Bio

Martha Sweezy is an assistant professor, part time, in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, a program consultant, supervisor, and Level 1 IFS trainer at Cambridge Health Alliance, an (online only) psychotherapist in private practice, and the author/co-author of many books on IFS.

Sweezy worked in community mental health at the Cambridge Health Alliance for 18 years. Trained in psychodynamic psychotherapy, DBT, and EMDR, she was introduced to internal family systems therapy (IFS) in 2005 and went through all the levels of IFS training on offer before starting to write about her clinical experiences. In 2010, she published the first two peer reviewed articles on IFS and then moved on to editing, co-authoring, and authoring books on IFS.

Sweezy grew up in Cambridge, MA, with her siblings Sam and Lybess. Her mother, Nancy Sweezy, was instrumental at the legendary folk music venue Club 47, revived and ran Jugtown Pottery in North Carolina, wrote Raised in Clay and several other books, worked at the NEA in Washington DC, founded Refugee Arts Group for refugees from Southeast Asia and was finally awarded a National Heritage Fellowship by the NEA for her work in traditional arts. Her father, Paul Sweezy, founded Monthly Review magazine and press, received many awards, and either alone or with co-authors wrote many books. 

Education and Training

  • IFS Levels 1, 2, 3
  • IFS Program assistant in Levels 1, 2, 3
  • IFIO Couple therapy Levels 1 & 2 
  • Also trained in: DBT, EMDR, IFS, IFIO
  • Ph.D. Smith College School for Social Work, August 1997
  • Master of Social Work, Smith College School for Social Work, August 1990
  • Master of Creative Writing, Boston University, 1983

Institutional affiliations

  • Assistant Professor part-time in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School
  • IFS instructor, supervisor, and research consultant at the Center for Mindfulness and Compassion at the Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA), working with Dr. Zev Schuman-Olivier, Dr. Richard Schwartz, Hanna Soumerai-Rae, Fiona Kate Rice, and other CMC staff.
  • Research at CHA https://www.chacmc.org/parts