Mental collapse as “disorganized attachment”: A dynamic understanding for clinicians
- Unresolved loss and unresolved trauma in adult mothers, and the commonly disorganized attachment pattern developed by their infants, have been repeatedly reported in longitudinal research literature as a crucial correlate or precedent of severe pathology. We describe and illustrate how unresolved loss and unresolved trauma are manifested in verbatim-transcribed language and how they are to be detected, so that psychoanalysts and clinicians in general are able to distinguish them and understand how such >states of mind< evidence the process of fragmentation they involve. We follow each example with a resolved transcript so it can be contrasted with a nonresolved case. We then describe excerpts of a taped >disorganized infant< – an example of infants who are usually babies of unresolved mothers, as shown during the Adult Attachment Interview. The analyst’s ability to identify and understand these >states of mind< and the subsequent sensitive reflection on the transcendental role of primary traumatic relations, which are involved in fear and the destructive dynamics of mental fragmentation – as seen in empirical research on attachment – can facilitate a resourceful integrative analytic scrutiny of the processes gone through by patients, and encourage the discovery of alternatives for working through the disturbing experience.
MetadatenAuthor: | Sonia Gojman de Millán, Salvador Millán |
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Parent Title (English): | International Forum of Psychoanalysis, Vol. 28 (No. 3, 2019), pp. 173-179. |
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Document Type: | Articles |
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Language: | English |
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Year of first Publication: | 2019 |
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Release Date: | 2020/11/03 |
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Format: | PDF-scan upon request / PDF-Scan auf Anfrage |
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IdNo: | Gojman_de_Millan_S_Millan_S_2019a |
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Erich Fromm's Library and Erich Fromm Archive: | Articles / Artikel |
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Licence (German): | |
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