Attachment Therapy

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The content is sourced from: https://handwiki.org/wiki/Unsolved:Attachment_therapy

Attachment therapy (also called "the Evergreen model," "holding time," "rage-reduction," "compression therapy," "rebirthing," "corrective attachment therapy," and Coercive Restraint Therapy) is a pseudoscientific child mental health intervention intended to treat attachment disorders. It is found primarily in the United States, and much of it is centered in about a dozen clinics in Evergreen, Colorado, where Foster Cline, one of the founders, established his clinic in the 1970s. The practice has resulted in adverse outcomes for children, including at least six documented child fatalities. Since the 1990s there have been a number of prosecutions for deaths or serious maltreatment of children at the hands of "attachment therapists" or parents following their instructions. Two of the most well-known cases are those of Candace Newmaker in 2000 and the Gravelles in 2003. Following the associated publicity, some advocates of attachment therapy began to alter views and practices to be less potentially dangerous to children. This change may have been hastened by the publication of a Task Force Report on the subject in January 2006, commissioned by the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children (APSAC) which was largely critical of attachment therapy. In April 2007, ATTACh, an organization originally set up by attachment therapists, formally adopted a White Paper stating its unequivocal opposition to the use of coercive practices in therapy and parenting, promoting instead newer techniques of attunement, sensitivity and regulation. Attachment therapy is primarily based on Robert Zaslow's rage-reduction therapy from the 1960s and '70s and on psychoanalytic theories about suppressed rage, catharsis, regression, breaking down of resistance and defence mechanisms. Zaslow, Tinbergen, Martha Welch and other early proponents used it as a treatment for autism, based on the now discredited belief that autism was the result of failures in the attachment relationship with the mother. This form of treatment differs significantly from evidence-based attachment-based therapies, talking psychotherapies such as attachment-based psychotherapy and relational psychoanalysis.

child mental health psychoanalysis psychotherapy

References

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"Some proponents have claimed that research exists that supports their methods, or that their methods are evidence based, or are even the sole evidence-based approach in existence, yet these proponents provide no citations to credible scientific research sufficient to support these claims (Becker-Weidman, n.d.-b). This Task Force was unable to locate any methodologically adequate clinical trials in the published peer-reviewed scientific literature to support any of these claims for effectiveness, let alone claims that these treatments are the only effective available approaches." Task Force Report, Chaffin, Hanson & Saunders 2006c, p. 78
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"Reply to Letters", Child Maltreat 11 (4): 381, 2006b, doi:10.1177/1077559506292636, "1. Holding a child and confronting him/her with anger. 2. Holding a child to provoke a negative emotional response. 3. Holding a child until s/he complies with a demand. 4. Hitting a child. 5. Poking a child on any part of his/her body to get a response. 6. Pressing against "pressure points" to get a response. 7. Covering a child's mouth/nose with one's hand to get a response. 8. Making a child repeatedly kick with his/her legs until s/he responds. 9. Wrapping a child in a blanket and lying on top of him/her. 10. Any actions based on power/submission, done repeatedly, until the child complies. 11. Any actions that utilize shame and fear to elicit compliance. 12. "Firing" a child from treatment because s/he is not compliant. 13. Punishing a child at home for being "fired" from treatment. 14. Sarcasm, such as saying "sad for you", when the adult actually feels no empathy. 15. Laughing at a child over the consequences which are being given for his behavior. 16. Labeling the child as a "boarder" rather than as one's child. 17. "German shepherd training," which bases the relationship on total obedience. 18. Depriving a child of any of the basic necessities, for example, food or sleep. 19. Blaming the child for one's own rage at the child. 20. Interpreting the child's behaviors as meaning that "s/he does not want to be part of the family", which then elicits consequences such as: A. Being sent away to live until s/he complies. B. Being put in a tent in the yard until s/he complies. C. Having to live in his/her bedroom until s/he complies. D. Having to eat in the basement/on the floor until s/he complies. E. Having "peanut butter" meals until s/he complies. F. Having to sit motionless until s/he complies. (Hughes, 2002, n.p.)" https://dx.doi.org/10.1177%2F1077559506292636
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