Hope and Motivation: Working With Adult and Child Victims of Childhood Complex Trauma

This chapter discusses how unresolved complex trauma—or recurrent trauma—in childhood affects the critical caregiver-child-clinician relationship in terms of building and reinforcing the three bases of intrinsic motivation, or behavior motivated by the inherent value of action-taking. It focuses on the ways in which correlated treatment of caregiver and child, as the keystone of the Intergenerational Trauma Treatment Model (ITTM), can effectively address the diminished hope and motivation of both, allowing for improved and lasting outcomes.