Multiple Inner Positions: How the Mind Organizes Itself

From a psychological perspective, the mind organizes experience through multiple internal positions. Different thoughts, emotions, and impulses reflect different relational expectations shaped through experience — expectations about safety, belonging, and worth (Hermans, 2001; Schore, 2003).

These internal positions are expressed through patterns of thought, bodily tension or relaxation, emotional tone, and anticipation. A cautious reaction, a longing impulse, or a critical voice each reflects a particular way the mind is preparing for what might happen in relation to others.

Much of this organization operates automatically, influencing perception, emotion, and response before deliberate reflection begins.
Imagination provides access to this level of organization by allowing internal positions to take perceptible form — as images, sensations, metaphors, or figures. In this way, relational patterns that usually operate in the background become observable and available for engagement.

The Basics of Parts: Attachment and Prediction

If the mind organizes itself into positions, early relationships often provide many of the primary blueprints for these configurations. During childhood — when the brain’s regulatory systems are still developing — we rely heavily on caregivers to help us process stress and emotion. When overwhelming or repeated relational stress occurs before these systems are mature, the nervous system may organize protective positions as adaptive responses (Bowlby, 1988; Schore, 2003).

These early-formed positions are survival strategies shaped at a time when cognitive and emotional resources were still developing.

For example, a protective stance may anticipate rejection or intrusion. This can manifest as an inner critic or a self-reliant posture that prioritizes distance over vulnerability (Schore, 2003).

Another example is a vigilant stance that anticipates abandonment, scanning both the internal and external environment for signs of disconnection.

Protective positions may also organize themselves around perceived threats in the world — certain people, social dynamics, political ideas, or conflict-laden situations. These external antagonists can mirror internal positions. What feels like “the problem out there” may simultaneously represent an internal stance structured around exposure and defense.

These examples are illustrative. The mind can organize many such positions depending on context and experience.

Each of these positions carries not only emotion, but prediction. They are relational models shaped through experience.

Symbolic Organization in Imagination: Different Forms of Parts

Internal positions do not always appear as clearly defined “parts.” More often, the mind organizes emotional experience through symbolic and metaphorical forms. These forms reflect how relational learning has been structured within the nervous system.

To engage these configurations directly, attention must shift from analytic reflection — the cognitive and linguistic reconstruction of experience — toward internal simulation, the multisensory re-enactment of an emotional configuration within the mind’s representational field. The following sections explore how symbolic forms arise, why imagination is central to this process, and how internal engagement differs from talking about experience alone.

1. Human-like Forms

Many internal positions appear as human-like figures — such as a vulnerable child, a critical authority, or a competent adult self. These may represent internalized relational dynamics, including introjected aspects of caregivers or significant others.

When we encounter such figures in imagination, we are often meeting the internalized relationship itself — both the position we once held and the position that acted upon us.

2. Nature and Landscapes as Internal States

A blocked stream, a barren mountain, or dense fog are not mere scenery. They are experiential metaphors for internal organization. When a person interacts with an internal landscape, they are engaging the felt structure of their own psychological field (Gendlin, 1981).

A frozen lake may reflect emotional suspension. A stormy sky may represent overwhelm. The form expresses the configuration.

3. The Instinctual Animal

Animals in inner imagery often bridge into more ancient, non-verbal layers of biology. A wolf, a bird, or a mouse carries immediate affective charge, activating neural circuits related to power, fear, or nurturance more rapidly than abstract concepts ever could.

These forms function as embodied metaphors for instinctual states.

4. The Externalized Shadow

Sometimes internal positions are projected outward. An antagonist, critic, or idealized figure in the external world may reflect a disowned internal stance.

In such cases, there may be both:

• An externalized position (“the one who judges”),

• And an identity position (“the one being judged”).

When we engage these figures imaginally, we are not creating fiction. We are examining how our predictive relational model has been organized.

From Reflection to Internal Interaction — Defining Relational Imagery

In relational imagery, attention is deliberately turned inward. Rather than discussing an experience from the outside, the individual attends to how it is internally organized — in image, sensation, metaphor, or relational stance.

Inner positions often respond to questions. Bodily states do take form that can be described. Metaphors emerge that carry emotional meaning. What was previously diffuse becomes relationally perceptible.

Talking about a situation can involve returning to memory, but without interacting directly with the internal configuration itself. Imaginative activity differs in that it enables engagement with the internal configuration itself. The individual does not merely recall the situation — they participate in the organization that sustains it.

Analytic reflection primarily involves cognitive reconstruction and linguistic framing. Imaginative engagement involves participatory simulation — the temporary re-enactment of an internal relational configuration. The former reflects upon memory; the latter enters into dynamic relation with the representational field through which the memory continues to operate.

Relational Imagery as Activation

Parts frequently manifest in the mind’s eye as imaginal figures: a younger version of oneself, a harsh critic, or a withdrawn shadow. Mental imagery is a powerful driver of neurobiology, engaging the same sensory and emotional systems involved in actual social perception (Kosslyn et al., 2001).

When an inner figure appears vividly, the associated emotional network becomes “labile” or active. It is only when a part is experientially present—rather than just talked about—that its underlying prediction can be accessed and updated (Ecker, 2012).

From Conflict to Integration

Internal struggles often arise from “counter-predictive” parts:

• One part seeks visibility; another predicts humiliation.

• One part seeks intimacy; another predicts loss of autonomy.

Imaginal dialogue allows these opposing predictions to be held in the same conscious space simultaneously. This creates the “mismatch” required for neuroplasticity. The goal is not to eliminate these parts, but to reorganize their relationship into a more flexible, integrated system (Siegel, 2012).

Imaginal Dialogue and Neuroplastic Change – An Example

Imaginal dialogue allows opposing expectations to become active at the same time within conscious awareness. Many internal conflicts are not simply differences of opinion — they are competing predictions about what will happen.

One part may predict danger.
Another may move toward growth or connection.

When both are present at the same time, something important can occur.

For example, a part may expect humiliation if one speaks openly. The body tightens. The impulse is to stay quiet or withdraw.

Yet in imaginal dialogue, the person allows themselves to continue speaking. They stay with the fear instead of shutting down. They imagine expressing what needs to be said — and notice that nothing catastrophic happens. They are not attacked. They are not overwhelmed. They do not fall apart.

What was feared does not happen. Fear is present, but it can be tolerated.

In that moment, the nervous system registers something unexpected. The outcome it prepared for does not occur. This difference between expectation and experience allows the brain to begin updating its prediction.

When an emotional expectation is activated and then not confirmed, the underlying memory network can temporarily become more flexible. During this period, new information can be integrated. This is one way neuroplasticity works in emotional learning.

Neuroplasticity does not eliminate parts. It changes how strongly their expectations are wired. The goal is not to silence one position, but to reorganize the relationship between them into a more flexible and integrated system (Siegel, 2012).

Relational Engagement Across Symbolic Forms

The same principle applies whether an internal configuration appears as a part, an animal, a landscape, or an abstract field. What matters is not the form itself, but how it is engaged.

A landscape

A frozen lake may represent emotional suspension or fragility.
If, in imagination, the person moves onto the ice and discovers that it holds, the expectation of collapse can begin to change.

An animal

A threatening animal may carry a prediction of danger.
If the person approaches the animal and it does not attack, the nervous system registers a different outcome than expected.

An atmospheric field

A dense fog may reflect confusion or loss of orientation.
If the person remains within the fog and gradually finds their way, the expectation of chaos may soften.

The principle is the same.
The form varies.

Change does not require a specific image or technique. It occurs when an emotionally charged configuration is met with an experience that differs from what was anticipated.

Relational Imagery Across Different Approaches – Further Reading

Relational imagery is not a single method. It is a mode of engagement that appears across multiple therapeutic and contemplative traditions — each with its own language, structure, and emphasis.

Across these approaches, inner dialogue, images, bodily sensations, and felt inner experience are actively engaged. What differs is how inner experience is given symmbolic form.

For further reading, explore the following examples:

Internal Family Systems (IFS) emphasizes dialogue with internal parts, allowing protective and vulnerable positions to express their concerns within a regulated inner relationship.

Inner Child Work often engages early relational configurations through imaginal contact, allowing unmet needs and protective responses to become perceptible and revisable.

Jungian Active Imagination approaches internal figures and symbols as autonomous expressions of the psyche, inviting relationship rather than interpretation.

Katathym Imaginative Psychotherapy (KIP) works systematically with emotionally charged imagery to activate and reorganize unconscious relational patterns.

These approaches differ in technique, yet they converge on a shared principle: meaningful change occurs when internal configurations are engaged directly rather than discussed from a distance.