Your eventual goal, of course, is to make the schizophrenic independent of whether the mother is congruent or not. In one sense, maturity is reaching a symmetrical relationship that allows a parent to be as incongruent as she wants, and the child can still maintain his own context and momentum in his life.
Whether the schizophrenic believes his mother wants him to stay sick or get well, if you're doing reframing you can say that the purpose the schizophrenic has in staying schizophrenic is to show honor to the mother. His purpose is to demonstrate how much he cares and how concerned he is about her welfare.
This is just standard reframing. I've gone from a piece of behavior, being schizophrenic, to the intent or the purpose of the behavior. I drive a wedge between the behavior «schizophrenia» and the intention or purpose of the behavior, and I validate the outcome. «You're right! Don't you mess around, because you care for your mother and you've got to demonstrate that to her as far as I'm concerned. I care for my mom, too.» Use whatever analogue is appropriate for this particular
guy.
Then you insist that he be schizophrenic until he has tested other ways of showing the respect and caring that his mother deserves and that he wants to give her. You insist that he continue to be schizophrenic until he discovers alternative patterns of behavior that lead to the outcome: showing respect and caring for his mother. «She deserves the best. If schizophrenia is the best, then you need to stay with it. If we can find a better way for you to demonstrate caring and respect for your mother, you'll want to do it that way, because she deserves the best.» By doing this, you operate entirely within his model of the world. At the same time I would also be working with the mother to sort out her behaviors.
Sometimes when someone has come in with aspects of her experience dissociated, we have chosen not to go for an outcome of complete integration. A big Dutch woman who had been in this country for twenty years was brought in by her husband, because she was displaying acute schizophrenic symptoms. She heard voices that were constantly propositioning her sexually, and making lewd and incomprehensible statements. She didn't even understand the meaning of those statements, because she was a «clean woman.»
A number of well–intentioned psychiatrists had attempted to deal with this woman. They explained to her that the voices were really her voices, and were a result of the fact that she was angry with her husband who had been involved with some other woman ten years earlier. This woman was extremely religious, and she had no way of accepting that explanation in her world–model. Her rage was unacceptable to her, so it was projected into auditory hallucinations. If she believed that those voices were hers, it would have shattered her conscious appreciation of herself. The voices were saying things and proposing activities that were abhorrent to her as a good, clean, religious woman. By trying to get the woman to accept this, the well–intentioned psychiatrists were running up against a stone wall.
This woman refused to go to psychiatrists because they were insulting her. So her husband and daughter brought her to us. The problem was getting serious, because she was slugging people who she thought were making indecent proposals to her. She was hitting and slapping waiters in restaurants, and people on the street—and she was a formidable opponent! Consequently, she was about to be locked up. We decided on a fairly limited therapeutic goal. The family was poor, and didn't have any interest in generative change. Mama just wanted to be comfortable, and the rest of the family just wanted Mama to be all right.
She was obviously already very dissociated. In this case it was a representational system dissociation. She had dissociated both the kinesthetics of the rage and the auditory representation of it. We made use of the dissociation, and simply widened it to get an altered state. Then we appealed directly to the part of her that knew what was going on. In the first session we were content with convincing her unconscious of a spurious piece of logic. We told her unconscious that since it had important things to say to her, it should say those things in her language of origin, so that she could completely understand. By doing that, we shifted all the hallucinated voices into Dutch. The consequence of this was that she couldn't beat up anybody here in the U.S., because she was hearing Dutch voices, and she knew that the people around her only spoke English. This was very confusing for her, but it was a good way to prevent her from getting into situations in which she'd actually be arrested or committed.
When she came back, we induced an altered state again, and I had a «revelation» on the spot. God spoke to me, and I reported to her what God said. «God said 'It is right and just and proper that blah, blah, blah.'" This revelation gave her instructions to move all the voices into dreams. So every night this woman would drop off to sleep and have violent dreams about taking revenge on her husband who had stepped out on her. During the day she was perfectly comfortable. We built in safeguards, so that the violent dreams didn't spill over into her behavior during the night, or she might actually have beat up her husband.
That's an example of an extremely limited therapeutic goal. It's been five and a half years now since we worked with her. She's happy and everybody in her family is happy. But that's not an integrated approach. She still has two dissociated parts of herself. Using the metaphor of the alcoholic, she is still capable of bingeing.
Man: In her dreams you mean?
Yes, and there's some possibility that it could spill over into her waking behavior, too. My guess is that if her husband got involved with another woman again, that would break down all the barriers that we set up to sort her behavior. You can always use that kind of dissociation to sort someone's behavior, but you should realize the limitations of not achieving full integration.
You need to be able to select and contextualize behavior, so that you can respond differently in different situations. Overcontextualization results in extreme dissociation, and severely limited and inflexible behavior. Extreme dissociation can work adequately in limited and relatively stable environments, but it quickly becomes maladaptive and ineffective in the face of changing conditions.
The ideal situation is to have full integration, so that any behavior can be available in any context. Our goal for you and your clients is to be able to respond to changing conditions in generative and evolutionary ways. In order to do this, it is useful to integrate dissociations fully, so that you have all your resources available to you anytime and anywhere.
Note
It is a common experience with many people when they are introduced to Neuro–linguistic Programming and first begin to learn the techniques, to be cautious and concerned with the possible uses and misuses of the technology. We fully recognize the great power of the information presented in this book and whole–heartedly recommend that you exercise caution as you learn and apply these techniques of a practitioner of NLP, as a protection for you and those around you. It is for this reason that we also urge you to attend only those seminars, workshops and training programs that have been officially designed and certified by THE SOCIETY OF NEURO–LINGUISTIC PROGRAMMING. Any training programs that have been approved and endorsed by THE SOCIETY OF NEURO–LINGUISTIC PROGRAMMING will display on the cover of the brochure (or on the front page of the literature) a copy of the registered certification mark of THE SOCIETY OF NEURO–LINGUISTIC PROGRAMMING shown below: