Re: Evaluating Abuse Cases

[Svanberg <svanberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hermetica@aol.com wrote:

>         I have not encountered any study directly on dissociation (as measured by the
> DES) and abusive parents.  However a study by Main & Goldwin regarding
> attachment is quite suggestive:
>
>         Main and Goldwyn (1984) studied a group of mothers and found that the
> motherās experience of her own mother as rejecting was highly related to the
> motherās rejection of her own infant.  This was particularly true if the
> mother displayed the cognitive distortions of idealization of the rejecting
> parent, difficulty in remembering childhood, and incoherency in discussing
> attachment issues.
>
>         [what might the relationship be between these cognitive distortions and
> dissociation?]
>
>         Main and Goldwyn write, "If a mother insisted that she was unable to recall
> her childhood, her infant was significantly likely to avoid her.  If a mother
> idealized her rejecting mother, her infant was also likely to avoid her.  But
> if the mother expressed resentment and anger toward her mother during the
> interview, and if she was coherent regarding her own feelings and experiences
> surrounding attachment, her infant was unlikely to avoid her.  Thus the
> childās avoidance of its mother assessed in infancy bore a systematic
> relationship to the motherās efforts to describe her own childhood
> experiences, and particularly to apparent distortions in the motherās
> cognitive process (p. 214).
>
>         Main, M., & Goldwyn, R. (1984). Predicting rejection of her infant from
> mother's representation of her own experience:  Implications for the abuse-
> abusing intergenerational cycle. Child Abuse & Neglect, 8, 203-217.
>
> Nelson J. Binggeli, M. S.
> Georgia State University

  Within the attachment tradition Patricia Crittenden has done a great deal of work in
relation to trauma and abuse. See
http://www.soton.ac.uk/~aoh/pmc.htm for example.
Best wishes
P.O. Svanberg
Sunderland,UK