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British Journal of Medical Psychology 72, 285-303, 1999
Both the developmental and social personality approaches to the study of adult attachment are concerned with understanding those factors that describe an individual's quality of relational adaptation and risk for mental ill health. This paper examines the theoretical and methodological assumptions of these alternative models and how these assumptions have markedly different implications for addressing clinical issues. It is suggested that recent evidence necessarily leads to the conclusion that mental and relational difficulties, such as partner violence and victimization, borderline personality, dissociation, suicidal behaviour and other clinical symptomology thought to be related to experiences of severe relationship distress, are best explained in terms of attachment disorganization rather than as normative forms of attachment insecurity or fearful avoidant adult romantic attachment.
Journal of Analytical Psychology 44, 443-463, 1999
This paper describes a patient who appears to have a chronic dissociative personality disorder. Renewed clinical interest in dissociative disorders had arisen in North America in the 1980s, in part due to the influence of the Women's Movement which had highlighted the incidence of child sexual abuse. The early psychological observations of Janet, Freud and Jung on hysterical patients who displayed dissociative phenomena were similar to those displayed by the patient. Consideration is given to theoretical understanding of the condition, taking into account the views of the earlier theorists and object-relations theory. The possibility of trauma, in particular, childhood sexual abuse, as a causative factor in dissociative disorders is discussed.
International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 80, 645, 1999