The Attachment-Trauma Complex

In the moment of overwhelming threat we are returned to the earliest form of object relatedness—the wish for an omnipotent parent to save us, to take us in his or her arms and lift us from danger. And if that parent does not arrive, if there is no help, we feel an abysmal desperation that is the negative form of early object relatedness. From that desperation ensues the sense of abandonment.

As is known from studies of severely neglected and/or bereaved children, the sense of abandonment deepens according to a predictable sequence unless it is met by renewed nurture and the restoration of social attachment (Bowlby, 1973; Kreuger, 1983). The abandoned infant passes from rageful tantrums, whose function is to reattract the parent's attention and call the parent back, to the gradual loss of hope and, at the extreme, to a biological shutdown as is seen in unnurtured, failure-to-thrive infants. Rage and despair are the sequelae of abandonment, and the power of an overwhelming traumatic event is such that it can initiate a deep and pervasive sense of abandonment extending to the earliest developmental structures, even in adults who otherwise have secure and supportive attachments.

A close examination of the mechanisms by which trauma implicates itself in the sphere of object relations yields important insights into the needs and treatment of trauma survivors, and suggests a theory concerning the adaptive function of the trauma response related to group cohesiveness and survival.

The trauma response has been described as bimodal, that is, the traumatized individual experiences a numbing and/or repression of psychic representations of the traumatic event(s), while experiencing episodes in which traumatic material returns intrusively, often in a vivid, hypercathected state (van der Kolk, 1987). The developing sense of abandonment and attachment loss is the object-related underpinning of the bimodal