Bowlby Centre Monograph Series – serie

The 2011 John Bowlby Memorial Conference, 'From Broken Attachments to Earned Security - The Role of Empathy in Therapeutic Change', focused on what needs to take place to facilitate empathy and attunement and ultimately the achievement of earned security. The confernce posed the challenge of how to re-establish a secure sense of self, mutuality, and the capacity for inter/intra-subjectivity when difficulties in empathy and attunement exist as a result of relational trauma. This can be between parent and child, within adult relationships, between client and therapist, or in organisational contexts. The outstanding collection of papers in this volume make a significant contribution to the field of attachment and our understanding of how child rearing affects each aspect of our lives, from the interpersonal to the organisational and societal. Each paper moves beyond the academic and theoretical to provide answers to the many difficult questions raised at the conference.

This monograph brings together the presentations from the nineteenth John Bowlby Memorial Conference in 2012, organised by The Bowlby Centre. It explored the growing role of the body in relational psychotherapy over the last decade, and to bring us up to date in thinking about the relationship between attachment, the body and trauma. Questions addressed included: How do we anchor the new understandings we are gaining within the framework of attachment? How might the integration of these ideas about the body change what we do in the consulting room? What impact might this have on the therapy relationship? Can we maintain and respect the place of a secure, attuned attachment between therapist and client, and its healing potential, at the centre of our therapeutic work?

This outstanding book is an important collection of papers from the 2013 John Bowlby Memorial Conference by accomplished clinicians from different modalities who share their experience of working with people with different kinds of addiction. The papers bring together an in-depth understanding that addictions are a response to, and hold the pain of, broken attachments and are best treated within healthy interpersonal relationships. For a long time the person with an addiction has been seen as the problem with society being able to live in denial of the causes. These papers open up innovative and effective ways of working with people troubled by addiction from an attachment-informed perspective.Contributors: Cara Crossan, Richard Gill, Lynn Greenwood, Bob Johnson, Liz Karter, Edward Khantzian, Arlene Vetere, Kate White, Jason Wright

This monograph contains a rich variety of material that is not usually included in traditional writings on trauma. In addition to the theoretical and clinical perspectives, poetry and storytelling join in to weave a vivid tapestry of multifaceted approaches to trauma. Whilst remaining true to its theoretical base (which, of course, is Bowlby's attachment theory), the monograph succeeds in locating its subject matter in wider perspectives, thus enabling the reader to appreciate the complexity of contributing factors. It is not easy to compile a single publication out of a conference; yet, this monograph achieves its objective by offering a coherent treatment of trauma that also includes some up-to-date approaches and innovations. The papers are written with authority, clarity and sensitivity and will provide the reader with a most beneficial elaboration of trauma from an attachment theory perspective.

This book is a selection of papers from the eleventh John Bowlby Memorial Conference. It covers the themes of sexuality and attachment, providing from a historical overview through intricate theoretical pathways to vivid descriptions to both analyst and analysand of a therapeutic relationship.

This book explores the experiences of terror states in the consulting room. It examines how we might more adequately provide support and legitimacy within the profession for work 'on the edge', and explores the means by which individuals struggle to cope with exposure to war zones.

This book is an outcome of the fourteenth John Bowlby Memorial Conference held in London. The conference covers the theme of understanding and treatment of the extreme state experienced in psychosis and major dissociative disorders by clients who have not benefited from psychoanalytic psychotherapy.

Drawn from the John Bowlby Memorial Conference, the theme of this book addresses the often hidden and ignored subject of attachment, race and culture. Can our individual narratives in relation to race, culture and attachment be unmasked in the therapeutic dyad to reveal our human connectedness? The contributors explore how the conscious and unconsc

This book compiles the papers presented at John Bowlby Memorial Conference 2003, exploring the complex and interwoven themes of touch, attachment and the body and their emergence in clinical work. It offers a new theory of the body, and of the role of the body in psychoanalytical practice.

Winner of the 2022 Gradiva® Award for Best Edited Book!Understanding shame as a relational problem, Shame Matters explores how people, with support, can gradually move away from the relentless cycle of shame and find new and more satisfying ways of relating.Orit Badouk Epstein brings together experts from across the world to explore different aspects of shame from an attachment perspective. The impact of racism and socio-economic factors on the development and experience of shame are discussed and illustrated with clinical narratives. Drawing upon the experience of infant researchers, trauma experts and therapists using somatic interventions, Shame Matters explores and develops understanding of the shameful deflations encountered in the consulting room and describes how new and empowered ways of relating can be nurtured. The book also details attachment-informed research into the experience of shame and outlines how it can be applied to clinical practice. Shame Matters will be an invaluable companion for psychotherapists, clinical psychologists, counsellors, social workers, nurses, and others in the helping professions.

Winner of the 2022 Gradiva® Award for Best Edited Book!Understanding shame as a relational problem, Shame Matters explores how people, with support, can gradually move away from the relentless cycle of shame and find new and more satisfying ways of relating.Orit Badouk Epstein brings together experts from across the world to explore different aspects of shame from an attachment perspective. The impact of racism and socio-economic factors on the development and experience of shame are discussed and illustrated with clinical narratives. Drawing upon the experience of infant researchers, trauma experts and therapists using somatic interventions, Shame Matters explores and develops understanding of the shameful deflations encountered in the consulting room and describes how new and empowered ways of relating can be nurtured. The book also details attachment-informed research into the experience of shame and outlines how it can be applied to clinical practice. Shame Matters will be an invaluable companion for psychotherapists, clinical psychologists, counsellors, social workers, nurses, and others in the helping professions.

Dissociative Identities draws on expertise from practitioners and survivors to explore therapeutic approaches to dissociation resulting from complex trauma. The contributors provide a vivid insight into what it is like for therapist and survivor to be alongside one another in the therapy room. They highlight the challenges of work with the fragmented internal worlds of those who have survived attachment trauma and explore together what approaches can promote healing and repair.Dissociative identity is reframed from being a disorder to an essential survival skill, and the book includes an open recognition from the perspective of both therapist and survivor of relational challenges, pitfalls, and their impact on the healing process.Dissociative Identities will be invaluable for all professionals working with survivors of complex trauma, including psychotherapists, nurses, social workers, clinical psychologists, and counsellors. It will also be of interest to survivors and their networks.

Dissociative Identities draws on expertise from practitioners and survivors to explore therapeutic approaches to dissociation resulting from complex trauma. The contributors provide a vivid insight into what it is like for therapist and survivor to be alongside one another in the therapy room. They highlight the challenges of work with the fragmented internal worlds of those who have survived attachment trauma and explore together what approaches can promote healing and repair.Dissociative identity is reframed from being a disorder to an essential survival skill, and the book includes an open recognition from the perspective of both therapist and survivor of relational challenges, pitfalls, and their impact on the healing process.Dissociative Identities will be invaluable for all professionals working with survivors of complex trauma, including psychotherapists, nurses, social workers, clinical psychologists, and counsellors. It will also be of interest to survivors and their networks.

Attachment, Climate Crisis and the Natural World is the first book to consider the psychological and social impact of global warming through the lens of Attachment Theory. The contributors reflect on our relationship with the natural world from the perspective of Bowlby’s major themes, including the nature and primacy of the attachment instinct for survival, the secure base, separation anxiety, maternal deprivation, loss and mourning. The therapeutic value of renewing our relationship with, and respect for, the natural world we are part of is explored, as is working with psychotherapy clients who are troubled by the climate emergency and suffering caused around the world by continued reckless plundering of natural resources. Attachment, Climate Crisis and the Natural World will offer valuable insights for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, counsellors, psychologists, environmental activists, and anyone concerned about our relationship with the natural world in times of ecological crisis.

Attachment, Climate Crisis and the Natural World is the first book to consider the psychological and social impact of global warming through the lens of Attachment Theory. The contributors reflect on our relationship with the natural world from the perspective of Bowlby’s major themes, including the nature and primacy of the attachment instinct for survival, the secure base, separation anxiety, maternal deprivation, loss and mourning. The therapeutic value of renewing our relationship with, and respect for, the natural world we are part of is explored, as is working with psychotherapy clients who are troubled by the climate emergency and suffering caused around the world by continued reckless plundering of natural resources. Attachment, Climate Crisis and the Natural World will offer valuable insights for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, counsellors, psychologists, environmental activists, and anyone concerned about our relationship with the natural world in times of ecological crisis.

This interdisciplinary book offers a relational perspective to dementia care drawing on attachment theory and practice. Relevant to professionals and the general public alike, it brings together innovative research and practice in psychotherapy and the creative arts with the lived experience of being a carer. Indeed, the book includes insights from professional and personal experience throughout. It also provides exclusive access to Josh Appignanesi’s short film, Ex Memoria, about his grandmother’s experience of dementia, poignantly portrayed by Sara Kestelman. Chapters include the experience of caring for a sister with dementia; the importance of an attachment perspective in theory and practice; a new approach to understanding the possible origins of dementia in trauma; contemporary understandings from clinical and research arenas; the description of a leading-edge project providing psychotherapeutic work; and an innovative creative arts and reminiscence European-wide family intervention for those living with dementia.Written in accessible language, Dementia: An Attachment Approach will be of great interest to people living with dementia, as well as those working with, and caring for, people with dementia in a variety of contexts including nurses, doctors and psychiatrists, clinical and counselling psychologists, social workers, health and social care workers, family carers and psychotherapists, as well as creative arts practitioners and policymakers.