A subpersonality is, in humanistic psychology, transpersonal psychology and ego psychology, a personality mode that activates to allow a person to cope with certain types of psychosocial situations. Similar to a complex, the mode may include thoughts, feelings, actions, physiology and other elements of human behavior to self-present a particular mode that works to negate particular psychosocial situations. American transpersonal philosopher Ken Wilber and English humanistic psychologistJohn Rowan suggested that the average person has about a dozen subpersonalities. Subpersonalities are able to perceive consciousness as something separate from themselves, as well as domestic image attached to these elements. Ken Wilber defined subpersonalities as "functional self-presentations that navigate particular psychosocial situations". For example, if a harsh critic responds with judgmental thoughts, anger, superior feelings, critical words, punitive action, and/or tense physiology when confronted with their own and/or others' fallibility, that is a subpersonality of the harsh critic kicking in to cope with the confrontation situation. Psychologist David Lester has reviewed the extensive literature on subpersonality and subself theory.
Many schools of psychotherapy see subpersonalities as relatively enduring psychological structures or entities that influence how a person feels, perceives, behaves, and sees him-, herself or themselves. Over the history of psychotherapy, many forms of therapy have worked with inner diversity representations or subpersonalities. Early methods were Jungian analysis, psychosynthesis, transactional analysis, and gestalt therapy. These were followed by some forms of hypnotherapy and the inner child work of John Bradshaw and others. Eventually, forms of therapy largely based on working with subpersonalities have arisen, such as Voice Dialogue, ego-state therapy, and John Rowan's work. A recent and widespread subpersonality method is Internal Family Systems therapy, developed by Richard C. Schwartz. He sees DID alters as on the same continuum as IFS parts, the only difference being that alters are more polarized and split off from the rest of the internal system. Recent studies have shown that subpersonality integration in the psychosynthesis therapeutic setting can help clients relieve anxiety and rebuild their identities when dealing with culture shock, enhance creativity, and help to awaken personal and spiritual growth in self-identified atheists.
