The underlying assumption is that all mental illness results principally from such parenting, even including schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
In the late 1960s, Jacqui Lee Schiff developed a form of therapy based on transactional analysis theory.
Schiff and her followers claimed success with curing clients with schizophrenia using reparenting, which resulted in the expansion of its practice.
[3][4] Due to the wide varying forms of reparenting, each therapist may adopt different methods when treating clients.
The therapist accomplishes this by partaking in child-rearing acts such as bottle feeding, lap pillows, and other techniques wherein the client consciously adopts physical positions and behaviors of a small child.
Once the ideal level of closeness is achieved, the therapist can finally proceed to providing the messages that reform the client's negative way of thinking by lecturing, entering discussions, or other forms of communication appropriate in a parent-child relationship.
The therapist provides all the care and nurturing with the goal of totally reforming the client's parent ego state.
But unlike both Schiff and Wilson, Del Casale proposes that the therapist does not play the role of the parent for the client.
[1] Dr. David Kline practiced Schiff's total regression reparenting and was a staff member of the Cathexis Institute.
[8] Jaqui Lee Schiff conducted a study to attain biochemical evidence for reparenting's effectiveness on schizophrenics.
Schiff based this study on the observation that individuals with schizophrenia tend to have low levels of tryptophan reuptake.
[10] Gloria Noriega conducted a study to analyze the effects of self-reparenting on female delinquents in jail, who were between the ages of eleven and eighteen.
The subject that didn't show change was a drug abuser and clinicians concluded that more specialized treatment was required.
[13][14] There is no way to objectively determine the success in completely replacing the client's parent ego state after reparenting therapy.