ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the importance of early attachment between infants and their caregivers at the dawn of life, and its implications for all other relationships, including the therapeutic relationship. It outlines the importance of attention given to minimal cues, failures of attunement, small t and big T trauma, to use Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) terminology, and their potential use in therapy. The chapter describes four common attachment styles: secure, avoidant/dismissive, ambivalent/preoccupied, and disorganized. Seligman and Harrison posit that the transactional perspective proposes that dynamic nonlinear process is at the core of development. It offers the idea that relationships are at the base of both developmental and clinical theory. The relational baby is "oriented to the outside world from the beginning", and is "particularly prepared for human interaction". From this perspective, the baby's interest in "social relations are a primary motive". Nonverbal communication is an important organizer of experience that lingers from the dawn of life onward.
