The Rationale behind a Potentially Harmful Child Psychotherapy
Author:
Jean Mercer - Department of Psychology, Richard Stockton College
Author
Note:
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed
to Jean Mercer, Richard Stockton College, Pomona, NJ 08240.
E-mail: petedempsey@worldnet.att.net.
Abstract:
Although modern therapies for children generally stress a
nonintrusive, communicative interaction between therapist
and child, practitioners of an approach called attachment
therapy (AT) use physical and emotional violence in their
attempts to treat emotional problems they attribute to early
separation. Several children's deaths have been documented
as occurring in association with AT, but the practice apparently
continues. AT practitioners have claimed both empirical evidence
for the benefits of their treatment and a well-accepted theoretical
rationale for their practices, but analysis of their work
does not support such claims. Instead, AT seems closely related
to a number of ideas historically outside mainstream clinical
thinking, some of which are questionable on ethical grounds
and none of which are congruent with modern theory or research.
The historical background of AT is examined in this paper,
and reasons why parents might find AT acceptable are discussed.
