From Infant Attachment Disorganization to Adult Dissociation
BIO:
Karlen Lyons-Ruth, Ph.D.,
is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, a member of the clinical staff and faculty at Cambridge Hospital, and principal investigator of the Family Pathways Project, an NIH-funded 20-year longitudinal study of predictors of adaptive social behavior from infancy to adolescence. Her research group is currently examining both genetic and caregiving influences on the developmental pathways leading to adolescent psychopathology, including dissociative and borderline symptoms. She is the author of numerous research articles and book chapters and speaks internationally on infant social development, maternal trauma and depression, and the parent-infant attachment relationship. Her clinical publications have proposed reorientations in psychoanalytic developmental theory based on the emerging body of developmental research findings. She is also a faculty member of the Massachusetts Institute of Psychoanalysis, an affiliate scholar of the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute, and maintains a private practice in Cambridge, MA.
TALK ABSTRACT:
While dissociation has been clearly related to severe and chronic abuse, many traumatic events do not result in serious symptomology. A model of fear regulation based on attachment theory would suggest that the impact of traumatic experiences is partially buffered by the quality of comfort and security available in primary attachment relationships or is exacerbated by relational processes that contribute to maintaining dissociation of mental contents. Dr. Lyons-Ruth will present recent findings from a 20-year longitudinal study on the contributions of the early parent-infant relationship and later trauma to dissociation in young adulthood. The implications of these developmental findings for clinical work with dissociative patients will be discussed.
