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FROM PROXIMITY SEEKING TO RELATIONSHIP SEEKING: WORKING TOWARDS SEPARATION FROM THE “SCAREGIVERS”

Traditionally psychoanalysis showed interest in the child’s ambivalent relationship towards the object. Psychoanalysis also did not put great emphasis on the role of fear in a child’s life, in particular fear that has been inflicted by the caregivers (Slade, 2013). It was Mary Main who placed fear in the face of attachment needs and named it as disorganized attachment style. The research findings have given us a new lens into the way we see human behavior as displayed in many of our traumatized clients. The child’s need for both protection and autonomy are universal and has been at the heart of object relations and attachment theories. It is there where matters of core-relatedness and a developed sense of self are most involved. This paper discusses a client who suffered extensive sexual abuse. Her attachment to her mother, who I called her “scaregiver,” was preoccupied, enmeshed and coercive as well as being disorganized. The lack of boundaries and the controlling relationship the client had with her mother was re-enacted in the therapeutic dyad. This paper explores these dynamics and how attachment-based psychotherapy enabled a move towards safety for the client followed by better functioning, and more so enabled her to move towards intersubjectivity, a deeper understanding of her lack of boundaries, separateness and need for autonomy.