Treating Attachment Disorder: Sharing Stories and Holding Hope

Reviews the book entitled Rebuilding Attachments With Traumatized Children: Healing From Losses, Violence, Abuse, and Neglect (see record 2004-15370-000) by Richard Kagan. The reviewer notes that currently child and family therapists are attempting to treat an unprecedented number of children with tenuous and damaged attachments, a predicament highlighted by Kagan in this book. These children are, beyond a doubt, among the toughest cases we may face. We have no empirically validated protocols and very few good, published ideas about how to intervene. In fact, attachment therapies have had terrible press, and there is a veritable array of sometimes dangerous holding, rebirthing, and boot camp strategies with limited merit at best (Mercer, 2001). Thus, the reviewer feels that this sensible and thoughtful book is a welcome (and needed) addition. At the core of Kagan's approach is helping children develop a coherent narrative. However, his angle is not merely retelling an old and painful story but rather recasting it as one in which the surviving child can see himself or herself and the people who love him or her as heroic. Ultimately, at least until policies in this country change dramatically, the reviewer states that all we have to offer individual children who have lost so much are our authentic, compassionate adult selves. Kagan's careful and thorough book offers us a well-reasoned methodology for how we might proceed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)