ABSTRACT
In the last two decades, a considerable body of literature has accumulated on attachment and family systems theories. This literature includes conceptual, empirical, and applied formulations on how human beings, individually and in their families, develop the social bonds that sustain human life. Throughout history, human beings have had to adapt to tragic life experiences that have taxed coping mechanisms even for highly adaptable human beings (Van der Kolk & McFarlane, 1996). Paralleling the time frame when attachment and family systems theorists were coalescing their understandings, traumatology was developing as a field of study following the inclusion of traumatic stress disorders as a diagnostic category in 1980. I attempt in this chapter to bring the three fields of study together, as a way of catalyzing the next 20 years of research and practice. This chapter has three purposes. The first is to propose an integrated model for understanding how individuals and their families build attachment bonds. The second is to develop the model by using case study material to conceptualize three family systems in which attachments have been affected by a particular type of traumatic experience, that of childhood sexual abuse (CSA). The third purpose is to provide five strategies for implementing the model with individuals with a history of CSA, with the goal of building resilient attachments.
