Attachment relationships as bipersonal, dynamic systems of interaction and meaning-making, can be understood as a resilient mechanism, a level of resilience in itself. A resilient early attachment relationship may facilitate resilience across development and interact with other factors to promote healthier, more resilient societies at different ecological levels. In this chapter, first, the concept of attachment resilience and its constituent factors are developed within the framework of resilience literature. Second, the ecological nature of attachment resilience is posited, and a set of four principles for the ecological study and enhancement of attachment resilience is presented and applied to a case study. Finally, a discussion of the implications of these ideas for interventions with families is developed.
Attachment-based interventions with parent–child dyads constitute a clinical scenario characterized by a series of specific challenges and opportunities for intervention and, essentially, considerations with respect to technique which are novel in comparison with the classical psychoanalytic intervention model. This paper aims to highlight the common therapeutic elements that define and differentiate intervention with parent–child dyads. The common therapeutic elements that traverse these interventions are: specific consideration for and handling of the therapeutic alliance with parents; mentalization-centered interventions with parents; promoting parental sensitivity through self-observation; and modifying second-order parental representations. Insight-oriented interpretation through words or actions is also considered as a technique appearing among certain models of dyadic therapy. The rationale, implications and advantages of each of these therapeutic elements are explored and exemplified.
This paper outlines a model of attachment‐centered group interventions to enhance caregiving among parents suffering from early trauma and/or social hardship. Groups are understood as an essential source of experiences that may restore traumatized adults’ relational security, and enhance their parenting capacities, in face of biographical and contextual factors that compromise caregiving. The model is especially suited for intervention within social service/child protection contexts and with families that struggle to establish trusting alliances with professionals and institutions. Proposed intervention strategies are oriented toward making the group function as an attachment figure that meets parents’ attachment and exploration needs and enhances parental sensitivity. Group therapists facilitate two sets of group processes: on the one hand, a sense of togetherness, emotional containment, protection and comfort (related to attachment needs); on the other hand, the development of parental mentalization, the revision of parental representations of the child, and the consolidation of parenting competence (related to exploration needs). A theoretical rationale for working with parent groups from an attachment‐centered perspective, the basic intervention principles and specific strategies of the model are presented and illustrated.
Resumen. En contextos de exclusión social, las relaciones de apego entre el niño y sus cuidadores pueden funcionar como correa de transmisión del trauma. Por otro lado, cuando estas relaciones son seguras, son promotoras tempranas de resiliencia. Por ello, las intervenciones centradas en el vínculo, de carácter preventivo, constituyen una herramienta fundamental de protección del menor. Primera Alianza es un programa breve, grupal, de intervención con cuidadores de niños en edad preescolar (1-6 años), en contextos de exclusión social. El objetivo de Primera Alianza es doble: mejorar la interacción de los cuidadores, por un lado, y aumentar su función reflexiva, por el otro. El programa emplea una metodología innovadora, basada en el video-feedback y el uso terapéutico del grupo. Se presentan los principios y herramientas fundamentales del programa, así como algunos de sus resultados preliminares.
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