What is it about?

Attachment-centered interventions (e.g. parent-infant therapies) aim to enhance or repair early affective relationships between parents and infants or young children. Treating these relationships is an essential measure of protection against the intergenerational transmission of relational trauma (abuse, neglect), and towards the promotion of healthy development. This work delineates a set of principles that are used across different attachment-centered interventions, and that converge upon the basic objective of enhancing security within parent-child early attachments.

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Why is it important?

This paper provides readers with a basic yet comprenhensive map of what is done within interventions that have proven to be succesful in strenghtening early affective relationships and protecting children form early relational trauma. It provides practiotioners with valuable ideas as to what are the essential ingredients that any therapeutic process with vulnerable child-parent dyads should have.

Perspectives

I hope that this article helps readers to find a way through the complexity and challenging nature of attachment-centered interventions. It has been a great pleasure to review the excellent work that many authors across the world are undertaking in order to help children and their primary caregivers in contexts of stress and vulnerability. Since their inception, attachment-centered interventions have been defined by great sensitivity and creativity, and I feel grateful to consider myself part of this rich community of practitioners and authors.

Carlos Pitillas
Universidad Pontificia Comillas

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: Common therapeutic elements of interventions aimed at enhancing parent–child early relationships., Psychoanalytic Psychology, March 2019, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/pap0000234.
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