Mark S from Apple TV+’s Severance is a compelling fictionalized case study of extreme emotional state fragmentation. He and other Lumon employees elect to undergo the severance procedure which splits ones conscious awareness between ones innie work self and their outie personal self. From this procedure emerges two separate personalities with their own memories and personal aims that become at odds with the other as the show progresses. This conflict among parts of one’s self is present in all of us, and is ingeniously depicted in the show.
In our daily life, we naturally shift through a catalogue of emotional states to maintain a sense of homeostasis within our changing environment. As we face different types of situations that call for different solutions, we find ourselves responding based on our impressions from prior experiences, which eventually turns into a feedback loop. Schema therapy conceptualizes this process of changing emotional states as schema mode shifting.
A Brief Rundown of Schema Therapy
Schema therapy theorizes that our psychological dysfunctions are the outcome of unmet emotional needs that throughout our personal history developed into persistent, self-defeating patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving called early maladaptive schemas. These deeply-rooted schema patterns manifest through different schema modes or emotional states.
Most of us have early maladaptive schemas to some degree, and when our situation activates them, we cope by shifting into schema modes in an attempt to protect ourself from emotional harm.
The Psychic Landscape of Severance
Severence’s innies and outies could be considered fictionalized analogues of schema modes. In schema therapy, we understand that people naturally develop different “modes” or states of being that activate in different contexts. These modes often operate semi-independently, with their own emotional patterns, beliefs, and behavioral tendencies. Depending on the person’s ability to adequately adapt to their environment using their modes, shifting between schema modes can be considered a necessary, functional way to meeting life’s vicissitudes, or it can be considered a dysfunctional response.
However, there are important distinctions between the schema modes of an average person and the fictionalized severed states as portrayed by the show. The severance procedure doesn’t just divide states of consciousness—it bifurcates the mind into developing two separate personalities to accommodate the disparate memory systems of the innie and the outie.
This is somewhat analogous to the experience of those who, as a response to severe early trauma, have schema modes that become inaccessible to the core self as a protective defense. However, most people’s schema modes feel like aspects of a continuous self of self, held together by a shared personal history with accessible memories
When it comes to understanding the similarities and differences of the severed states and schema modes, it is a matter of reflecting upon how we and others shift from one emotional state to another in our life and how it affects us, others, and our aims.
Mark S’s Vulnerable Child Mode
Schema’s vulnerable child mode is the combined state of thoughts, feelings, and body sensations we experienced during difficult moments of our childhood. In vulnerable child mode, we can feel helplessness, fear, sadness, and/or abandonment. When activated, this mode urges us to respond to current situations with the same emotional reactions and coping mechanisms we originally developed as children. When we utilize our old childhood coping responses in our adulthood, this often leads to the perpetuation of negative cycles and causes further problems.
Mark S’s vulnerable child mode is perhaps most evident in his innie, although his outie dual also shows it. His vulnerable child mode accepts his subordinate position within the Lumon hierarchy and the absurd and nefarious practices imposed on him.
Examples of innie Mark S’s vulnerable child mode:
- Petey’s Disappearance: Mark S shows the effect of his abandonment fears when Petey vanishes. He repeatedly ask about him, checks his empty desk, and shows visible distress when he is told Petey is no longer with the company.
- The Break Room: Mark S shows fear and shame when he is sentenced to the break room and ordered to repeat the apology script with the “sincerity” Mr. Milchick demands.
- Reaction to Ms. Cobel’s Office: Mark S shows his fear and helplessness when summoned to Ms. Cobel’s office. He fidgets with his hands, maintains rigid posture, and speaks with careful hesitation. There is focus on his anxious swallowing and the way he chooses words cautiously to avoid provoking punishment.
The vulnerable child in Mark S is also connected to deep grief. Though his innie doesn’t consciously know about his wife’s death, the emotional imprint remains. This elicits a sense of emptiness and yearning within him with no identifiable source, similar to how early emotional wounds operate in our schema systems.
His innie’s childlike wonder at simple rewards, like the finger traps or waffle parties, mirrors how vulnerable child modes often respond to basic validation and attention. This is particularly poignant because these rewards are manipulative tools designed by Lumon to maintain control, much as dysfunctional family systems might use intermittent reinforcement to keep children compliant.
Mark S’s Detached Protector Mode
Schema’s detached protector mode is an inhibitory state that serves to avoid the pain from our unmet emotional needs by wholesale disconnecting from our emotional experience. This self-protective mode creates emotional distance through behaviors like intellectualizing, dissociating, or avoiding closeness. This ultimately prevents us from experiencing both emotional pain and genuine closeness with others.
Mark S’s decision to undergo the severance procedure is his detached protector mode in action. Outie Mark S most prominently exemplifies the detached protector mode, although it is also exhibited by his innie dual.
Examples of outie Mark S’s detached protector mode:
- The Dinner Party: Mark S is detached, dysphoric, and unsympathetic as he delivers a rehearsed speech to his shocked loved ones on why he chose to undergo the severance procedure.
- Mark’s Home: Mark S reenact his emotional deprivation by sparsely furnishing his apartment with minimal effects. It is a living space as emotionally void as it is neutral.
- Socializing: Mark S is neither emotionally present nor is he boundaried enough to effectively navigate Ms. Cobel’s (as Mrs. Selvig) attempts to engage outie Mark S in personal conversation. He is polite but firmly redirects with emotional flatness to maintain an equilibrium of detachment.
- Alcohol to self-soothe: Mark S habitually over-consumes alcohol to simultaneously detach by numbing his nervous system and replacing the numbness with the pleasant effects of inebriation.
For Mark S’s outie, the severance procedure serves as the ultimate mode of detachment and protection. It is eight hours a day, every work day, where he can be relieved from the grief of his wife’s death. It is a literary representation of the detached protector mode many of us utilize in reaction to overwhelming emotions.
Because outie Mark S is the half of himself left with the memory of his wife’s death, he uses alcohol to sever himself from his grief. The overuse of alcohol depresses Mark S’s nervous system, chronically inhibiting the structures regulating his emotional life, thus severing Mark S from the feelings of grief associated memories of loss.
We see this detachment extend outie Mark S’s personal relationships outside work as well. His interactions with his sister and her family, while caring, maintain a certain emotional distance. He does not tell his sister his choice to undergo reverse severance. He participates in family life but keeps parts of himself inaccessible, protecting the vulnerability beneath his grief.
Mark S’s Compliant Surrender Mode
Schema’s compliant surrender mode is the state in which we submissively accept mistreatment, criticism, and/or unreasonable demands to avoid perceived conflict, rejection, or punishment. In this mode, we suppress our own needs and emotions while prioritizing others’ expectations, often resulting in feelings of powerlessness and an inability to establish healthy boundaries.
Examples of innie Mark S’s compliant surrender mode:
- Project Cold Harbor: Mark S shows unquestioning conformity to his role at the micro refinery department at Lumon as he dutifully sorts “scary” numbers into digital bins without ever questioning what the numbers mean or why certain ones feel “scary,” “sad,” or “happy.” His methodical approach and lack of curiosity about the task’s purpose demonstrate deep compliance.
- The Waffle Party: Despite its bizarre nature, Mark S participates in the waffle party ritual without questioning its strange ceremonial aspects. His complete acceptance of this reward system highlights his compliance with Lumon’s cultural programming. Mark S does not appear to have a separate identity from Lumon with values and belief in conflict with the practices.
- Self-Policing: When Mark S catches himself breaking a minor rule he often self-corrects before anyone notices, showing how he’s internalized the compliance system to the point of self-regulation.
Because innie Mark S has no personal history outside of his role at Lumon, his temporal awareness limited to the 9-5 window, his sense of self is likewise fragmented and incongruent. This leaves him particularly vulnerable to exploitation by Lumon’s cultish conditioning and exertion of power over him.
The compliant surrender is particularly evident in how innie Mark S relates to his supervisor and to the company’s cult structure. He recites company mantras and follows protocols that make little logical sense. This parallels how trauma survivors often internalize the systems of their abusers, finding safety in compliance even when those systems are harmful.
Examples of outie Mark S’s compliant surrender mode:
- Voice Modulation: Mark S’s voice softens and hesitates when speaking to authority figures. He uses with direct statements and more qualifying phrases like “I think” or “maybe.” This is seem in both Mark S’s.
- Quarterly Reviews: He repeatedly signs off on the quarterly continuation paperwork with an attitude of automatic compliance.
- Deflection of Concerns: When confronted by anti-severance protesters outside Lumon. He hurries past without engaging, showing unwillingness to critically examine his choice even when directly challenged.
Mark S’s Angry Child Mode
Schema’s angry child mode is a reactive state when we feel intense rage, frustration, and impulsivity when our emotional needs go unmet. This reaction resembles the unregulated emotional turmoil of a young child. When in this mode, we have emotional outbursts, make unreasonable demands, and/or engage in destructive behaviors as we struggle to process and express our feelings appropriately.
Though less dominant than his other modes, Mark S occasionally displays elements of the angry child:
Examples of innie Mark S’s angry child mode:
- Break Room Breakdown: After multiple repetitions of the forced apology in the break room he finally breaks down. But in a show of malicious compliance, he start shouting the apology rather than reciting it calmly.
- Confrontation with Cobel About Helly: Mark S’s usually respectful demeanor toward Ms. Cobel turns hostile and confrontation, demanding that she answer to Helly’s whereabouts after she attempts suicide.
Examples of outie Mark S’s angry child mode
- Drunken Basement Breakdown: Mark S gets drunk in his basement surrounded by Gemma’s belongings. When he accidentally breaks one of her possessions, he has a complete emotional collapse – sobbing uncontrollably, knocking items over, and eventually falling asleep on the floor amid the wreckage. This raw display of grief contrasts sharply with his usual detached protector mode.
- Anniversary Reaction: On what viewers can deduce is an anniversary related to Gemma’s death, he has a breakdown in his car, pounding the steering wheel repeatedly and screaming before composing himself to enter his house. The abrupt transition from intense emotion to forced calm highlights his usual detached compartmentalization.
- Confrontation with Mrs. Selvig: Mark S discovers Mrs. Selvig (Cobel) has moved some of Gemma’s belongings while in his house. He loses his temper and shouts at her not to move anything in his house.
These moments, while fleeting, represent important disruptions to his compliant pattern. In schema therapy, the emergence of appropriate anger can be a healing sign—a reclaiming of the right to have and express boundaries.
His friendship with Petey triggers this mode more frequently, as it provides external validation that his suspicions are justified. This mirrors how in therapy, validation of a client’s perceptions can help them access appropriate protective anger that was previously suppressed.
Mark S’s Critical Parent Mode
Schema’s critical parent mode is a rigid state when we harshly judge, criticize, and shame ourselves based on strict standards and beliefs typically absorbed from our caregivers or authority figures. When activated, this mode manifests as a harsh inner critic voice that demeans, belittles, and sets impossible standards, leading to shame, anxiety, and feelings of inadequacy.
We see that innie Mark S has internalized Kier’s word and Lumon as his critical parent mode.
Examples of innie Mark S’s critical parent mode:
- Helly’s Orientation: While Helly is in angry child mode and acting oppositional during her orientation, Mark’s critical parent emerges in a rigid, judgmental tone when scolding Helly.
- Irving’s Relationship with Burt: Mark initially responds to Irving’s interdepartmental interest with critical parent judgments that is more concerned about policy adherence than Irving’s well-being.
- Team Mistakes: During group work, Mark occasionally slips into perfectionist criticism when colleagues make errors, mirroring the critical nature of Lumon management.
While this mode is primarily externalized through the company structure, Mark S has partially internalized these messages. Innie Mark S shows signs of self-criticism and shame when failing to meet company expectations or when questioning authority.
The “break room” serves as a physical manifestation of this critical parent mode, forcing repetitive confessions until the employee internalizes their “wrongdoing.” This has disturbing parallels to how critical parenting can create lasting patterns of self-punishment in adult life.
Interestingly, Mark S’s critical parent mode gradually decreases over the course of the series as his bond with his colleagues deepen through their shared experience under Lumon’s exploitation. At the same time, his healthy adult mode strengthens, allowing him to separate from Lumon and seek autonomy and emotional fulfillment in his own right.
This evolution represents an important aspect of his psychological growth, as the harsh critical parent messages begin to be replaced by more compassionate, nuanced understanding of himself and others.
The persistence of his critical parent mode despite severance suggests these deeply internalized messages exist in both innie and outie, highlighting how core psychological patterns transcend even the artificial division of consciousness created by the severance procedure.
Mark S’s Healthy Adult Mode (Emerging)
Schema’s healthy adult mode is a balanced state where we approach situations with emotional regulation, rational thinking, and appropriate boundary-setting while maintaining compassion for ourself and others. In this mode, we can access our core needs and emotions, respond to challenges adaptively, and integrate both logical reasoning and empathetic understanding to navigate life effectively.
As the series progresses, we see glimpses of Mark’s emerging Healthy Adult mode
Examples of innie Mark S’s healthy adult mode
- Evaluating Lumon’s Claims: As the series progresses, innie Mark shows increasing discernment about management statements, neither accepting them blindly nor rejecting them reactively, instead evaluating them thoughtfully: “Ms. Cobel says this is for our benefit, but let’s consider what we’ve actually experienced.”
- Wellness Session Insights: During wellness sessions with Ms. Casey, Mark occasionally shows self-reflection: “I’ve been having these feelings that don’t make sense to me. I’m trying to understand where they’re coming from.” This demonstrates emerging self-awareness despite his severed state.
- Questioning His Reactions: In a scene where Mark has a strong emotional response to a photo in the Lumon historical corridor, he pauses to examine his reaction: “I don’t know why this affects me this way. Something about it feels important.” This self-examination reflects healthy adult functioning.
Examples of outie Mark S’s healthy adult mode:
- Grief with Balance: In quieter moments with his sister, Mark S occasionally speaks about Gemma with a balanced perspective: “I miss her every day, but I’m trying to find ways to keep going.” These moments show brief integration of grief without becoming completely overwhelmed.
- Moving on and Dating: Mark S’s approach to dating Alexa shows tentative healthy adult functioning—he acknowledges his continued grief while making conscious choices to engage in new connections: “I’m still working through some things, but I’d like to try.”
In schema therapy terms, Mark’s journey can be understood as the slow awakening of his Healthy Adult mode, which begins to mediate between his other modes and seek integration.
What makes this evolution compelling is that it happens simultaneously but differently in both his innie and outie versions. As innie Mark S begins to question Lumon, outie Mark S begins to question the value of severance itself. This parallel journey suggests that on some fundamental level, there remains a connection between these severed aspects of self—a profound statement about the resilience of human wholeness.
The Role of Memory in Schema Work
Apple TV+’s Severance offers a particularly interesting exploration of how schemas operate even in the absence of conscious memories. Despite having no memory of his wife’s death, innie Mark S is plague by grief and loss without context. This illustrates a fundamental principle in schema therapy: emotional patterns can persist even when the memories that formed them are no longer accessible.
For clients with trauma histories, particularly those with dissociative symptoms, this can be validating. It helps explain why they might react strongly to triggers even without clear memories of their original trauma. Mark S’s character demonstrates how emotional truth persists across the severed barrier, even when cognitive awareness and the access to episodic memories does not.
Therapeutic Implications
From a schema therapy perspective, Mark S’s healing would involve:
- Mode awareness: Helping him recognize when different modes are activated
- Limited reparenting: Providing the emotional validation his vulnerable child mode needs
- Mode dialogue: Facilitating communication between his severed experiences
- Integration work: Supporting the connection of memories, emotions, and insights across his fragmented self
- Grief processing: Creating space to fully acknowledge and experience the loss of his wife
- Boundary development: Building the capacity to set healthy limits without extreme detachment
A schema therapist working with a client like Mark S would focus on building bridges between these fragmented aspects of self, recognizing that integration doesn’t happen all at once but through small moments of connection that gradually expand.
The Ethics of Integration
The show raises profound questions about whether integration is always the ethical goal—questions that have parallels in therapeutic work. Innie Mark S doesn’t consent to the arrangement, yet outie Mark S chooses it.
Ethical schema therapy requires respecting the protective function of all modes, including the detached protector. Integration becomes possible not through forcing vulnerable exposure, but by honoring the wisdom of the modes while gently expanding their repertoire of strategies.
Final Thoughts
Mark S’s character illustrates how extreme compartmentalization can serve as both protection and prison. His journey toward potential integration mirrors the therapeutic process many clients undergo in schema therapy—the painful but necessary work of bringing dissociated aspects of self into conscious awareness and dialogue.
What makes Mark S’s story particularly compelling is that his schema modes are not just psychological constructs but have been physically manifested through the severance procedure, creating a literal representation of the fragmentation many people experience psychologically.
The show reminds us that even in our most divided states, there remains an essential wholeness seeking expression. For therapists and clients alike, this offers hope that integration is possible even after profound disconnection. Mark’s struggle toward wholeness, despite extraordinary obstacles, reflects the resilience of the human spirit and its innate movement toward healing and integration.
