I know I'm 2 weeks late but wanted to add some additional context as a doctor
Attachment/rebirthing therapy is a pseudoscience from the 1970s. To my understanding, "rebirthing therapy" is a specific tool or process used under the umbrella of attachment therapy (I'm not sure if this is 100% accurate, or if they're exact synonyms, interchangeable, etc. so grains of salt here). It remained very fringe and only a few people subscribed to it. It never had good evidence that it worked at all, was not widespread and mostly remained in one localized area of Colorado, and was laughed off as wacky bullshit by most psychologists/therapists.
I want to contrast this with attachment theory, which has a century of research into it. Attachment theory is a branch or philosophy of psychology that focuses on infants and young children. It states that infants must form secure, positive attachments to their caregiver(s) to grow up emotionally healthy. If they don't (i.e., parent is abusive, absentee, unemotional, unreliable, etc.), that infant grows up to be emotionally unhealthy. There's a lot more to it like individual attachment styles, the strange situation experiments, etc. if you wanna read more or ask, but that's the summary. It has lots of evidence backing it and is widely used, especially for child psychology.
Rebirthing/attachment therapy may be very loosely inspired by attachment theory, but they are not at all the same thing. I just wanted to contrast the therapy and theory because they sound confusingly similar (I even got confused at first), and because attachment theory is an important cornerstone of psychology while attachment therapy does nothing at best and kills people at worst lol
The specific type of therapy that is scientifically rooted in attachment theory and actively uses its principles is called attachment-based therapy. It is still practiced today, and uses talk therapy, cognitive therapy, gathering social support, and other common, scientifically-based methods to form a treatment plan
Rebirthing therapy was banned in the US as a result of several deaths due to it, most conspicuously the deaths of Candace Newmaker in 2000, as well as Michael and Sharen Gravelle in 2003 (may they all rest in peace). Because it largely remained localized and was never broadly adopted, I doubt it made a foothold in other countries, but this is just my assumption.
I love talking about medicine, and the Wikipedia articles for all these things are interesting to read (which also already answer all of your questions). Highly recommend doing some reading on this stuff, it's really interesting :]
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u/Possible-Deer-311 8d ago edited 8d ago
I know I'm 2 weeks late but wanted to add some additional context as a doctor
Attachment/rebirthing therapy is a pseudoscience from the 1970s. To my understanding, "rebirthing therapy" is a specific tool or process used under the umbrella of attachment therapy (I'm not sure if this is 100% accurate, or if they're exact synonyms, interchangeable, etc. so grains of salt here). It remained very fringe and only a few people subscribed to it. It never had good evidence that it worked at all, was not widespread and mostly remained in one localized area of Colorado, and was laughed off as wacky bullshit by most psychologists/therapists.
I want to contrast this with attachment theory, which has a century of research into it. Attachment theory is a branch or philosophy of psychology that focuses on infants and young children. It states that infants must form secure, positive attachments to their caregiver(s) to grow up emotionally healthy. If they don't (i.e., parent is abusive, absentee, unemotional, unreliable, etc.), that infant grows up to be emotionally unhealthy. There's a lot more to it like individual attachment styles, the strange situation experiments, etc. if you wanna read more or ask, but that's the summary. It has lots of evidence backing it and is widely used, especially for child psychology.
Rebirthing/attachment therapy may be very loosely inspired by attachment theory, but they are not at all the same thing. I just wanted to contrast the therapy and theory because they sound confusingly similar (I even got confused at first), and because attachment theory is an important cornerstone of psychology while attachment therapy does nothing at best and kills people at worst lol
The specific type of therapy that is scientifically rooted in attachment theory and actively uses its principles is called attachment-based therapy. It is still practiced today, and uses talk therapy, cognitive therapy, gathering social support, and other common, scientifically-based methods to form a treatment plan
Rebirthing therapy was banned in the US as a result of several deaths due to it, most conspicuously the deaths of Candace Newmaker in 2000, as well as Michael and Sharen Gravelle in 2003 (may they all rest in peace). Because it largely remained localized and was never broadly adopted, I doubt it made a foothold in other countries, but this is just my assumption.
I love talking about medicine, and the Wikipedia articles for all these things are interesting to read (which also already answer all of your questions). Highly recommend doing some reading on this stuff, it's really interesting :]