Using Family Attachment Narrative Therapy to Heal the Wounds of Twinship: A Case Study of an 11-Year-Old Boy
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Using Family Attachment Narrative Therapy to Heal the Wounds of Twinship: A Case Study of an 11-Year-Old Boy Itzhak Lander
Published online: 2 July 2008 Ó Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2008
Abstract This paper describes the utilization of Family Attachment Narrative Therapy with an 11-year-old boy experiencing significant behavioral and developmental problems emerging from his experience of identical twinship and associated parental failure. This innovative treatment model is demonstrated to be a useful tool for changing the child’s faulty self narrative resulting in improved functioning. The critical element of the reworked schema is the perception of self as complete, adequate, worthy and cherished. Family Attachment Narrative Therapy is also shown to facilitate increased parental attunement to the child’s inner state and parent-child bonding. This study highlights the unique developmental challenges facing young twins and the related complexity of the parental role. Keywords
Family attachment narrative therapy Twins Internal working model
Family Attachment Narrative Therapy challenged the prevailing view that maltreated children would respond positively once no longer exposed to abuse and neglect. It acknowledged the need for a corresponding change in the child’s inner world, in particular how the child views himself, in order to continue forward on the developmental path. This contention was supported by increased recognition of the influence on children’s functioning of those cognitive schema that evolve out of early experiences with caregivers and which come to function for the child as sets of expectations of how he will behave and be responded to by others (Wachtel 2001). The attainment of positive internal working models enables children to I. Lander Department of Social Work, Sapir Academic College, Sderot, Israel I. Lander (&) Nachman Avigad 9/2, Beer Sheva, Israel e-mail: [email protected]
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initiate and interpret life experiences in a manner that will promote solution construction and personal growth (Cunningham and Page 2001). Family Attachment Narrative Therapy emphasized how the child’s ability to construct a coherent self narrative was dependent upon the nature of the emotional tie with his caregivers. A satisfactory bond enables that reflective dialog which facilitates a resilient perspective in the child. In the absence of adequate parental attunement and communication, life narratives developed tend to be incoherent and chaotic. In acknowledging the primacy of attachment in the genesis of children’s cognitive schema Family Attachment Narrative Therapy built upon Bowlby’s initial conceptualization of attachment and internal working models subsequently elaborated upon by Ainsworth and her colleagues in their designation of attachment patterns (Ainsworth et al. 1978; Bowlby 1969/1982, 1973, 1980; George and Solomon 1999; May 2005). The approach’s emphasis on parent–child attunement is reflective of origins in self psychology (Kohut 1971, 1988; Wolfe 1988). Family
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