The importance of the "traumatic attachment" in forensic psychotherapy

Abstract

In this article I will be presenting theoretical and clinical therapeutic work involving the traumatic attachment. It is extremely important to understand the role it plays in human development because of how it impacts the future development of infants and children who suffer from parental abuse or neglect. It also appears to be at the origin of so-called "difficult to treat disorders" like personality disorders. So far, our knowledge of the traumatic attachment has been largely theoretical, described as it is in detail by Dr Allan Schore (2002). However, we now have access to animal research which explains its evolutionary importance, which I will share with you. This is followed by clinical therapeutic work carried out with adults using a procedure called the traumatic attachment induction procedure (TAIP), which I originally named the traumatic attachment induction test (TAIT) (Zulueta, 2006b). Our results confirm Allan Schore's theoretical model and, in the process, we discover that we can enable the healing of the dissociated self to take place, which appears to restore the individual's affected neurodevelopment and with it the possibility of living a "normal" life.