#1114: Jacqui Schiff

We have tried to verify the current whereabouts of Jacqui Schiff, but for the last decades she has retained a low profile, and we cannot with certainty assert that she is even still around (at least she may have left the US for places with fewer restrictions on psychological practices). But it is no doubt that her life and work merit a mention in out Encyclopedia. In the 1960s Schiff popularized the dubious treatment of Reparenting as a treatment of schizophrenia. Her book, All My Children, achieved some modest popularity, and she did claim to have successfully treated or cured many patients this way (the evidence being, shall we say, “unclear”). Reparenting involves “regressing” the patient to an infantile state, essentially playing “baby”, with the therapist then acting as a healthy parent figure. The strategy is then supposed to undo the effects of bad parenting from neglect or abusive homes.

It is utter woo, belonging to the same genus as rebirthing, crammed with faddish pop-psychology terminology to cover the absence of empirical support, and even if the idea had been on track Schiff’s parenting techniques would themselves have remained questionable, with e.g. their heavy emphasis on spanking the regressed adult “babies” as an example of healthy parenting. Her book is a narrative testimonial of her attempts at reparenting using a trial-and-error basis – no proper methodology or testing. The technique employs some concepts from Transactional Analysis (TA), which itself is complete crackpottery, and the popularity of reparenting in the 1970s did cause a split in the (at that time) popular field of TA. The International Transactional Analysis Association first embraced Schiff’s therapy, but finally launched an investigation into Schiff's activities in 1978, uncovering reports of abuse, which together with Schiff’s refusal to submit her methods for peer review forced her to resign (much of the story is here).

The list of New Age psychotherapies is a long one, and you may still encounter some reparenting attempts between your rebirthing, regression, primal scream, and hypnotherapy sessions.