Dysregulated Motherhood: Exploring the Risk Features in a Mother’s Caregiving Representations

2019

In the case of a mother with dysregulating attachment experiences and current enrolment in a parent-infant psychotherapy process, we explored which insecure, hostile/helpless, and prementalizing risk features were similar in her attachment and caregiving representations; which risk features were specific to her caregiving representations; and how these theory-defined features overlapped in detecting caregiving risks. Risk features in the attachment representations were assessed from the adult attachment interview and risk features in the caregiving representations from written psychotherapy notes. We found similar insecure (preoccupied and disorganized), prementalizing and hostile/helpless …