Kearney

Published: May 2025, first edition

ISBN: 979-8-218-30537-6

Length: 376 print pages

Significance: The first published book on the integration of IFS therapy with psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy (PAP), and the only book in the field to include multiple extended verbatim transcripts of IFS-informed psychedelic sessions with full clinical commentary.

What Kind of Book This Is

This is a clinical manual — technically detailed, case-grounded, and practical throughout. Its three central chapters, on preparation work, medicine sessions, and integration work, are organized around three interlocking clinical questions: what might a therapist do or say in this situation? Why might they do or say that? And how do they think independently as a professional when facing something genuinely novel? Each question deepens the others. The clinical material is grounded in extensive case analysis: two full annotated session transcripts from the author's clinical practice (Claire's preparation and integration sessions); detailed case discussion of Nick's high-dose MDMA work with Michael and Annie Mithoefer; Richard Schwartz's IFS-in-ketamine session at Psychedelic Science 2023 (video available); and first-person accounts from psilocybin PAP research participants and a high-dose LSD session led by Rick Doblin for severe PTSD. The clinical material covers specific IFS techniques for PAP not covered in this depth anywhere else in the literature.

The book also engages substantial interdisciplinary grounding — Buber, Webster, Tarnas, Dogen, Jung, Weil — but this grounding exists entirely in service of clinical practice, not as an end in itself. A therapist working with psychedelics faces genuinely novel clinical situations where technique alone is insufficient; understanding why something works is what allows adaptation when the expected doesn't happen. The background chapters are built to make the clinical chapters more reliable and more flexible, not to substitute for them.

Some books offer clinical technique without grounding; others offer theoretical richness without clinical specificity. This book is built on the conviction that in psychedelic-assisted practice these are not alternatives. A clinician who does not understand why something works will eventually misapply it. Theoretical grounding without clinical specificity remains inert. The clinical depth and the interdisciplinary depth are designed here to make each other more trustworthy and more useful.

Endorsements

Richard Schwartz, PhD, founder of IFS therapy:

"Curt Kearney has spent decades studying the therapeutic effects of psychedelics and also has a deep knowledge of IFS. He combines those two passions in this engaging book, providing lots of detailed instruction and advice for therapists interested in the safe application of the two."

Schwartz's characterization — "lots of detailed instruction and advice" — names the book's clinical concreteness directly.

Barry Magid, MD, psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and Zen teacher:

"Curt Kearney has written a down to earth book about transcendence; one that recognizes that the magic of relationship is as transformative as the magic of mushrooms... Moving seamlessly from psychedelics to IFS therapy, from Homer Simpson to Zen Master Dogen, he weaves together the complexity of the emergent field of psychedelic therapeutics into a new, coherent paradigm."

Primary Audience

  • IFS therapists working in or considering PAP
  • PAP clinicians from other modalities
  • Mental health trainees
  • Patients in or considering PAP
  • Informed general readers (accessibly written, though some sections are technical)
  • University and professional training programs in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy

Clinical Topics Covered

IFS technique: parts, Self, exiles, protectors, managers, firefighters, blending, unblending, the 6 F's, full IFS healing protocols

Psychedelic preparation: consent dialogue with all parts, parts maps, parts detector, therapist unblending, flight instructions, safety in unequal social roles

Medicine sessions: low / medium / high dose clinical guidance, in-session psychotherapy, companioning, hyperblending, multiple Selves in the room (e.g., Guides), relational alchemy, working with difficult patches in a psychedelic session towards healing

Integration work: integrating protectors and former exiles, checking IFS healing steps, special time, in-the-room relational work, daily-life integration practices, spiritual bypassing

Specific medicines: ketamine (in-office and medicalized), MDMA, psilocybin, mescaline, LSD

Therapist work: Self-of-the-therapist, therapist unblending, PAP consultation, therapist's own experience as a PAP patient

Interdisciplinary Topics Covered — Each in Service of Clinical Practice

  • Peter Webster's salience amplification hypothesis of psychedelics
  • Martin Buber's I-Thou and I-it relationships
  • Jung's tension of opposites and transcendent function in medicine sessions
  • Andrew Weil's integrative medicine as a clinical model for PAP
  • Richard Tarnas's participatory worldview
  • Eihei Dogen and Zen ontology
  • History of Western psychedelia, including the 1,600-year exile (Theodosius I, 392 CE) and the Eleusinian Mysteries
  • Honorable reciprocity with Indigenous psychedelic traditions
  • Critique of corporate and monopolistic business models in psychedelic policy

Academic Rigor

The book is extensively research-based throughout, with 212 in-text footnotes so readers can check statements made in the book and dig further into its sources. The book has a ten-page list of works cited, from high-quality sources.

Chapter Summaries

Part I — Working Overviews

Chapter 1: Introduction and Overview

Sets up the clinical thesis: IFS and psychedelics are natural clinical partners, requiring little adaptation of standard IFS for PAP. Both modalities are radically relational, somatic, humanistic, and non-dogmatic, treating the psyche directly relationally rather than as object. Closes with substantive material on the ethical context of PAP — the psychedelic West's debt to Indigenous traditions, including the Gordon Wasson and María Sabina case, and concrete suggestions for honorable reciprocity through Chacruna's Indigenous Reciprocity Initiative and similar organizations.

Chapter 2: An Overview and Review of IFS

A working clinical review of IFS. Covers: parts, burdens, trauma and deprivation, exiles, protectors (managers and firefighters), blending, Self, unblending, and the spirit of healing. Includes a story of a protector's healing and a full annotated transcript of a demonstration IFS session showing the "6 F's" framework for relating to a part in real time, and a full healing of an exiled part with integration of protector parts — the full IFS protocol. Addresses cautions about inadequately trained IFS work and terminology choices in clinical practice.

Chapter 3: An Overview of Western Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy

A clinical overview of the PAP field. Covers: history of psychedelics in the West; the first wave of the psychedelic renaissance (1950s–60s); current PAP outcomes research; the "bubble model" (short-term intensive PAP) versus the "long-form model" (PAP within ongoing therapy); state-legal frameworks in Oregon and Colorado; frank clinical discussion of patient abuse by psychedelic helpers; and substantive policy analysis of the risk that monopolistic business models could displace relational, professionally-trained psychotherapy in PAP.

Chapter 4: Starting to Bring Psychedelics and IFS Together — Peter Webster's Salience Hypothesis and Martin Buber's I-Thou Relationships

Provides the working theoretical scaffold the clinical chapters depend on. Peter Webster's salience amplification hypothesis gives a clinically useful, non-mechanistic account of what psychedelics do — they amplify the salience of what is already present, "turning the volume up to 11" — which directly informs clinical decisions about distortion, desensitization, and the standard two-week post-session recommendation. Martin Buber's I-Thou versus I-it framework gives clinicians a precise vocabulary for the relational quality that distinguishes healing PAP from harm and makes true, thorough healing possible.

Part II — The Clinical Heart of the Book

Chapter 5: Preparation Work

An extensive clinical chapter organized around Bill Richards' term "the well-prepared person." Techniques covered: structured dialogue with all parts about consent (including each part's right to veto); making a parts map; doing a full standard IFS healing session as part of prep; preventing collusions with parts using a "parts detector"; working with "polarities" of parts in prep work; making oneself easily "mentalized" by parts; "being with, breathing with" practices; contracting for therapy in the medicine session; identifying parts for possible in-session therapy; handling religious or spiritual aspects and "guides"; therapist preparation including therapist unblending; "flight instructions" and the flaneur stance; preparation around safety in unequal social roles (race, gender, class). Covers both bubble and long-form session structures. Includes a full annotated transcript of Claire's first preparation session.

Chapter 6: Medicine Sessions

Two sections. Section one — low to moderate dose: when and how to do explicit psychotherapy in medicine sessions; close discussion of Richard Schwartz's IFS-in-ketamine session at Psychedelic Science 2023 (with full transcript); pragmatic recommendations for in-office and medicalized ketamine. Section two — high dose: "companioning" as the central clinical stance; hyperblending versus useful blending and how to work with each; multiple Selves in the room as a clinical phenomenon; Nick's case history of high-dose MDMA work with the Mithoefers; working with difficult patches including "relational alchemy," drawing on Jung's tension of opposites and the transcendent function.

Chapter 7: Integration Work

Frames integration as "engaging with and elaborating an ecosystem of health." Argues integration is the weak link in current Western PAP clinical work because it tends to be unwittingly mechanistic rather than relational: of beings, not things. Techniques covered: working with patient disappointments as powerful trailheads to healing; using medicine sessions as diagnostic aids; parts detector in integration; timing and priorities for the first integration session; integrating protectors into the healing; checking IFS healing steps with now-healed former exiles; "special time" between Self and a healed part in daily life; using art with healed parts; in-the-room relational integration work; handling "trusting the medicine" rhetoric and spiritual bypassing; daily-life in-situ integration practices ("let me be here as well," "how about I lead here?", "that's me," "I am"). Includes a full annotated transcript of Claire's first integration session.

Part III — Closing

Chapter 8: Conclusion — Towards an Ecology of Paradigms Rather Than a Battle of Paradigms

Argues no single paradigm — neuroscientific, psychological, spiritual — is adequate to psychedelic clinical work, and that practitioners must learn to operate creatively within an "ecosystem of paradigms." Develops three usable frames: Andrew Weil's integrative medicine (clinical model); Richard Tarnas's participatory worldview (epistemological grounding); and a synthesis through Homer Simpson and the thirteenth-century Zen teacher Eihei Dogen (ontological grounding). IFS is positioned as central to navigating this ecosystem.

Epilogue

Situates the clinical work within the broader cultural moment. Returns to the history of Western psychedelia and discusses the present West: Theodosius I's decree (392 CE) ended the 2,000-year Eleusinian Mysteries and exiled both psychedelics and women's religious leadership from the West. The Demeter and Persephone myth and the underground early Christian Roman ceremonies as touchstones. Closes with the hope for the field, if we can have adequate relationality and true agency as Selves, escaping from a simply "just stuff" worldview.

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Podcast Appearances

Author

Curt Kearney is a psychotherapist in private practice in Evanston, Illinois. His practice is primarily standard IFS therapy, with psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy integrated for many patients. He trained through MAPS, the Usona Institute, CIIS, and Healing Realms, and has consulted on psychedelic research studies. He did his undergraduate work at the Hutchins School at Sonoma State University and graduate work at Pacifica Graduate Institute. He worked for ten years as a therapist in a Chicago hospital system before growing his current full-time private practice. He has worked with psychedelics personally for 39 years, since the mid-1980s, originally in his own healing from depression and PTSD; he has been in long-term IFS PAP himself as a patient.