This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Lyons-Ruth, K. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Lyons-Ruth, K. Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Dissociation and the Parent-Infant Dialogue: a Longitudinal Perspective From Attachment Research

Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School at the Cambridge Hospital, Klruth{at}hms.harvard.edu, Boston Psychoanalytic Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Psychoanalysis

Two longitudinal attachment studies of families at social risk have now followed their cohorts of infants to late adolescence. Several key findings have emerged related to outcomes of interest to psychoanalysts. First, data from both studies indicate that disorganized attachment behaviors in infancy are important precursors of later dissociative symptomatology. Second, this early vulnerability is related to patterns of parent-infant affective communication, particularly quieter behaviors like emotional unavailability or role reversal, and does not appear to reside in the infant alone. Finally, the results suggest that the quality of the attachment relationship may in part account for why some people exposed to later trauma develop dissociative symptoms and others do not. To paraphrase Dori Laub (1993), the mother's seeing and not knowing in infancy may be a precondition of her child's knowing and not knowing in late adolescence. It remains unclear, however, whether the early relationship is predictive due primarily to the onset of an internal defensive process in infancy or whether its predictive power resides primarily in enduring patterns of parent-child dialogue that continually reinforce the child's segregated and contradictory mental contents.

Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Vol. 51, No. 3, 883-911 (2003)
DOI: 10.1177/00030651030510031501


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

				P. Tyson Research in Child Psychoanalysis: Twenty-Five-Year Follow-Up of a Severely Disturbed Child J Am Psychoanal Assoc, August 1, 2009; 57(4): 919 - 945. [Abstract] [PDF]