List your inner and outer positions and choose the ones you recognise
Choose from a list of inner figures and outer figures the ones you recognise in your life, and name any the list leaves out.
Why it works
The matrices assume a hierarchical relation between positions, valuations and affects, at three levels (DeSouza et al. 2013, p. 324, citing Hermans 2001).
How to do it
- Read the inner-position list. The study's Portuguese list has 50 items, with examples such as "I as a woman", "I as a professional", "I as an idealist", "the child in me" and "how I am with myself".
- Read the outer-position list. The study's list has 41 items, with examples such as "my mother", "my colleague", "a figure in my dream", "someone who is dead" and "a group or society I belong to".
- Choose the positions you recognise in yourself and that play some role in your life. Name any position the lists leave out in your own words, as participants in the study were allowed to do.
Evidence
DeSouza et al. (2013) describe this first part of the PPR as a list from which the participant chooses the internal and external positions they recognise and that play some role in their life, with the option to name their own. The study applied the PPR to 17 participants aged 19 to 34 (11 women). The paper calls the PPR a psychological assessment tool. (observational)
In the study the inner and outer lists and the matrix were completed in the first of two meetings in different weeks, and the researcher led the interview in the second. The list items are the study's Portuguese translation. Hermans's 2001 PPR article was read only through its abstract, which describes the method as having steps. Hermans's 2001 theory article was read through its abstract, which is the source of the "multiplicity of positions" quote in the intro. The study does not test whether doing the listing changes anything. Stop line: if naming these figures stirs up feelings that feel overwhelming, or you lose track of where you are, stop and work with a trained therapist rather than continuing alone.
Sources
- DeSouza, M. L., Oliveira, M. Z., DaSilveira, A., & Gomes, W. B. (2013). A lógica da dialogicidade narrativa no Repertório de Posições Pessoais [The logic of narrative dialogicality in the Personal Position Repertoire]. Psicologia: Teoria e Pesquisa, 29(3), 321-329.
- Hermans, H. J. M. (2001). The dialogical self: Toward a theory of personal and cultural positioning. Culture & Psychology, 7(3), 243-281.
- Hermans, H. J. M. (2001). The construction of a Personal Position Repertoire: Method and practice. Culture & Psychology, 7(3), 323-366.
Common mistake
Treating the list as a fixed map of who you are, when the next step in the source rates relations between the chosen positions.
Practice this with IX Coach
More practices for Dialogical Self Theory: Hermans and the Self as Inner Positions
- Set the voices down and come back to your body
Put the list of positions aside, feel your feet and breath, and let the room hold you while the loud voice quiets.
- Reach a clinician now if the voices are unclear or frightening
If you cannot tell what is you, or a voice pushes you toward not being here, reach a trusted person and a clinician now rather than sorting it out alone.
- Rate how strongly each inner position shows up toward each outer figure
Take the positions you chose and rate, from 0 to 5, how strongly each inner position is active in your relation to each outer figure.
- Write a story from two of your positions, then rate what shaped each one
Choose two of your positions, build a narrative across past, present and future with guided questions, then rate how much events and people in your life affected each valuation.
- Picture your inner and outer figures on one stage
Imagine a stage with your inner characters entering from one side and your outer figures from the other, then notice how the two groups are linked.
Related concepts
- Shadow Work
Meeting the parts of yourself you have been ignoring
- Internal Family Systems (IFS), Made Practical
The parts model, the mechanisms behind it, and an honest read on an emerging evidence base
- Voice Dialogue: Meeting the Selves That Run Your Life
Hearing the pusher, the pleaser and the critic in their own voices, so they stop running you unnoticed
- Shadow Projection: Recognizing It and Taking It Back
When someone else seems to carry exactly the fault you cannot stand, and how to bring that energy home
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