The CUT recently published an article revealing the abuse that happened behind the walls of Castlewood Treatment Center in Missouri.
The article is called “The Therapy That Can Break You” and is written by Rachel Corbett.
Corbett wrote about one eating disorder patient’s experience with therapist Mark Schwartz, the former Castlewood director. Corbett followed this patient’s experience of how Mark Schwartz misused a type of therapy called Internal Family Systems (IFS) to implant false memories of her dad abusing her. By the end of her stay at Castelwood, this patient truly believed that her dad had raped her.
Mark and other Castlewood staff misused IFS, which centers on breaking a person’s personality into “parts” with different wants and needs, to implant false memories into multiple patients’ minds. Castlewood also misused IFS to create the illusion that their patients had Dissociative Identity Disorder (formerly called Multiple Personality Disorder). They diagnosed almost everyone with this condition, even when patients didn’t come to the treatment center with any symptoms.
I never met Mark Schwartz because I admitted to Castlewood a year after the treatment center fired him due to sexual abuse allegations. However, as someone who received treatment at Castlewood and who came to the center with symptoms of dissociative identity disorder (DID), Castlewood harmed me in a different way.
When I arrived at Castlewood in 2014, the staff members feared lawsuits so intensely that they decided that they wouldn’t treat anyone with Dissociative Identity Disorder, and they wouldn’t diagnose anyone with DID either.
Castlewood refused to diagnose me, even though I had every DID symptom.
Only one doctor on the staff would diagnose patients with DID, and he believed me, especially after I dissociated in front of him. But the rest of the staff refused to accept my diagnosis and gaslit me into believing that I didn’t have DID because they didn’t want to lose their jobs.
When the doctor mentioned my new DID diagnosis to both my therapist and the program director, the director asked me if I “liked being sick,” and my therapist said that I was “a very sick person” for wanting to have dissociative identity disorder.
They accused me of wanting to be sick.
For years after that experience, I tried to shut down my “parts.” I decided that I definitely didn’t have DID because it felt like the only way to cope after hearing so many professionals accuse me of faking my trauma. Honestly, I don’t doubt any of the abuse that patients reported, and I’m sure that many others experienced abuse at Castlewood as well. I feel deeply for the families of the patients who now falsely believe that their families abused them. These young girls never should have received inaccurate DID diagnoses or have been encouraged to name their “parts.” And some former Castlewood patients reported that staff forced them to act out rape scenes in their therapy groups — an experience that I also witnessed firsthand. Castlewood harmed and traumatized countless clients, and I believe every one of their stories.
In 2020, years after I attended Castlewood, a therapist I was seeing realized that I have DID. During ketamine treatment, my various personalities appeared and shared my trauma memories.
My therapist realized that each one of my “parts” has a distinct personality.
My stories of trauma are consistent, too, without any gaps. I still try to blame myself for “making up” my DID, like Castlewood said I did, even though it’s impossible to fake DID when you’re sedated on medications.
The therapy that Castlewood used likely wasn’t true IFS therapy, especially because they encouraged patients to name their “parts.” The reality is that IFS doesn’t work for everyone, but that’s true for any type of therapy. IFS therapy — along with ketamine treatment — has saved my life. Castlewood used a twisted form of IFS to abuse vulnerable people, but that doesn’t mean that true IFS is inherently traumatizing.
I personally find IFS helpful because I get to collaborate with my “parts” rather than run from them.
I’m sorry for all of the patients that Castlewood hurt. Castlewood deeply wounded me, too. And if IFS isn’t for you, I completely understand. But not every IFS therapist is cruel and abusive. IFS saved my life in a way that no treatment center ever could.
Featured Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash.
Reading about how Castlewood misused IFS to implant false memories and gaslight patients is heartbreaking. Genuine Trauma therapy should be about safety, collaboration, and healing – not retraumatization or manipulation. Real trauma informed care recognizes the complexity of a person’s history and parts, but never forces memories or identities into existence. Survivors deserve compassionate, evidence based support, not coercion.
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‘The Therapy That Can Break You’… wow, chilling. Kinda makes you wonder if even so-called helpful treatments can go sideways, right?
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