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Dr. Courtenay's study is an exceptionally hopeful one. Those who haven't read it can find it here: The Recovery Vision: New paradigm, new questions, new answers.

I'm a great believer in therapy for schizophrenia, but my personal beliefs are that different forms of therapy are most appropriate during different stages of the process.

During the experience itself, the best kind of therapy is 24 hours around the clock. My therapist was one who "fell into my head". He served as my constant companion during the entirety of those six weeks. He wasn't a "professional" but because he was a character modelled on a warm and empathic friendship I'd had, he could be a friend. He was available to talk with me, to hold my hand if I was frightened. I didn't feel judged by him and therefore I didn't feel shamed. That meant that I could allow what was happening, to simply happen. Note that this isn't the stage for analyzing the content -- it's simply the stage where you bring it all up. About 14 months after my breakdown I stumbled across the work of John Weir Perry and was astonished to read that what my psyche had created for myself was precisely the type of setting he used with his clients. Perry had an 85% recovery rate so his words are worth paying attention to...<blockquote>O'C: In your book The Far Side of Madness, you describe how at Diabasis - the home for "schizophrenic" individuals which you set up in Berkeley iin the 1960's - they could comfortably get into their visionary process in a totally supportive atmosphere. What are the necessary conditions to enable a person to go through the experience of madness and be renewed by it when they come through, as you put it, on the far side?

PERRY: That's a question with many facets! The first one, which we touched on briefly toward the beginning of this conversation, was about the conditions that are set up around such an individual. What we did at Diabasis was specifically to set up what we hoped would be the most ideal, least toxic (smile), least damaging environment for a person in the visionary state.

First off, this means a home. You need a place with friendly, sympathetic individuals who live there. These people have to be companions, have to be willing to listen and not be frightened and not be judgmental about it, and not try to do anything to anybody.

One has to let the visionary process unfold itself spontaneously. Under such conditions, to our surprise, we found that our clients got into a clear space very quickly! We had started out with the notion that we would surely be in for alot of bedlam with all this "madness" going on, but actually the opposite was true! People would come in just a crazy as could be on the first day or two, but they'd settle down very soon into a state of coherency and clarity. Often, when I would come in for a consultation at the end of the week, I would see someone who had been admitted in a completely freaked-out state just a few days before, sitting at the dinner-table indistinguishable from anybody else; sometimes I couldn't tell if this was a new member of the staff, or one of our clients. The calming effect of a supportive environment is truly amazing!

It's a well-known fact that people can and do clear up in a benign setting. Actually, they can come down very quickly. But if some of our cases had gone to the mental hospital, they would have been given a very dire message: "You've had a mental breakdown. You're sick. You're into this for decades, maybe for the rest of your life!" and told "You need this medication to keep it all together." I am quite certain that if some of our clients had been sent to the mental hospital, they would have had a long, long fight with it. The outcome of their stay at Diabasis, however, was that their life after the episode was substantially more satisfying and fulfilling to them than it had been before!

Source: Mental Breakdown as Healing</blockquote>
The next stage in the recovery/therapeutic process is interpreting the content -- this is when you do the analyzing, the piecing back together, the understanding, the integration. I had my (human) friend Kali to serve as a companion through that stage, as well as the wonders of the internet. I did a lot of surfing at that time, a lot of reading. Mostly, I explored stuff on my own, but if something struck me as particularly interesting or insightful, I'd share it with Kali.

That was also the time when I was processing a lot of emotional content: grief, rage, despair... it had to be worked through. Mostly, I did that alone but I could talk to Kali about those things as well. If I'd been in a traditional therapeutic relationship this would have been the time to work one-on-one with someone, but not with the same intensity as during the process itself: once or twice a week probably would have been sufficient.

Somewhere in there I began to find other people who had been through similar experiences. If they were schizophrenics who had been through a traditional experience in this culture, I couldn't connect with them. Their conversation was constructed primarily around their dysfunction, their medication, their doctors and the hospitals they had been in -- they perceived their psychosis to be an illness, something very negative. I hadn't been to the doctor, I hadn't been on meds, I hadn't been hospitalized. While I recognized a number of "negative" elements in my own experience, there had been a great deal of "positives" in my experience too. I couldn't relate to their experiences of mainstream treatment. Nonetheless, the mere fact that I was moving outward was an indication that I was capable of dealing with group settings. I would not have been capable of doing so during my experience nor in the months immediately after. I had to live life very, very quietly for many months after.

Now, I continue to learn but I'm also at the point where I can assist others too. Mostly I do that via educating others as to what the psychotic process can be about and ideally, instilling in others a sense of hope that they too can recover. Occasionally, I'll make a connection with a fellow schizophrenic. This happened between myself and a fellow about a year ago who went by the name of Marek. Marek was not in very good space in those days. He's in much better space now. Should you wish to, you can read a bit more about him here: Marek: A Story About Schizophrenia

So, therapy? Absolutely. The most positive recovery rates are being seen among those who do therapy with their clients, but it also has to be the right kind of therapist, the right kind of therapy, and the right time to apply that particular kind of therapy.