John Rowan (1925 to 2018) was an English psychotherapist, often called the father of humanistic psychotherapy in Britain, and best known for his work on subpersonalities, the inner ‘people’ each of us has, such as the critic, the pleaser or the frightened child. His starting point, that a person is normally a group and not a single self, is one Therapeutic Shamanism shares; the shamanic map adds Soul and Spirit, parts that have left altogether, and beings that are not parts of us at all.
Who was John Rowan? #
A pioneer of humanistic psychology in Britain. Rowan discovered humanistic psychology on a short stay in the United States and became one of its main writers and organisers in Britain, helping to set up the association of humanistic psychology practitioners in Britain and serving as honorary life president of the Association for Humanistic Psychology in Britain. Colleagues writing after his death in May 2018 called him the “Father of British Humanistic Psychology”.1
His books ranged widely. Ordinary Ecstasy (1976) was a guide to humanistic psychology in practice; The Horned God (1987) and Healing the Male Psyche (1997) were about men and masculinity; The Transpersonal (1993) was about spirituality in psychotherapy and counselling. On subpersonalities he wrote Subpersonalities: The People Inside Us (1990), a popular companion, Discover Your Subpersonalities (1993), and in his eighties he reworked the subject again as Personification.2
What are subpersonalities? #
Semi-independent parts of the personality that can act as if they were people. Rowan defined them as “semi-permanent and semi-autonomous regions of the personality capable of acting as a person”.3 Most people, in his experience, have somewhere between four and nine. Some turn up so often that he could list a common cast, such as a Protector or Controller, a Critic, a Pusher, a Perfectionist, a Pleaser, several kinds of inner child, a Nurturing Parent, and others.4
He traced them to several sources: the roles we play, our inner conflicts, the people we hope or fear to become, our personal history, the culture we grow up in, and the archetypes of the collective unconscious. One account in particular is close to home for anyone who works with childhood wounds. A baby overwhelmed by panic splits off a protector that knows how to throw up defences, and that part lives on long after the danger has passed.5
Two of his points are at the heart of the idea. “There are no good or bad subpersonalities”, since each expresses something vital in us, and they become harmful only when they control us, usually because we are unaware of them.6 And recognising that each of us “is normally a group” can come as a relief, not a diagnosis.7
How did Rowan see the different schools of parts work? #
As one family. Rowan saw subpersonalities as a kind of common language between therapies that otherwise have little in common, and surveyed them one by one: Freud and the object-relations analysts, Jung and active imagination, psychodrama, Gestalt chair work, psychosynthesis, Transactional Analysis, Voice Dialogue and hypnotherapy. In his telling, personifying our inner figures is not something primitive but something advanced, and it turns the ego from the whole of the psyche into “only one member of a commune”.8
He also went beyond the parts. Near the end of Discover Your Subpersonalities he described a “real self” and a higher self beyond the subpersonalities, and held that therapy should come first, before work in the spiritual realms, so that unworked parts are not mistaken for outside beings.9
How does this fit with Therapeutic Shamanism? #
At the starting point, closely. In Therapeutic Shamanism there is no one single ‘I’; the thing we call ‘I’ is itself made of different parts, each with its own needs and drives, so that each of us is an inner tribeInner Tribe. The community of parts-of-self that a human being actually is. Health is not one part’s triumph but a well-run tribe: every member honoured, every member doing its proper job, the Adult in charge. Read the full answer. Psychotherapists usually describe these parts as sub-personalities, and divide up the inner landscape in many different ways; shamanic cultures did the same, with some recognising as few as three parts and others fifteen, twenty or more.10 Whether someone comes at it from psychotherapy or from shamanism, the more closely they look at the self, the clearer it becomes that there is no single ‘I’.
The healthy version is a healthy tribe: one where every member feels welcome, respected and heard, and where the needs of each part are balanced with the needs of the whole.11 Rowan’s insistence that there are no bad parts sits easily beside this. So does a hard-won lesson from shamanic healing. The protective ‘fort-holderFort-holder. A protective part of the self that stayed behind to ‘man the fort’ when we were wounded: the inner critic, perfectionist, pusher, pleaser: the loyal soldier still fighting a war that ended long ago. Usually the part that sent an orphan away, so no deep healing holds without its consent; befriended, never extracted. Read the full answer’ part, built in childhood to help us fit in, has to be greeted and listened to, because “no deep or permanent change happens without the fort-holder’s consent.”12 See What is the inner tribe? and What are child, orphan, fort-holder and protector parts?
Where does the shamanic map go further? #
In three directions. The first is the parts that are no longer there. Rowan’s inner children are put away “in a drawer”, as he put it, and are still present.13 Shamanism also knows soul lossSoul-loss. The sending-away of parts of the self in order to survive: through shock or trauma, or (the chief modern cause) exiling our own parts to fit in. With Power-loss, one of the two root causes of shamanic illness. Read the full answer, in which a part of ourselves is sent away, often in order to fit in, and is lost to us until it is found and brought back.14 A psychology that only works with the parts in the room has no way of reaching a part that has left. See What is soul-loss?
The second is the size of the self. Rowan’s map is of the personality, the middle-world selfMiddle-world self. The everyday self (ego, persona, head-and-heart), made of our stories and experiences. A genuine and needed part of the Inner Tribe: of service, not in command. Read the full answer, with archetypes and a higher self described in psychological terms. The parts of the selfParts of the self. There are four parts of the self, the realm-corresponding members of the Inner Tribe: the Body and the middle-world self (both of the middle-world), the Soul (of the Lower-World) and the Spirit (of the Upper-World). The Aware Self, also called the Witness, is not a fifth part but a capacity: the awareness that can watch all four, with compassion and equanimity. Read the full answer in Therapeutic Shamanism belong to different realms, the body and the middle-world self to the middle-worldMiddle-world. Ordinary physical reality together with its energetic layers: the realm of individuality, separation and mixed intentions, and the only realm where harm is possible. “If there is a hell, then it is the middle-world.” Read the full answer, the Soul to the Lower-World, and the Spirit to the Upper-WorldUpper-World. The realm of Father Sky and of Spirit: spacious, rarefied and clear, layered in tiers, offering not escape but perspective. Not better than the Lower-World: we ascend rooted, and bring the gifts back down. Read the full answer. Rowan used the words ‘soul’ and ‘higher self’ for things of his own, and they do not map onto the shamanic Soul and Spirit. See What are the different parts of the self in Therapeutic Shamanism?
The third is the beings that are not us. Rowan described the shamanic Power AnimalPower Animal. The Oversoul of a wild species, met as a single Lower-World being and bonded with in a deep, committed, usually lifelong soul-bond of unconditional love. The practitioner’s first and foremost Guide: Panther, not “my panther”. Read the full answer as “a symbol to learn from” that “you can turn … into a subpersonality”.15 In Therapeutic Shamanism a Power Animal is not a part of the self at all but a being in its own right, met in the Lower-World. Rowan also thought that apparent spirits met by people dabbling in the psychic “may very often be just projections of our own nastiness”, our own disowned energies.16 Therapeutic Shamanism agrees that some apparent spirits are disowned parts of ourselves, and holds that others are real, independent beings; telling them apart is crucially important for the person being helped, and is one of the reasons Therapeutic Shamanism brings psychotherapy and shamanism together.17 See What is a Power Animal?
