A Seminar on IFS Therapy
in Psychedelic Practice

Kearney's 'gunpowder vs. rocket' framing as a course-long lens. What brings each participant to this intersection?

Small group analysis of the demo IFS session transcript. What does the model look like in motion? Where does Self appear and retreat? How, if at all, might IFS need to be modified for psychedelic work?

What does this history ask of us as practitioners, and possibly tell us as practitioners?

Psychedelic-assisted practice happens in many different containers — individual short-term work, ongoing outpatient therapy, group retreats, ceremonial and religious contexts, harm reduction at festivals. Each asks something different of the clinician and creates different clinical dynamics. This session maps that landscape briefly, then devotes the bulk of its attention to the retreat model as a distinctive and underexplored form of IFS-PAP practice.

A brief orientation to the medicines through the lens of what they share rather than how they differ: the commonality framework from Kearney — anything that helps manifest the psyche and supports better internal relationships is psychedelic, regardless of receptor profile, duration, or setting. And an honest acknowledgment of where non-prescribing clinicians need to know more, where they need good consulting relationships, and where the honest position is "this is complex territory; know your limits."

Then the retreat model in depth, read from the inside out: the assigned sections of the retreat workbook are written for participants, not clinicians. Read them as a clinician. What does this twelve-week arc — six weeks of preparation, retreat, six weeks of integration — ask of the people going through it? What does it therefore ask of the clinician holding it?

The theoretical moment of the course. Webster's salience amplification hypothesis. Buber's I-Thou. Their synthesis. Does this framework hold up? What does it clarify, what does it not cover?

Both frameworks in conversation. Role-play exercise: participants practice the parts consent dialogue in triads.

Full-session transcript workshop. Small groups work through Claire's first preparation session in sections. What would you have done differently? Where does the therapist's IFS thinking show?

Special attention to Schwartz's ketamine assisted session transcript — the only extended low-dose session transcript in the literature. Discussion of the 'light touch' principle.

Companioning, hyperblending, and the phenomenology of being present with someone in a profound non-ordinary state. What does a therapist actually do?

Case analysis workshop: Nick's MDMA session in depth. What happens when the therapist's parts activate during a session? Relational alchemy as a clinical response.

'Integration is the weak link.' Why does the field often fall short here, and what does IFS offer? Discussion of the parts detector as a specific integration tool.

Workshop on the Claire integration transcript. Then: the daily life practices as the ground of sustained healing. 'Let me be here as well.' 'That's me.' Nick's longer integration arc. Working with protectors in integration work.

The Zakara case as extended analysis. Backlash after medicine sessions. Therapist countertransference and blending. The Compass Pathways critique as a field-level case study.

This session turns the lens inward, towards us as therapists. We revisit Kearney's therapist preparation material from Week 6, now with the whole clinical arc of the course behind us: what do you notice now that you didn't notice then? What parts of yours have shown up in this material? What have you learned about yourself as a clinician through this course?

We also take up endings — termination as a genuine IFS clinical domain, with its own attachment dynamics and parts activity — and then widen the frame to the question of ongoing formation in this work.

Psychedelic training outside Western mental health has historically followed an apprenticeship model: long, relational, experiential, embedded in lineage. The Western clinical credentialing model is newer, thinner, and in many ways less adequate to what this work actually demands. What does ongoing consultation, training, ongoing growth, and peer support look like for a clinician serious about this field? Where do you find your teachers, and how do you stay honest about what you don't yet know?

Where does each participant's own paradigm (or paradigms...) sit in this emerging landscape? How can they plan to hold the edges with curiosity and dialogue? Closing circle.