The Effect of Childhood Emotional Maltreatment on the Emerging Attachment System and Later Intimate Relationships

Abstract

Researchers have historically overlooked the influence of childhood emotional abuse on the emerging attachment system and the formation of later intimate relationships in adolescence and adulthood. The purpose of this special issue of the Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment and Trauma is to shed some light on the role of emotional forms of child maltreatment on the development of attachment and provide some insight into how clinicians might overcome attachment difficulties that result from childhood histories of emotional abuse. This introduction provides a brief overview of each article in this special issue.

KEYWORDS:

• attachment
• child abuse
• emotional maltreatment
• intimate relationships

This issue of the Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment and Trauma is the first of two special issues concerned with the influence of childhood emotional maltreatment on the formation and maintenance of intimate relationships in adolescence and adulthood. This special issue focuses on theory and research pertinent to the effect of early emotional maltreatment on the emerging attachment system and later intimate relationships. The influence of childhood maltreatment on the formation of early attachment relationships has been a topic of research for nearly three decades, but very little work has actually been done to tease out the effect of emotional forms of maltreatment on the attachment system (Baer & Martinez, 2006; Carlson, Cicchetti, Barnett, & Braunwald, 1989; Crittenden & Ainsworth, 1989; Egeland & Sroufe, 1981; Morton & Browne, 1998). The content of this issue is a step toward rectifying that oversight. There are four articles in this special issue. The first article provides a theoretical and empirical overview of the topic. The second article explores the influence of emotional maltreatment on attachment in youth who have been placed in foster care. The third article is an empirical report on some of the connections proposed in the first article. The final article presents evidence from the clinical world on the efficacy of particular therapeutic methods in addressing attachment difficulties in survivors of childhood emotional maltreatment.

In the first article, Riggs presents a comprehensive theoretical and empirical overview of the influence of childhood emotional abuse on the developing attachment system. She provides a framework for demonstrating how attachment difficulties experienced by emotionally abused children translate into later problems with intimate relationships for these individuals. Riggs introduces a model based on theory and research that focuses on how childhood emotional abuse influences the development of the attachment system, which subsequently influences socioemotional development and ultimately provides the foundation for the formation of later interpersonal relationships. Through this model she explains that childhood emotional abuse is related to the development of insecure attachment during childhood. Further, Riggs argues that individuals with insecure attachments demonstrate poor emotion regulation, ineffective coping strategies, low self-esteem, deficits in self-understanding, impaired social skills, and poor mental health. Riggs argues that it is through these psychological and social mechanisms that insecure attachment has a deleterious effect on the formation of later intimate and romantic relationships of childhood emotional abuse survivors.

In the second article, Taussig and Culhane explore the influence of emotional abuse on psychological and interpersonal functioning in a study of preadolescent youth in foster placement. The young people in the Taussig and Culhane study were exposed to a myriad of emotionally abusive behaviors, including overall emotional maltreatment, verbal aggression, parentification, abandonment, and violence exposure. Among the outcome variables measured in this study were attachment to caregivers, parents, and peers. For the entire sample studied, the authors discovered that the emotional trauma associated with abandonment was associated with poorer attachment relationships with peers. Interestingly, they found the attachment relationships of males were most affected by a history of emotional maltreatment. Specifically, they found that males who experienced verbal aggression experienced difficulty in attachment relationships with parents and males who experienced overall emotional maltreatment had difficulties in attachments to peers. Although exploratory in nature, this study provides new avenues for further examination as researchers look at the contribution of different forms of emotional maltreatment to the formation of attachment.

Using an attachment theory perspective, Riggs and Kaminski investigated childhood emotional abuse, adult attachment security, and depression as predictors of relational functioning and psychological aggression in the romantic relationships of young adults. Among other things, their study sought to explore the link between childhood emotional abuse and adult attachment quality and the link between childhood emotional abuse and later intimate relationship functioning. The authors conclude that the results of the study uphold the theoretical model introduced in the first Riggs article, linking a history of childhood emotional abuse to insecure attachment in late adolescence and adulthood and determining that insecure attachment style makes a significant contribution to functioning in romantic relationships in later life.

Finally, the Carbone article presents five clinical case studies of individuals with insecure attachment histories attributable to childhood emotional abuse and social rejection from parents and peers. In detailing the experiences of each of the individual cases presented, Carbone discusses how three treatment methods—cognitive behavioral therapy, rational emotive therapy, and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing—were used in each case to assist the individual in overcoming the negative social cognitions and internal working models of relationships associated with a history of childhood emotional abuse and social rejection. This article provides a glimpse into the clinical techniques used to help emotional abuse survivors reprocess and reframe these painful experiences and begin to lead socially productive and satisfying adult lives.

Childhood maltreatment has long been associated with the formation of insecure, disorganized attachment relationships in childhood and adulthood. The content of this issue supports and reinforces this finding while exploring ways that childhood emotional maltreatment has a unique, possibly more devastating effect on the emerging attachment system than other forms of maltreatment. Further, material in this issue provides hope for assisting adult survivors with overcoming the devastating interpersonal effects of childhood emotional trauma by exploring successful clinical interventions for moving survivors forward in their effort to experience healthy, secure adult relationships.