Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > Daytop Village

Dr. Dan Casriel “A scream away from happiness”

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Awake:
Casriel has recently been added to wikepedia for those interested.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Harold_Casriel

Awake:
(This was in response to a conversation on this thread ‘Where did ‘the game’ come from  viewtopic.php?f=9&t=32589  ‘ ,but I thought it was more relevant here)

I have some background on where Casriel got some of his influence, however, I am no expert on him. He is really quite mysterious imo and certain stylistic aspects of his approach are suspiciously hard to trace. Casreil developed the New Identity Process, which is now called Bonding Therapy, which is based on the Attachment Theory of John Bowlby and others. I find it interesting that the Attachment Therapy (also based on attachment theory) of Robert Zaslow, and Primal Therapy by Arthur Janov all emerged at right around the same time, but despite the VERY similar approaches they seem to have developed independently of each other.  A common emphasis in all of them is acting out, or catharting, over childhood trauma. This undoubtedly has it’s roots in the Cathartic Method, as old as psychotherapy itself. http://www.freudfile.org/psychoanalysis ... erapy.html

 The Cathartic Method  was a common practice in Freud’s early career, due to Breuer,  to employ a model of hypnosis, age regression, and achievement of catharsis over a repressed childhood trauma (abreaction). He ended up abandoning this process because he concluded that the therapeutic results were due to what he termed ‘transference’ and didn’t provide a lasting cure (as exampled by Anna O.’s falling in love with Breuer). So he abandoned it in favor of ‘free association’.

More recently Jacob Moreno and psychodrama also focused on catharsis. He felt that catharsis needed to be acted out even more deeply and in more ways.  Humanistic Psychiatry and the Human Potential Movement was all the rage leading up to and during Casriels time in the spotlight, Carl Rogers was largely responsible for the widespread use of sensitivity training which he called ‘encounter groups’. Some pretty marked changes showed up in Synanon that were resemblant of humanism. Human potential groups also focused heavily on inducing cathartic states, it was a held belief that the point of catharsis is the point at which a person is de-programmed and ready to accept new programming. Today ‘age regression’ and ‘abreaction’ are often terms heard in relation to the area of hypnosis. There is a commonly reffered to ‘trick’ in this area called the ‘affect bridge’ technique, which is just following a particular feeling back to when someone first remembers feeling it and focusing on that as the source of current problems. All in all what seems to be Casriels goal is to not just stop with age regression and catharsis, but to also ‘re-parent’ the individual from that point in development by applying attachment theory principles. This seems to be utilized by Casriel and a unique flare he adds to the Synanon group dynamic. So anyways, it is hard to get a clear reading on Casriel. Since Bowlby is the respected figure in this area it is probably important to note HIS perspective on the validity of Age Regression.


“Bowlby explicitly rejected the notion of regression stating "present knowledge of infant and child development requires that a theory of developmental pathways should replace theories that invoke specific phases of development in which it is held a person may become fixated and/or to which he may regress." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attachment_therapy “

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