Reparenting Schizophrenics: The Cathexis Experience Book

This book is the result of ethnographic research into the healing rituals of a western psychiatric community in the 1970s and of how rituals, adaptation and Transactional Analysis intersect to create change in individuals suffering from schizophrenia. The Transactional Analysis structure is delineated as a basis for teaching individuals how to separate thoughts and feelings, how to think about problems, and how to use cognitive behavioral and developmental approaches to the healing of individuals who are profoundly disturbed. The process known as Reparenting involves both in-patient and outpatient treatment and cognitive behavioral methods coupled with regressions and healthy parenting to bring about change in the participants in the Cathexis Institute. While the Cathexis Institute has long since folded, the theories and techniques (rituals) devised there continue to be used around the world in therapeutic centers where Transactional Analysis is the basic model. An outgrowth of the Reparenting model is Corrective Parenting (Elaine Childs-Gowell) and Self-Reparenting (Muriel James). The Passivity Confrontation model developed by Jacque Schiff and staff is described and illustrated.Read More