The two most popular frameworks for insecure attachment and trauma are under scientific scrutiny, and something better is already being built to replace them, by several people from several directions. This is my honest attempt to add one strand to that effort, and to argue for keeping the conversation a shared and generous one.
The past few months have brought real movement in how we think about insecure attachment and trauma.
Two of the most popular frameworks, Stephen Porges’s Polyvagal Theory and Bessel van der Kolk’s “The body keeps the score”, have come under serious and, in my reading, largely justified scientific scrutiny.
I have written about both already, in my previous posts on Polyvagal Theory and on whether the body really keeps the score, so I will not rehearse those arguments here.
Instead I want to do two things.
First, to notice that an alternative is already being built, by several people from several directions, and to add one more strand to it from the corner of science I work in, the social neuroscience of human attachment (SoNeAt).
And second, and more importantly, to argue that this is a conversation worth keeping open and collaborative. It matters a great deal, it is easy for it to turn sour, and it will only produce something better than what it replaces if a lot of different people stay at the table together.
Click on the link below to read the entire post on Substack.
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