Self-Encounters: Identity-oriented Psychotrauma Theory (IoPT)
Identity-oriented Psychotrauma Theory and Self-Encounters
Franz Ruppert, a psychotherapist in Munich, has spent over thirty years developing an explanatory model of how early trauma continues to affect us — and a way to investigate it. Together, these are now known as Identity-oriented Psychotrauma Theory, or IoPT for short. The method was long called Aufstellung des Anliegens, constellating the intention; today it is called Self-Encounter.
First comes the model, followed by how it is put into practice, both individually and in groups. We can find out together which parts of it ring true for you — if you want to.
Stress and trauma are not the same thing
Under stress, the body is highly activated. There’s a great deal of energy, and something needs to be done — fight or flee. It’s exhausting, but it’s not helplessness.
A situation becomes traumatic only when neither is possible. When fighting or fleeing is useless, or even makes things worse. Then the organism tips into the opposite state: freezing, collapsing, dissociation. Its resources withdraw toward the core so that the bare essentials can keep going.
So what matters is not how bad something looks from the outside, but whether someone could do anything in that moment, and whether they received the support they needed from those around them, during and afterwards.
Three kinds of parts
What is split off from consciousness when we freeze remains split off. Ruppert describes the psyche afterwards as divided into three kinds of parts:
Healthy parts. They perceive, feel, think clearly, remember, and want things. They know that something is missing, and they look for it.
Traumatized parts. Encapsulated within them is what was unbearable back then: fear, pain, anger, shame, disgust. They have remained stuck at that point in time, while simultaneously searching relentlessly for a way into consciousness.
Survival parts. They maintain the split. They distract, avoid, control, numb, explain, talk, work. They build a world in which the unbearable does not exist.
The third point determines how one works with the model. The survival parts are neither a flaw nor an adversary. They once saved our lives and have worked tirelessly ever since. The fact that they get in the way today doesn’t mean they need to go. This is the same approach as with body awareness: work with the protection, not against it.
A sequence, not a diagnosis
Ruppert arranges the forms of trauma according to when they arise in a person’s life. This gives rise to what he calls a psychotrauma biography: trauma of identity, trauma of love, trauma of sexuality, and trauma of one’s own perpetration. Existential, loss, and health traumas can also occur at any point along the way.
For him, it begins with the question of whether a child was wanted. Unwanted, unloved, unprotected — these are the three he calls the trauma triad.
It’s an explanatory model, not a label. No one is going to determine where you fall in this sequence. And you don’t have to believe any of it to work with the method.
What the model does explain, though, is why the method looks the way it does. If the essential things happened before the age of two — that is, before language and episodic memory — then asking questions won’t get you very far. There’s nothing to tell. Ruppert compares it to the man who looks for his key under the streetlamp — not because he lost it there, but because that’s where the light is.
The intention
At the heart of it is a sentence that you write yourself.
It can be a question, a wish, a few individual words, a drawing, or any combination of these. Over the years, Ruppert has steadily reduced the number of elements used in the process: first nine, then seven, and now no more than three. For himself, he often uses just two. His example: I toothache.
Before the intention is found, very little is said on purpose — no backstory, no follow-up questions, no interpretation. This isn’t a lack of interest. It prevents my idea of what your intention is about from finding its way into your sentence.
Nothing about the intention is improved. No rephrasing, no clarification, no correction of spelling or grammar. Experience has shown that the “mistakes” in particular are often significant.
“It is important that the person who actually wants to do their own Self-Encounter formulates their own Intention. No one else should help, or be allowed to help them, formulate it. […] Even ‘errors’ made when writing and formulating the Intention must not be corrected by someone else. Experience shows that they are always relevant and have a deeper meaning.”
— Franz Ruppert, Self - Encounters & the Intention Method
An intention is not necessarily a description of a problem or a goal. It is the point you want to look at right now.
Resonance
Then the words are given a place outside of you.
In the group, one person resonates with each word. They know nothing about you and are often seeing you for the first time. They say what they perceive, in their own words: a feeling, an impulse, a sentence, an image, sometimes a movement, sometimes nothing.
Why this works I do not know. Ruppert doesn’t know either; he says so openly and calls his conjectures conjectures. I take the same view. That something happens reliably without being explainable is a reason to approach it with care — not a reason to stop doing it, and certainly no reason to invent an explanation.
What emerges is not a constellation of a family system. No real people are standing there, but rather the parts of your own sentence. Hence the name “Self-Encounter.”
In the group
The intention is written down so that everyone can see it. Three elements at most are placed on slips of paper.
The person bringing the intention chooses representatives and invites them to participate. Then everything goes quiet, and it takes time. After that, it moves from one person to the next, in the order you decide. You also say when it ends. Sometimes, a representative for the mother is added in along the way; sometimes for the father, too.
Everyone else sits in the outer circle and watches. That is not a minor role. Typically, each person finds something of personal value in someone else’s process.
Free-Form Constellations illustrate how a group can be shaped around a participant’s intention, with as little else added as possible.
One-on-one
This works without a group too, just differently.
Instead of people, objects resonate: so-called floor anchors in various shapes, colors, and sizes, or whatever happens to be in the room. Online, you use things from your own surroundings — the choice already tells a story.
You place them as feels right from within, on the floor or on the table in front of you. Then you decide which one to connect with first: stand on it, pick it up, sit in front of it. And then you wait for feelings or memories to come up.
It’s slower, smaller, and more intimate than working in a group. In many cases, this is the more suitable setting.
What I bring
Not much, and that’s intentional.
I don’t interpret. I don’t rephrase anything. I don’t suggest solutions or have a picture in mind of how things should look in the end. I make no findings about you.
What I do is hold the space, give it the time it needs, stay present when things get difficult, and make sure pauses remain pauses. “No” is a complete answer here, too; you can read more about that in my Principles.
If something arises before it can be put into words, we return to the body and take our time. This isn’t an interruption — it’s the way. You can read about what that looks like in guided body awareness.
If you want to go further
If you’d like to give it a try, get in touch with me.
I do not work psychotherapeutically. I’d be happy to help you find a suitable form of therapy or the right person to work with. IoPT as a trauma theory and Self-Encounters as a method are used in both kinds of setting: in therapy, to uncover unconscious patterns and ease the aftereffects of trauma; and — as in my case — in counseling, in a slightly modified form and with careful attention to boundaries, where there is sufficient psychological stability, to strengthen a person’s sense of self-efficacy.
Franz Ruppert maintains a list of recommended practitioners: people who completed further training with him or at an institute licensed by him and who work with the intention method. The list also includes information about a support fund covering up to five Self-Encounters for those who otherwise couldn’t afford them. The supporting practitioner — not you — submits the application.
In addition to Franz Ruppert, existing IoPT groups and further support in Munich are offered in German by, among others, Marion Nebbe, Christina Freund and Helmut Glas. One to one, we can work in English; and once enough people have come together, we can also form an international Self-Encounter group.
»I am an inhabitant of my body again. I feel at home in my body.« — a sentence at the end of an intention process, quoted by Franz Ruppert
Franz Ruppert: Identity-oriented Psychotrauma Theory (IoPT)
Franz Ruppert: Self - Encounters & the Intention Method. The Practice of IoPT — translated by Simon Lys, 2023
Vivian Broughton: Trauma and Identity. Identity Oriented Psychotrauma Therapy: Theory and Practice — 2021; a German edition followed in 2024
Franz Ruppert: Who am I in a Traumatised & Traumatising Society?
The painting at the top of this page is by the artist CeeCee. Thank you for letting me use it!
