Meeting-The-Challenge-Making-a-Difference-Practitioner-Guide

How does failure
to meet core
needs contribute
to personality
disorder?
It may seem common sense to
us in our psychologicallyoriented
culture that a failure
to meet the emotional needs
of the child will lead to
problems in adulthood. But
human societies have not
always seen it this way,
historically or cross-culturally.
For example, some groups of
people think that strictness
and physical punishment will
produce well-behaved and
obedient children; others think
that this will produce angry
and traumatised children.
If we are attempting to
provide treatment and
support to those with adult
personality disorder, we need
to understand more precisely
what people have experienced
that has shaped their
personalities, and so leads
to outwardly difficult-tounderstand
behaviour.
Therapists of different
persuasions have attempted
to provide explanations mainly
of the difficulties associated
with the diagnosis of
borderline personality disorder.
All explanations of the
development of personality
disorder take as their starting
point the importance of the
relationship between an infant
and a primary caregiver, usually
a parent, which is often called
the ‘attachment relationship’.
Attachment theory
Attachment theory proposes
that human babies come into
the world all ready to form a
strong attachment to a
primary care giver during the
first year of life. It is thought
that becoming emotionally
attached to the caregiver
helps humans to survive and
gives them an advantage. The
closer the infant remains to the
caregiver, the less likely he or
she is to be vulnerable to threat
or predation and the more
likely the infant is to survive.
So infant behaviours such as
crying or smiling are built-in to
the way our brains work, and
serve to keep the carer close
at hand and to make the
infant feel secure. This enables
the child to learn through
exploring the environment,
confident that with the
caregiver nearby, no harm will
occur. When there is a threat
of harm, the attachment
system is activated and the
infant communicates to the
caregiver through crying or
seeking closeness.
A responsive carer will protect
the child by coming close
and seeing what is wrong.
An unavailable or insensitive
care giver can leave the child
feeling frightened, or
confused. For example, the
caregiver who responds to
the child’s anxious calls by
becoming irritable with the
child, may leave the child
feeling that calling for a
caregiver at times of stress
only makes things worse, so
that child may grow up
avoiding close contact with
others, particularly when they
feel at their most vulnerable.
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