Journal de psychologie et psychothérapie
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Neurobiological Research Enabling Psychotherapists to Use New Methods for Treating Patients with Attachment-Related Disorders

Martin Fields

Recent neurobiological research has contributed significantly to our understanding of the process of attachment. This article concerns a treatment method utilizing this understanding in clinical practice. Using simultaneously recorded brain wave patterns in mother–child dyads, researchers have determined that brain-to-brain synchrony-or intuitive synchrony is the basis of attachment. This article provides a model for using this type of synchronicity in psychotherapy practice to restore individuals’ capacity for attachment. The process entails using a mode of relating that is identical to the brain wave pattern in intuitive synchronicity. To accomplish this, therapists must modify the psychotherapy situation in a systematic way guided by their understanding of the brain function in the region that is deficient. As demonstrated in this paper, the brain wave deficit is in the nucleus accumbens brain region. By constructing the treatment setting to mimic the function of the intuitive process, and by bringing in other frames of reference into the psychotherapy-timed exactly as is needed by the patient-an intuitive resonance is developed, reducing the attachment capacity deficit. In the case study presented, the deficit resulted from and in drug abuse; with the psychotherapeutic resolution, the patient simultaneously resolved the drug problem.