An understanding towards Schizophrenia in Psychotherapy

Schizophrenia and Psychotherapy

Harry Stack Sullivan, who wrote The Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry, became famous for his ability to enter into healing relationships with those suffering from schizophrenic and psychotic experiences.
One of his contemporaries, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, upon whose work the book and film I Never Promised You A Rose Garden, regarded Sullivan as her mentor.

Sullivan's theory was that when one part of the personality fails to function, then another, younger part of the personality will come in and try to help the person to survive. If this younger parts fails to cope with life, then these ways of coping also collapse, and the next younger level of self tries to cope with the world. This could be like a three year old trying to cope with the world. And this can happen, so that the person's literal childhood, infantile, and even foetal experiences can enter into a person's consciousness - along with their current mental processes - so that at once you can have a person who is very lucid as an adult and yet at the same time can have infantile processes happening - so that Sullivan said it can feel like a toy boat on a real ocean.

Reintegration and becoming a person through psychotherapy can be a long process taking several years, where the person actually begins to form their own frame of reference and self through a healing relationship with someone who is deeply empathic and who can listen to the client's own wisdom in their process of becoming.

The kind of therapy which is available in this country and utilizes this understanding is relatively rare, but hopefully these brief words might encourage clients and therapists alike to explore the knowledge and talents of these two great therapists which make bizarre and confusing experiences understandable and workable with, and re-discover the skills and workings of the human psyche to create more healing in this world.

For futher information please call 0800 024 8647 or 07960 214 336, or go to www.counsellingpsychotherapy.org.uk