Schema Therapy was developed to treat more difficult issues with powerful interventions, including active re‐parenting in imagery re-scripting, chair‐work dialogs, and behavioural pattern breaking. Schema Therapy combines the depth and developmental theory of longer term treatments with the active, change‐oriented approach of shorter term therapies.
One of the strengths of Schema Therapy is its origins in cognitive therapy, which has the advantage of conceptual clarity and ease of understanding. Now, it incorporates a good deal more than talk, including both non‐verbal cognitions (imagery) and embodiment techniques. It is essentially integrative.
Schema Therapy also goes to the developmental origins of adult problems, to effectively “repair” experiences of neglect and trauma through imagery work embedded in a re‐parenting relationship.
Schema Therapy has parallels and differences with major approaches, including Beck’s “reformulated” model, psychoanalytic theory, Bowlby’s attachment theory (especially internal working models), and emotion‐focused therapy (EFT). Schema Therapy has integrated techniques adapted from transactional analysis and gestalt therapy. Schema Therapy as an individual therapy with systemic implications.
Schema Therapy offers more than technical eclecticism. There is a deep “assimilative integration” of different perspectives and insights from various schools into a system of therapy with a coherent, conceptually economic model.
