I'm going to see attachment psychotherapist Stan Tatkin deliver a two-day professional development training in May on his triadic model of attachment-based couple's work which grounds orientation in affect regulation theory, attachment theory and interpersonal neurobiology - right in the same vein as Dr Allan Schore and Dr Dan Siegel's recent work (indeed, Tatkin is a veteran member of Allan Schore's study group).
It's very pleasing for me as I've been pointing to the unavoidable necessity of this view for a long time now, and have finally uncovered the throughlines in the research work done by all of these psychological heavyweights to go very deeply into this aspect of my transformation and sculpting of a healthy and happy relational and family, if not community, life. Their admonishment of the gestalt oaths of separateness and framing of them as a mere plateau in an immature 70's psychology ring like bells in my ear after years of advocating for what Judith Blackstone calls 'contact' over ego-division. The research is in, and it is pretty unequivocal that, across the lifespan, we grow and flourish in the attunement with significant others, and as adults negotiate relational space healthily only if we open to interdependency - the flow of selves-in-context securely negotiating time together and time alone within the trace of an attuned connection which pervades one's sense of having a secure base from which to venture into the world and return.
Looking forward to this deepening engagement with his work.
From the invitation:
Wired for Love: A Psychobiological Approach to Couple Therapy (PACT) focuses on the effect of early attachment on brain and nervous system development, as well as specific neuroendocrine issues related to interpersonal stress. Enactment of experience is emphasised over cognition or psychological interpretation. Interventions often entail therapeutically-staged moments intended to trigger arousal and implicit somatoaffective experience and memory. A PACT-trained clinician attends to each patient's moment-to-moment variations and shifts in affect and arousal as observed in the face, body, and voice. These macro and micro state changes occur rapidly in couples work. This training enables clinicians to discover and analyse psychobiological cues and other bottom-up (implicit) processes that reveal what top-down (explicit) approaches cannot.
Couples often enter therapy due to intense periods of mutual dysregulation whereby attachment injuries and adaptations become reanimated. The therapist needs a knowledge of the neurobiological processes that underlie primary attachment relationships, and a coherent narrative to explain where the couple has been, where they are, and where they must go. This training integrates three domains of developmental neuroscience, attachment theory, and principles of arousal regulation in treating couples typically thought of as untreatable. Attendees are introduced to an approach to adult romantic relationships that helps illuminate how and why adult primary relationships succeed and fail. Didactic, experiential, and multimedia learning are used.
http://www.thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com
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