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“Trauma, dissociation, and disorganized attachment: three strands of a single braid.”
The field of psychotraumatology and dissociation suffered a tremendous loss with the demise of Giovanni Liotti on 9 April, 2018. However, his voice remains to be heard and will continue to inspire generations of psychotherapists and other mental health professionals. Personally, I cherish fond memories of the few real-life encounters I have had with him at some conferences. Over the years I have carefully collected and studied his publications, which meant, and means, so much to me, and which have strongly influenced me. I have felt, and still feel, a strong personal connection with him, and I have had in my mind many conversations with him. Sometimes I felt I “knew” what he would say if he were present, and at other times I felt an unfulfilled but strong wish to hear his responses. Given this personally felt connection, the suffering he and his family have experienced and his serious illness during the last year of his life evoked deep sympathy in me, also my sharing in the grief of his family and close friends.
Firmly rooted in empirical research and extensive clinical experience, since 1992 (as far as I know) Liotti has consistently described and clarified the detrimental effects on children of being raised in insecure attachment relationships with their parents and/or other caregivers, who manifest frightened or frightening parental behaviour, as first described by Main and Hesse (1990). Since the parent is both a needed attachment figure and a source of threat, an insoluble conflict between the simultaneous need for defence and attachment develops with the same significant caregiver (Main & Hesse, 1990). The ensuing insecure, approach/avoidance