Trauma at Home: How Betrayal Trauma and Attachment Theories Understand the Human Response to Abuse by an Attachment Figure

Betrayal trauma theory (BTT), building on the most central concepts of attachment theory (AT), has focused very specifically on understanding psychological responses to trauma. Like AT, BTT proposes that trauma occurring within the context of an attachment relationship is qualitatively different to trauma that takes place outside of one. More specifically, they both make the depathologising argument that since forming and maintaining attachment relationships are so crucial to our very survival, it is adaptive for an individual to defensively exclude (or remain “blind” to) knowledge of caregiver maltreatment—information that, if fully acknowledged, could threaten the attachment relationship and hence lead to further endangerment. At the same time, both theories acknowledge that these dissociative responses—though helpful in the short-term—can become problematic later in life. In this paper, we describe these theoretical convergences, and also point out several points of theoretical divergence. Where attachment theory and betrayal trauma theory make differing predictions, we outline potential future studies that may help reveal which provides the most helpful explanatory fit.