Guy Bosmans

Attachment development in middle childhood and adolescence: Clinical applications of recent insights

Although the association between attachment and the development of psychopathology is beyond doubt, research suggests that the association is smaller than initially assumed. This finding calls for a better understanding of attachment, its development, and its influence on the development of psychopathology across the life-span. Accumulating attachment research does confirm that attachment is not a stable construct that develops early in life and then has a lasting influence on development later in life. Instead, research points at attachment as a more flexible and malleable characteristic that is affected by the quality of the parent-child relationship in the here and now. If parents and children get entwined in increasing miscommunication, trust in the support of the parent gets ruptured, which in turns increases their risk to develop psychopathology upon exposure to distress. Illustrating the clinical relevance of these ideas, therapies like Attachment-based Family Therapy show that trust-related ruptures can be restored, which significantly reduces symptoms of psychopathology related to, for example, depression and suicidal ideation. This presentation aims to illustrate these novel insights on the role of attachment development in the development of psychopathology and to illustrate how Attachment-based Family Therapy restores trust as a treatment strategy.

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Dr. Guy Bosmans is associate professor in Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences at University of Leuven. His research fields include Clinical Psychology, Developmental Psychology, and Developmental Psychopathology. His main research interest is attachment, with a specific focus on attachment-related process research in middle childhood. He has been awarded numerous research grants for projects on attachment, perinatal stress and family training, funded by Flanders (FWO-Vlaanderen), KU Leuven and Flemish Government. Dr. Guy Bosmans also belongs to PPW Faculty Council and different associations such as Flemish Association of Clinical Psychologists, Belgian Federation of Psychologists, International Society for Research in Child and Adolescent Psychopathology, Society of Research in Child and Adolescent Development, among others. Dr. Bosmans is member of the Editorial Board of Journal of Social and Personal Relationships and reviewer for Cognition and Emotion and other international local journals.

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