"I've been waiting my whole life for someone to understand me..."
Imagine yourself sitting next to a person who is yelling at you, talking crazy and smoking like a chimney...Most of us would make a few feeble  attempts to redirect the client or tell them their behavior was inappropriate...What would happen if we endured the situation and assured the client that  we are there, we aren't going to let their delusions hurt them while we are together and that you believe in them and will not go away until they stop acting crazy? Direct Confrontation Case Study

The Challenge Of Treating The Schizophrenic Patient A major problem confronting psychotherapists who treat schizophrenia is how to make successful therapeutic contact with the patient.  Too often the patient's bizarre behavior drives the therapist away, especially when the illness intrudes on the patient's ability to use ordinary human communication.  This problem can be so frustrating to both patient and therapist that each is unable to respond to the potential inherent in the therapeutic encounter.  Therapists most often adopt this stance because they are not familiar with these problems and how to work with them. Few training institutions encourage  therapists to engage the patient with schizophrenia in a humanistic way, so that a sense of relatedness can be established. Preparing the patient for treatment using Direct Confrontation psychotherapy helps the therapist understand and quickly overcome the patient's psychological barriers to treatment. Treatment can begin  with the rapid disruption of the patient's defensive patterns. This disruption affords the therapist the opportunity to show the patient that they are stronger than their delusional  system and can contain the patient's terrors, allowing the patient to emerge from their "psychotic world" and establish a relatedness to another human, for the first time in many years.