Within role-playing games, a party is a group of player characters who adventure together and work towards a common goal.
Within life, after one has undergone some growth and changes, one may begin to realize that this party metaphor can be applied to their own growth and development as well. In effect, one begins to realize that they themselves are creatively comprised of a multitude, that being different aspects of one’s self.
Initially, these different aspects of one’s self may be in conflict within one another, often going in different directions, but over time, through growth and development, they can begin to work together in alignment, like different adventurers who realize they are actually going in the same purposeful direction and decide to join up and form an adventuring party with each other.
Gestalt Therapy
If alienated, fragmentary selves in an individual take on separate, compartmentalized roles, the Gestalt therapist encourages communication between the roles; he may actually ask them to talk to one another. If the patient objects to this or indicates a block, the therapist asks him simply to invest himself fully in the objection or the block. Experience has shown that when the patient identifies with the alienated fragments, integration does occur. Thus, by being what one is—fully—one can become something else.
Arnold Beisser, M.D.
The Paradoxical Theory of Change