Deborah Hage


Deborah E. Hage

Deborah Elinbeth Hage, MSW, is a Registered Unlicensed Psychotherapist in Colorado, and a self-professed Attachment Therapist, presently operating from her home in Silverthorne, Colorado.

Hage initially took two of her children in 1986 to the Attachment Center at Evergreen (ACE, now doing business as the Institute for Attachment and Child Development), where she was introduced to “therapeutic foster care.” She learned “holding” techniques from a variety of therapists, including Neil Feinberg, John Alston, Michael Orlans, Gregory Keck, and Daniel Hughes.

Hage became professionally associated with her children’s therapist at ACE, Connell Watkins, starting in 1989, and remained so until Watkins’s arrest and conviction for the killing of Candace Newmaker during a “rebirthing” session. She herself had been involved in at least one preceding rebirthing session on a child with Watkins.

From approximately 2002 on, Hage joined together with others who had been part of Connell Watkins and Associates and created Turning Point. This business has offered one- and two-week intensive treatment programs for children suffering from Reactive Attachment Disorder, “Attachment Disorder,” Bi-Polar Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Hage and Neil Feinberg act as lead therapists, while others act as “Parents Extraordinaire” offering so-called “Powerful Parenting.”

Hage has said, “I travel all over the world. I’ve been in orphanages…probably more orphanages in more countries than almost anybody in the world, because I do orphanage assessments for my agency.” That agency is the Maine Adoption Placement Service (MAPS); she is director of MAPS Colorado, which she describes as “my [small] therapeutic foster care and adoption agency.” Among its offered services, MAPS Colorado does adoption home studies.

Hage lectures widely in the US and Canada and self-publishes several books under the “Parenting with Pizazz” rubric. She also claims she has contributed chapters and articles on therapeutic parenting to sundry publications.

In Her Own Words

— Most Telling —

— Rebirthing —

— Ordeal Therapy —

— Holding Therapy —

— Holding Therapy for Infants —

— Contract Process —

— “Reparenting” —

— Abandonment —

— Belittling and Taunting Children —

— Creative Use of Foul Language —

— Alarms and Locks —

— Strong Sitting —

— Compliance Training —

— The “Pivotal Behavior” —

— Caseworker and Compliance —

— Manipulation and Food —

— Scare Tactics —

— School Issues—

— Dismissing Conventional Therapy —

— “Attachment Disorder” —

— More on Attachment Therapy —

— “Eye Contact on Parents’ Terms” —

— Paradoxical Techniques —

— Respite and Therapeutic Foster Care —

— One-Minute Scolding —

— Parenting Advice —

— The “Exquisitely Tuned In” Fetus —

— “Attachment Cycle” —

— “Rewiring” the Brain —

— Attitude —

— Hage, the Adoption Agent —

— Hage and the Police —

— More Pseudoscience —

— Success —

— Role of Father —

— Splitting Up Siblings —

— Commendations —

Note: The “Guiding Philosophy of Attachment Therapy” essay was revised by Hage in December 2007 as “Guiding Philosophies of Child and Family Therapy” and some of the quotations here do not appear in the revision. Where the quotations persist, the dates 2003/2007 are attributed and the online link is to the later version. Where the quotations do not appear in the revision, the date attributed is 2003 alone and the online link is the earlier version.
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