The "Negative" Holding Environment in Child Treatment—Cycles of Abuse and Depression

IN A PREVIOUS PAPER (Buchholz & Wolf, 1991) we introduced an addition to Winnicott's concept of the holding environment called the "negative holding environment." We used the term "negative" to suggest lapses in the holding environment in its traditional connotation as a facilitating process. We described a phenomenon in which issues of separation, loss and self-definition were critical to understanding both misattunements in the early environment and later treatment impasses. We defined the concept thus:

A negative holding environment protects the child from undue anxiety and provides stimulation, but does so by overly limiting the child's movements. Thus, it holds without sufficiently facilitating development. Negative holding occurs when the mother envisioned as holding the child safe is also experienced and incorporated as the critical, elusive, and hard to engage mother who may disappear if the child is not constantly vigilant and available (p. 9).

Although we described the negative holding environment as it appears in more subtle and covertly traumatizing experiences, we suggested that the concept might also be useful in understanding why abused children often cling so tenaciously to the abusive parent. Such depressed and abused children may feel that their only chance for connection is within a negatively-tinged affective experience which binds them to the parent and restricts growth.

In treatment, the holding environment has traditionally been viewed as a positive and healthy condition which facilitates growth. Implicit in this is the analyst's creating a safe space within