Unlocking the Emotional Brain: Eliminating Symptoms at Their Roots Using Memory Reconsolidation

by Bruce Ecker

A third form of disturbed attachment is termed insecure-disorganized because of these infants’ lack of any adaptive strategy or solution to the attachment dilemma within which they live: a mother or caregiver who behaves in unpredictable, extreme and punitive ways, arousing severe distress in the infant but not providing comfort or help. The insoluble problem facing these infants is that the parent is needed for security while at the same time is perceived as a dangerous source of arbitrary aggression (Main & Hesse, 1990), a condition of “fear without solution” (Hesse & Main, 2000). These infants appear disoriented, frozen, or fearful—coherent but functionless expressions of helplessness and desperation in the face of harm and endangerment with no known self-protective response. The Emotional Coherence Framework emphasizes that although the infant’s response is disorganized and helpless, coherent learning is occurring in the formation of an implicit emotional schema or model of dyadic relationships in which the Other is expected to do extremely hurtful, terrifying things and oneself is completely defenseless. It is through the lens of that expectation that the individual then perceives and responds to significant others in subsequent relationships. This attachment pattern, which is sometimes termed unresolved in adults, has been linked to subsequent aggression, dissociation and over-controlling behavior (Solomon & George, 1999) and to lapses in reasoning and collaborative ...