Attachment Disorder
Beyond_Ideologies
Understanding Attachment and Attachment Disorders
Theory, Evidence and Practice
Vivien Prior and Danya Glaser
Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2006
This book talks about 4 types of attachment
Organized
B. Secure
A. Avoidant
C. Resistant
D. Disorganized
Remember that Danya Glaser wrote the Emotional Abuse chapter in the ABC Child Proteciton book edited by Roy Glaser.
Much of this present book derives from the work of John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Ainsworth
It is interesting to a point. But if you go to far with it, then you are prescribing the Good Mother. This is patent Rousseauism. No good. We need to move beyond that as it is reactionary.
Also, beware of anything published by Jessica Kingsley, as they publish all the autism advocacy books.
BO
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Continuing with this book:
Understanding Attachment and Attachment Disorders
Theory, Evidence and Practice
Vivien Prior and Danya Glaser
Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2006
They look at attachment disorder. DSM-IV-TR defines it one way, and the World Health Organization has this ICD-10 which cuts it a different way.
But basically they are talking about Inhibited versus Disinhibited Attachment Disorders, and as these are not opposites, both can be present in the same child.
Of course to me this still sounds a great deal like what we are also calling Autism, although these authors are careful not to ever say this, and sometimes to draw distance from that sort of a view.
Now on page 219 they say something very important.
"The fault does not lie in the child. ... However, in these very adverse circumstances, some children are particularly vulnerable to developing an attachment disorder."
So this is important, even in Romania's orphanages, not all the children suffered the same sorts of outcomes.
And also, it is necessary to do everything possible to prevent this from being turned back on the child. But even this is not enough.
Prior and Glaser indicate that there is now something of a cottage industry built by using the Attachment Disorder diagnosis to stigmatize children and give their parents and doctors the power to psychologically abuse them.
The authors mention names like Levy, Thomas, Zaslow, Menta, and Cline, and in chapter 12 they completely disavow them.
The speak symptom lists saying things like:
* Avoids making eye contact
* Asks persistent non-sense questions and chatters incessantly
* Is fascinated with fire, blood, gore, weapons, and evil.
* Engages in food-related issues -- hoarding, gorging, refusing to eat, eating strange hings
* Displays cruelty to animals
* Displays no conscience - shows complete lack of remorse.
It is pretty much the standard terror child sort of a list. I have found that when you hear a parent talking like this, the odds are very high that they have been abusing their child.
The authors also mention this and completey disavow it:
http://www.attachmenttherapy.com/
Let me explain why I am interested in all of this. I am concerned about the abuse of children which goes on in the kind of families we have today in the US, and the kind of family I have grown up in. This is the kind of family which industrial capitalism has created, the Middle-Class Family.
I am only interested in the abuse which goes on in such families because I know that this is the most prevalent type of child abuse. I also feel that the other types of child abuse, institutions and strangers, is allowed to happen because it operates in the shadow created by the lies we tell about the middle class family. If we can restore children's personhoods, then these other sorts of abuses can be easily dealt with. But as long as we live in lies, were are all powerless and worse.
Sexual and Physical abuse of children are all also Psychological abuse. In fact, I feel that most of the sexual abuse is actually intended as psychological abuse. That is, it is not just for the perpetrator's gratification. It is also intended specifically to harm their child.
So we have to explore this and deal with it. I feel that the blacksheeping and stigmatizing of children is what allows it to go on.
So if I go the the Pentecostal Church were I helped get the guy convicted from, I will hear endlessly about all the problems people are having with their unsaved and rebellious children. Behind the scenes I know this means child abuse.
If I go to this Evergreen Human Behavior Clinic, I would hear endless stories about all the problems parents are having with their attachment disordered child. I know that behind the scenes this means child abuse is going on.
If I go to the University of California Santa Barbara and to the Koegel Autism Center I know that I would hear endless stories about all the problems people are having with their autistic child who has no friends in school and who lacks empathy and doesn't understand non-verbal communications skills and about how distressed these parents are. I know that behind the scenes, and in front of the Koegel's video cameras, psychological child abuse is going on. I feel that the Koegels are just a slicker version of:
http://www.attachmenttherapy.com/
I know that the Koegels have never been charged with anything and that they probably have never even been sued, but I plan to change both of these.
To Be Continued
Becoming Other
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Prior and Glaser also say something else very important.
page 218
"There continues to be some lack of clarity about the nature of attachment disorders. One aspect about which there is consensus is that, whatever the precise nature of these difficulties, they only arise following very adverse early caregiving experiences in the child's life, to the extent that one might conceptualise the disorders as 'post severe caregiving adversity disorders'. This is, however, unsatisfactory, as a disorder cannot be characterized by its antecedents alone."
We can go further and reduce this down to it's grammatical essentials, ".. a disorder cannot be characterized by its antecedents alone."
That is, what does it mean in the present? But unfortunately it will always be seen as genetic, environmental, or characterological. All of these serve the purpose of demonizing the victim. And then there are the hypnosis and histrionic techniques designed to purge memories.
All very stupid and completely abusive.
The disorder concept is just completely wrong. Disorder, Syndrome, Complex, and Disease, all lead no where.
The issue which remains of all abuse is a lack of social status, of social legitimacy. The victim is always being subjected to further abuses, if they won't accept the web of lies that our world lives on.
So people believe that they are the problem, and then they seek Recovery. This is just self perpetrated second rape.
No, the way to restore social and civil standing is by fighting back, by refusing to live as an Uncle Tom, and instead to carve out a place in the world by engaging in conflict.
But there is an additional problem. You can't do it alone. You'll just be branded a psychopath. No, you have to find common cause with others. You have to join forces. You have to find comrades. Then and only then can you be effective in fighting back.
Becoming Other
http://freedomtoexpress.freeforums.org/
Vivien Prior is senior research fellow at the Behavioral and Brain Sciences Unit at the Institute of Child Health, London.
Danya Glaser is a consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist at the Department of Psychologial Medicne, Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, London.