From Broken Attachments to Earned Security The Role of Empathy in Therapeutic Change The Bowlby Centre Monograph Series

The 2011 John Bowlby Memorial Conference, 'From Broken Attachments to Earned Security - The Role of Empathy in Therapeutic Change', focused on what needs to take place to facilitate empathy and attunement and ultimately the achievement of earned security. The confernce posed the challenge of how to re-establish a secure sense of self, mutuality, and the capacity for inter/intra-subjectivity when difficulties in empathy and attunement exist as a result of relational trauma. This can be between parent and child, within adult relationships, between client and therapist, or in organisational contexts. The outstanding collection of papers in this volume make a significant contribution to the field of attachment and our understanding of how child rearing affects each aspect of our lives, from the interpersonal to the organisational and societal. Each paper moves beyond the academic and theoretical to provide answers to the many difficult questions raised at the conference.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSABOUT THE EDITOR AND CONTRIBUTORSINTRODUCTIONCHAPTER ONE Attachment theory and the John Bowlby Memorial Lecture 2011: a short historyKate WhiteCHAPTER TWO The effort of empathySue GerhardtCHAPTER THREELove bombing: a simple self-help intervention for parents to reset their child's emotional thermostatOliver JamesCHAPTER FOUR To shed what still attempts to cling as if attached by thornsJane Haynes and Harry WhiteheadCHAPTER FIVE Creating, destroying, and restoring Sanctuary within caregiving organisations: the eighteenth John Bowlby Memorial LectureSandra BloomCHAPTER SIX"What happens after this quiet bit? I may have to leave now." The risks of empathyEleanor RichardsCHAPTER SEVEN Empathy and earned security: reciprocal influences, ruptures, and shifts in the psychotherapeutic processAnastasia PatrikiouAPPENDIX I Reading listAPPENDIX II The Bowlby CentreINDEX

Professional Practice & Development

Andrew Odgers