Freedom is the reward for courage. Conversation with Joanne Greenberg

A good psychotherapist must have courage to follow the patient into the world of fear and must have some sense of humor to be able to understand a metaphor. As Joanne Greenberg says, ‘I had the map and my psychotherapist had the light’. What is it like to be schizophrenic? What does it take to come out of it? What qualities must a good psychotherapist have? Is schizophrenia a genetic disorder, a brain defect or is it a state of chronic fear and loneliness, as a result of an earlier trauma? It usually starts as a place of refuge, a safe fortress which turns into a prison. Joanne Greenberg was diagnosed with schizophrenia at 16, and after 3 years of psychotherapy with dr Frieda Fromm-Reichmann she recovered and became a thriving human being, writing books, getting married and starting a family. She has written 21 novels (among them the famous “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden”, turned into a movie in 1977 and a play in 2004), 4 books of short stories, countless articles, poems and songs. She graduated from the American University in Washington with majors in anthropology and English literature, and worked as a professor at Colorado School of Mines, and she’s also the most famous patient of Dr. Frida Fromm-Reichmann, a psychiatrist who specialized in healing people with schizophrenia using psychotherapy.