Attachment Therapy and Pseudoscience in Psychology
Saturday 18 December  2004 

Radio National
 
 
*Howard Steele: The debate in the USA has been extraordinarily heated. There is a widespread movement in the United States... by people who are targeting the very vulnerable and desperate group of adoptive parents who’ve taken on the tremendous challenge of making a commitment to children with Reactive Attachment Disorder. And they are a vulnerable group and will pay for advice that they can get, pay for therapy. And they may be misled into thinking that holding therapy, or holding therapy going under the label of ‘attachment therapy’ is the way to go.
 
...it may take two or three of these holding therapists to constrain and hold the child. And I’m sad to report that there were a couple of cases in the United States where children suffocated as a result of this treatment. And in one or more states holding therapy has been outlawed.
 
There’s simply no evidence base to support the idea that a school age child with attachment difficulties should be physically constrained against their will.  
 
...to now forcibly hold them again I think is likely to activate old terrors as well as to be I think a terribly invasive affront to their personhood.

*Louise Newman: ... the great risk is that we’re using those techniques, retraumatising already damaged children, making them scared, depressed and helpless.
 
*Jean Mercer:  ...[attachment therapy]an alternative theory of child development and of psychotherapy with no evidence basis whatsoever.
 

*Associate Professor Howard Steele
Psychology
New School University
New York
http://www.newschool.edu/gf/psy/faculty/steele_h/

*Dr Louise Newman
Head, NSW Institute of Psychiatry

Chair, Faculty of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists
http://www.nswiop.nsw.edu.au/

*Professor Jean Mercer
Richard Stockton College, New Jersey

http://talon.stockton.edu/eyos/page.cfm?siteID=14&pageID=85&program=PSYC


 

 
Full Transcript:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/mind/stories/s1264621.htm
Audio:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/mind/audio/mind_18122004_2856.ram