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Reimagining Attachment Traumas: Perspectives on Using Image-Making in Psychoeducation for People with Borderline Personality Disorder

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Integrating arts-based practice within psychological interventions has been widely used to increase accessibility and cultural sensitivity and to enable emotional communication and expression. However, using arts within psychoeducation for people with a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder (BPD) where attachment trauma has led to interpersonal difficulties has been less well-documented. This chapter intends to illustrate the experience of patients and facilitators in a mentalization-based psycho-educational programme being delivered in adult mental health services. We will look at the relevance of how images are used to embody relational struggles and how they are used to work through themes of anticipated attachment trauma. We then describe narratives of a 12-week arts-based psychoeducational programme from both the patient and professional perspectives. We conclude that arts-based mentalization focused psychoeducation is a valuable resource for preparing patients with a diagnosis of BPD for further treatment where attachment injury is central to the presenting issues.
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Chapter
Reimagining Attachment
Traumas: Perspectives on Using
Image-Making in Psychoeducation
for People with Borderline
Personality Disorder
DominikHavsteen-Franklin, MariaPatsou,
GretaSomaini and Jorge CamarenaAltamirano
Abstract
Integrating arts-based practice within psychological interventions has been widely
used to increase accessibility and cultural sensitivity and to enable emotional commu-
nication and expression. However, using arts within psychoeducation for people with
a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder (BPD) where attachment trauma has led
to interpersonal difficulties has been less well-documented. This chapter intends to
illustrate the experience of patients and facilitators in a mentalization-based psycho-
educational programme being delivered in adult mental health services. We will look at
the relevance of how images are used to embody relational struggles and how they are
used to work through themes of anticipated attachment trauma. We then describe nar-
ratives of a 12-week arts-based psychoeducational programme from both the patient
and professional perspectives. We conclude that arts-based mentalization focused
psychoeducation is a valuable resource for preparing patients with a diagnosis of BPD
for further treatment where attachment injury is central to the presenting issues.
Keywords: attachment trauma, borderline personality disorder, art psychotherapy,
psychoeducation
. Introduction
Integrating arts-based practice within psychological interventions has been
widely used to increase accessibility and cultural sensitivity and to enable emo-
tional communication and expression. However, using arts within psychoeducation
for people with a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder where traumatic
events have led to interpersonal difficulties has been less well-documented. This
chapter intends to illustrate the experience of patients and facilitators engaging in a
mentalization-based psychoeducational programme being delivered in adult mental
health services. We will look at the relevance of how images are used to embody
relational struggles and how they are used to work through themes of anticipated
interpersonal trauma. We then describe narratives of a 12-week arts-based psycho-
educational programme from both the patient and professional perspectives.
Mental Disorders
We present an overview of the rationale of introducing arts-based psychoedu-
cation into a mental health programme for people with a diagnosis of borderline
personality disorder (BPD) followed by a description of the structure and a brief
vignette of the programme. Finally, we will explore patient perceptions of the
programme. All patients are anonymised and have given consent for this material
to be published, including any images produced during the sessions. The authors
are experienced clinician-researchers and have substantial experience of working
within mental health services and related contexts.
. Background
We now know that understanding the relationship between attachment, trauma
and affect regulation is central to treating patients with a diagnosis of BPD. Evidence
suggests that symptoms of BPD have a multifactorial psychobiological aetiology
and include attachment trauma reactions to a range of harmful events, including
childhood physical and sexual abuse [1–5], early neglect [6, 7] and invalidation [8].
Attachment traumas in this context refer to an intergenerational disorganised condi-
tion of relationship that results in disassociation, high affect arousal ‘stemming from
fright without solution’ [9]. In conditions of affect dysregulation due to experiencing
attachment traumas, it is hard for the person to make sense of causal factors, includ-
ing traumatic events and triggers that may produce reactive high arousal states.
Stawarczyk et al. [10] proposed that thought suppression is a key survival mechanism
developed to mitigate the effects of predictive processing, particularly in relation to
interpersonal events. Given the propensity to evade direct linking between affect
arousal and events preceding the arousal, acting out emotional experience within
an interpersonal context where attachment traumas are perceived to occur is a core
part of the work in the restoration of a capacity to mentalize. Here we are referring to
mentalizing as having the capacity to imagine intentional states of mind that influ-
ence behaviours, for example, desires, beliefs, feelings and thoughts. This is highly
relevant to working with patients with a diagnosis of BPD where there is marked
reduction in mentalizing [11] due to high affect arousal [12] and attachment trauma
triggers within interpersonal contexts [13]. A mentalization-based verbal group
model has been developed with this theoretical premise in mind [14]. Mentalizing
begins in early infancy through the mirroring actions of parental care that offers a
capacity to sensitise to emotional experiences and develop symbolic representations
of self-and other as well as narrativisation and restoration of affective homeostasis
[12]. The actions of mentalizing another, that is the attuned awareness of internal
states influencing behaviours, enable a secure attachment [15]. Where unsuccessful
parental mentalizing happens, for example, misattunements, insensitivity, neglect
or abuse, the psychobiological vulnerability of the infant is likewise managed with
non-mentalizing behaviours. As the pre-requisite for secure attachment is a capac-
ity to mentalize this can cause transgenerational patterns of insecure attachment
and attachment traumas, potentially advancing to conditions of severe avoidance
of abandonment, identity disturbance, impulsivity and self-harm. These are symp-
tomatic of severe conditions of non- mentalizing and together are considered to
be primary symptoms of borderline personality disorder [16]. Most treatments for
borderline personality disorder focus on the restoration of mentalizing and enabling
a second-order representational system to become established [11, 17, 18]. Second to
this, the development of ‘positive thinking’ to replace anticipated catastrophe is also
considered to be helpful, particularly for impulsive behaviours [19]. Most treatments
are medium to long-term and psychoeducation, as a brief intervention is still in the
early stages of development for this clinical group. Given that mentalizing involves
imagining mental states and developing representations of self and others, the use of
Reimagining Attachment Traumas: Perspectives on Using Image-Making in Psychoeducation…
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.93406
image-making as a reflexive tool is proposed as being a helpful addition to the models
of BPD treatment. That said, in order to mobilise the process, framing the problem,
understanding the aetiology and reflecting on relational patterns of behaviour are a
fundamental first step towards engaging with treatment. Whilst the authors are not
intending to describe the effectiveness of the process of using art in psychoeducation
for this population, the development of a trauma focused model or the long term ben-
efits, the authors are intending to understand what happens when art is used as a focal
point within a psychoeducation programme and how it effects peoples experiences,
self-understanding and the participant’s preparedness for psychological treatment.
Psychoeducation is widely used in mental health contexts to help patients to
understand living with a diagnosis of borderline BPD [20, 21], how and when
presenting issues arise and to consider attachment trauma in the context of
interpersonal relationships [22], identity and affect arousal [21]. Further to this,
psychoeducation has been used to help impulsivity and suicidality often occurring
in relation to attachment traumas [23]. In psychoeducation, participants usually
engage between one and 2 hours on a weekly basis for 6–20 weeks. There is some
evidence to suggest psychoeducation improves relationships, reducing attachment
traumas [22] however the evidence of its effectiveness is limited to feasibility and
pilot studies [2024]. However, the true extent of the use of psychoeducation is not
accounted for given that psychoeducation is often part of a psychotherapeutic inter-
vention for borderline personality disorder [25]. Within the context of art psycho-
therapy this was also clear in a survey conducted by the British Association of Art
Therapists [26]; it was evident that 50% of the art therapists that responded used
psychoeducation as either a stand-alone intervention or as being integrated within
their treatment. Springham and Whittaker [26] reflect on the survey outcomes and
conclude that psychoeducation could be a ‘crucial unique feature of the practice of
art therapy with BPD’. This is also clear in the emerging literature in this field where
art psychotherapy methods of practice within a psychoeducational framework are
often used alongside conventional methods of treatment [27–31]. For example,
Sweig [30] uses a model of arts in psychoeducation and ‘the role of art therapy in
clarifying issues and mobilizing creative energies in service of personal growth.
Likewise Thorne [32] has published a specific model of using art within a psycho-
educational framework for patients diagnosed with BPD similar to the one that
we employed, that offers a structured and theme-based approach to engaging in
understanding and reflecting upon self- and other-experience. Thorne [23] asserts
that the image-making process adds to a psychoeducation model for BPD through
enabling emotions and experiences to be more richly expressed and contained.
The theoretical assumption guiding the evaluation was that the use of arts in
psychoeducation encourages the patient to view the perceived attachment trauma
trigger from a ‘distance’. An intolerable, affectively charged trauma can be made
more tolerable through seeing it as a human pattern of relating that all people may
experience, and hence offering some normalisation according to human functioning
[33, 34]. The nature of requesting the participant to see their experience through
the lens of human patterns of relating and attachment trauma reactions helps
the patient to consider potential aetiological factors. This requires the patient to
relate to the subject but also to see the problem as an observer of themselves [35].
Psychoeducation uses a teaching-based model that encourages distance from the
trauma and desensitisation to the predicated interpersonal response. We hypoth-
esised that in the proposed model of psychoeducation there is a core mechanism that
increases the capacity to reflect on the expected attachment trauma. The second key
feature of taking a more distanced view of the attachment trauma, relates to the gen-
eralisability of the presenting difficulty. Arts psychotherapies engage the person in
thinking about what they are expressing, how it is expressed and how the expression
Mental Disorders
might be received. We propose that introducing arts to a psychoeducation model
supports the process of imaginative reflexivity in psychoeducation as a method that
enhances the persons capacity to regulate affect and improve relating to the other
[3639]. These features of developing imaginative flexibility are also described as a
core mechanism in the capacity to mentalize attachment traumas [34] and therefore
we deemed this as a helpful addition to the verbal methods of intervention.
Mentalization-based art psychotherapy is becoming an established method of
treatment due to the accessibility, cultural sensitivity and scope for emotional com-
munication and reflection [40, 41]. Mentalization based treatment draws on rela-
tional theory from attachment theory [42] and restoring mentalizing in the context
of attachment trauma as a key part of the work [43]. The concept of mentalization
also has its roots in early dynamic theory and cognitive science [44] and refers to a
persons capacity to reflect on self and others’ intentional states of mind [45].
. Arts-based psychoeducation within a mentalization based
programme in psychiatry
. Overview of the psychoeducation programme
Arts-based mentalization focused psychoeducation is a 12-week programme
developed within a secondary care mental health context as both a standalone
intervention and as a preparation for an 18-month arts-based mentalization treat-
ment programme. Patients were offered up to four sessions to assess for present-
ing issues relating to attachment trauma such as self-harm, identity disturbance
and affect dysregulation as well as the patients motivation for receiving therapy.
To understand other stressors, a holistic view to the persons life including fam-
ily, finance, social factors and a risk assessment were assessed in relation to their
potential treatment and was shared with patients as an assessment formulation
report co-written with the patient. The facilitators regularly reviewed the for-
mulation with the members throughout the programme. Following this process,
the facilitators offered a place on the arts-based psychoeducation programme.
The sessions included arts and ran for 1 hour and 30 minutes over 12 weeks. The
themes for each week were modelled on the programme designed by Karterud
and Bateman [46] that described preparatory sessions for mentalization-based
treatment (MBT) [47]:
Week 1: Mentalization and mentalizing stance
Week 2: What does it mean to have problems with mentalizing?
Week 3: Why do we have emotions and what are the core emotions?
Week 4: How do we register and regulate emotions?
Week 5: The significance of attachment relationships
Week 6: Attachment and mentalization
Week 7: What is borderline personality disorder?
Week 8: Mentalization-based arts therapies - Part 1
Week 9: Mentalization-based arts therapies - Part 2
Week 10: Anxiety, attachment and mentalizing
Week 11: Depression, attachment and mentalizing
Week 12: Summary and conclusion, feedback
The facilitators informed participants that the focus of the group would be on
how we see ourselves and the way we relate to others and how these perceptions
link to early attachment patterns and traumas to those attachments. Group rules,
Reimagining Attachment Traumas: Perspectives on Using Image-Making in Psychoeducation…
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.93406
boundaries, confidentiality, respect for others and punctuality were discussed and
agreed. Using alcohol, drugs and violence was prohibited in addition to contact
between the members of the group, outside of the group. The format of the group
included attendance and a refresher of the previous session, presentation and devel-
opment of the theme of the current session and discussion, image making, feedback
and preparation for the next session.
Each session had the purpose of clarifying the concept of mentalization and the
point where it can fail, particularly in relation to anticipating attachment traumas
and regulating the associated intense affect. The intention of the group was to work
with recent attachment traumas, which group members had identified as being
emotionally difficult. At the end of the psychoeducation group, there was a collab-
orative decision made whether further treatment was required.
. Psychoeducation, group work and the clinical process: the art
psychotherapists’ perspective
The arts were introduced by the fourth author of this chapter and a co-facilitator
(both art psychotherapists) to be used in an improvised and explorative way.
Materials such as chalks, pens and paints were available to help the patient explore
their experience of being in the group in relation to the weekly themes. The nar-
rative uses pseudonyms for the patient names. All members of the group had a
primary diagnosis of BPD which had been confirmed through the assessment
process. George was a 61year old, white British man, Henry was a 65year old white
British man, and Dalmar was a 27year old British Somalian lady.
The artworks were treated as an important part of their personal and group
experience and were kept until the end of the 12th session. Over the weeks, the
patients’ engagement with the arts appeared to develop in emotional complexity,
competency and confidence which was reflected in the way they used the arts
media. With the presence of anticipated attachment traumas, the arts were also
offered as a way of regulating feelings through making doodles or experimental
marks when it felt too difficult to reflect on or explore themes. As sessions passed an
increasing engagement with the arts was encouraged and there was clear intent to
produce figurative drawings with a narrative that related to attachment trauma and
how mentalizing could be restored in relation to the themes discussed.
A way of developing initial cohesion in the group was clear in Week 3, in
response to the theme of ‘Why do we have emotions and what are the core emo-
tions?’, George described how his image making on the first week was driven by the
curiosity of using the pencil colours that were available, as it gave him an opportu-
nity to ‘get a feel for being in a group’. In Week 3, his initial anxieties were reformu-
lated to form rhythmically drawn patterns in distinct shades on the right top corner
of the paper (Figure ). The early stage of the work in the group and how the forms
co-existed became a strong motif for his experience, where the spaces between
people, the nuances of emotions and feelings remained compact and connected in
a controlled space. We felt that the patient was using the arts materials to regulate
his emotional response to feeling cornered, hemmed into a group where he was
uncertain about how people could interact and function without disagreement and
the resulting personal trauma and potential disassociation. His marks represented
a tapestry like presence where form and colour could coexist in a similar way as his
emergent feelings in the groups context.
Similarly, in the same session, Dalmar described her artwork (Figure ) she said
that her relationships were like these stone structures that had ‘collapsed’, ‘heavy and
helpless’, ‘immovable’ and ‘stuck’. These terms are typical of the disorganised attach-
ment state where there is no solution or relational flexibility and ultimately there is a
Mental Disorders
sense of unresponsive or misattuned neglect. These early images showed a capacity to
use image making as a tool for embodying complex emotional narratives that antici-
pated attachment traumas in ways that could be communicated within a group context.
Figure 1.
‘Myself in the group’.
Figure 2.
‘Relationships as collapsing stones’.
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.93406
By Week 3 some group members mentioned how the use of the arts seemed
to enable a capacity to be more aware and talk about their mental and emotional
processes within an interpersonal context. In Figures  and , the artwork allowed
the opportunity to expressively articulate thoughts and emotions that had remained
unspoken. In Week 4, ‘How do we register and regulate emotions?’ One group
member (Henry) described his image as the traffic light in the middle of his draw-
ing (Figure ). He used the image to help the group reflect on his anxieties of being
out of control, again in a disorganised state where he felt helpless and unwanted. He
described the predominant affect as fear, represented by the sunset as a loss of light
and something blinding. He described his wish to be like the lamp on the left of
the page which he commented on as having a more ‘pleasant and balanced quality’.
Again, key themes about the rupture to attachments as losing the sun and associated
high ‘fight or flight’ arousal of feeling afraid were at the core of the work.
Using themes to structure sessions helped to enable experiences to be shared.
For example, another group member (George) (Figure ) described being ‘like
the hectic river which was crossing and dividing the urban and green space’. In
these early sessions, we focused the content on identifying emotional states and
understanding how interpersonal contexts stimulate attachment anxieties about
anticipated attachment traumas. In Figure , George described the urban environ-
ment as populated with fragile homes with empty windows, and a mass of green
fluidity is sharply divided by an insertion of blue. The powerful disruption also
described an intense experience of disconnection that he felt was difficult to bridge
due to the uncertainties contained in the green grass of the hill and the disappear-
ing, empty-looking town again drawing on the felt experience of the unavailable
and unresponsive others.
The cause of these intolerable conditions of loss of control and disorganised
attachment was shared in the group. Dalmar stated that if her family understood
her, they would not behave the way they do. Firmly stating, ‘It’s them that’s the
problem.’ (Figure ).
Figure 3.
‘Loss of control’.
Mental Disorders
The same member, later in the work during the session titled, ‘Anxiety
Attachment and Mentalizing’, responded by describing how she manages those
states of helplessness and abandonment rather than describing what causes them.
She managed painful feelings by harming herself or attempting to overdose on
her medication, depicting a blue and white pill in a smudged, surrounded by
Figure 4.
‘I live in the space In-between’.
Figure 5.
‘It’s them that’s the problem’.
Reimagining Attachment Traumas: Perspectives on Using Image-Making in Psychoeducation…
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.93406
fingerprint smudges (Figure ). The theme resonated with the group experience.
Several people in the group said that this was the first time that they felt that they
were being heard. The sense of having a shared experience within the group session
contributed positively to the sense of being held in mind by another and developing
a capacity to mentalize the other in the context of anticipated social rupture.
By the end of the 12weeks, participants were asked to conclude the sessions
through sharing thoughts about how they engaged with the use of the arts as a
medium to foster reflective thinking about thoughts, emotions, beliefs, and their
personal stories.
. Experiences of image-making, affect and relationships: the patient
perspective
Following the psychoeducation, all members were invited to give feedback about
their experience for the purposes of evaluating the group and for the results to be
published. Three members came forward and gave consent for their interview to be
published (George, Henry and Dalmar). The interviews were conducted by honor-
ary researchers (authors 2 and 3) who were independent from the programme and
who were supervised as part of an early career research initiative [48, 49] founded
with the NHS by the first author. Each interview lasted about 1hour and was semi-
structures. Key extracts that appeared to be prevalent or represent the larger themes
were extracted and are contextualised within the narrative below.
The first sessions appeared to have a heightened sense of vulnerability
and members were tentatively engaging. For example, one member (George.)
described drawing an image of a baby without a mother in response to the theme
of what it means to have problems with secure attachment, describing the image
as having a re-traumatising quality. The image making was originally seen as
tentative, bearing no genuine relationship to the psychoeducation, and some-
times felt uncomfortable. Members also expressed cautious engagement through
feeling self-conscious and unskilled when using the art media, which they felt
expressed a sense of vulnerability and the feeling that using the art media was
exposing a sense of vulnerability, feeling like they would fail or not be good
Figure 6.
‘When I feel abandoned I can only think about dying’.
Mental Disorders

enough. For example, one member stuttered and looked embarrassed when she
was asked about the use of the art materials.
‘I did feel slightly embarrassed, but or not embarrassed, but…conscious and
conscious that I couldn’t draw really that well in that short time.
The unexpected effect of the image was often experienced as both offering help-
ful insight and emotional disturbance. George described how a sense of profound
attachment re-traumatisation was immediately evoked,
‘When [the image], features round something that impacted you like, so bad, so
much…When it, when you could see what happened, bulging in front of your eyes…
it brought back terrible memories.
Henry also expressed an experience of re-traumatisation from being in the
presence of others during the group experience whilst attempting to avoid group
conflicts. He described an avoidance of unmanageable disorganised attachment
arousal in the group that could be provoked by group conflicts to try to keep his
stability.
‘It’s just that it might have brought up memories that I didn’t want to think about
I’m sort of outside the conflicts… … [Relationships] can be rocky, chaotic, so again
it’s a bit like me, I’m stable now but I feel it’s a bit fragile
However, in this early stage, there was a sense that the structure could contain
and guide, often helped to reduce anxieties through a sense of being in a group with
a direction which felt supportive; being held by the frame of the task. Henry stated,
And so to have that...back-up... of other people. Though they, you’re not talking...
you’re, more or less, you know, it’s more structured’. Henry said that she had begun
to gain a sense of clarity regarding past relationships ‘[past attachment trauma] is
not bothering me so much…cause the only person it’s destroying it’s me’.
However, through having a practical task, the sense of accomplishment of
improvising was felt to be useful and could express a state of attachment trauma
rather than acting out interpersonally. George said that he used the image as a
retreat when one hecould not get a word in. As the work progressed, members
said the image making became more comfortable and automatic, perhaps less
pre-meditated, but often members said that the relational tension meant that it
was hard to be playful or to improvise. As the work progressed, members began to
monitor themselves, restore a capacity to mentalize, using the psychoeducation to
make sense of their experience. For example, using images helped Dalmar to reflect
on the experience of attachment trauma, exploring what felt like part of an illness
and what was felt like a ‘normal’ response to relationships,
….in relation to like my personality disorder erm …there is a lot of up and down
and stuff… but it’s unhealthy but I was just thinking how a lot of it is just normal…
As the group progressed, what seems to accompany the image making and
inform the process were several key areas directly related to the aims of the group.
Members said that image-making was used to reflect on feeling states relating to
attachment traumas that had otherwise been considered as overwhelming and this
marked the beginning of feeling more trusting of others.

Reimagining Attachment Traumas: Perspectives on Using Image-Making in Psychoeducation…
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.93406
yeah, my confidence has come back… I think I can trust them, but it’s, I…, I don’t
know, I just don’t know.
Members also described an experience of image-making as a way of process-
ing over-thinking and an opportunity to make sense of the salient teaching points
provided by the facilitator.
‘I was just feeling reflective like…erm thinking about myself and thinking about
what other people were saying I was just sort of processing it in my head and this is
how it came out on paper.
During the latter sessions they described a growing sense of stability and con-
fidence in themselves and their own agency, which enabled a capacity to be more
reflective about other people’s states of mind. However, this appeared to be less so
with the experience of what motivated other peoples actions, which often produced
feelings of anxiety or distrust. Two of the participants described having a more struc-
tured interpersonal experience where they were trying to unravel their problems and
consider ways of reflecting on their experience. For example, one participant stated,
‘the psychoeducation group has helped me to step back and think about what is
happening’.
Towards the end, members suggested an experience of hope that was linked
with an educational ‘structure’ that enabled people to be together and learn about
how they might experience one another and what might cause a perceived attach-
ment trauma. There was also an experience of being together and appreciating each
other’s struggles, in effect beginning to mentalize the others’ experience.
‘That other people around you, makes you feel comfortable. Make you feel...
they’re suffering and all. You know, others are in the same predicament as you are.
(George)
The ending marked a hard transition and whilst the psychoeducation was
successful in helping members of the group to reflect on their experience and form
tentative relationships, there was also a sense that they were left with uncertain-
ties given the brief period of the group. Members described the first steps towards
alternative ways of relating, but they seemed to be left with a fragile footing.
… well, I’m more positive, I’m more positive in myself. I could lose that stability any
moment…
This brief narrative echoes some similar anxieties as the therapist’s account
of the session, and overall, the quality and stories of the members felt like a brief
but important encounter that opened up the emotionality and contextual issues in
relation to their presenting issues. Following the psychoeducation, most members
agreed to continue the work of understanding mentalizing in a non-directive
mentalization art psychotherapy group.
. Conclusion
The arts-based psychoeducation offered a structured experiential approach
to understanding attachment traumas and mentalizing relationships. The image
Mental Disorders

making seemed to offer powerful access to feelings and experiences that sometimes,
and especially at the beginning of the psychoeducation, could be uncomfortable
and even ‘re-traumatising’. The art psychotherapists’ perspective of the work
provides a comprehensive narrative, highlighting the small but significant positive
changes. In the follow-up evaluation we see the patients autonomy emerging, also
describing a tentative grasp of the concepts and emergent alternative forms of relat-
ing. We believe that the image-making process facilitated an affective experience of
relationships, often revealing vulnerability in safe ways that could be reflected on.
The images offered a powerful account of this process, and particularly the
anxieties and uncertainties about developing a secure attachment. The images also
revealed anticipated attachment traumas and an invalidating environment, for
example in the stuck, rigid invalidating stones; being surrounded by a family that
‘should be in therapy’; the constant traffic light ‘fight or flight’ dance or being stuck
in a turbulent place between haunting empty houses and the green grass. Whilst we
believe that the use of arts is a valuable tool for communicating, engaging with and
reflecting on feeling states; careful, structured and sensitive facilitation is required
to maintain safe and effective practice especially where the focus is on how thera-
pists facilitate brief educational work focusing on attachment trauma.
This study revealed that the psychoeducation can expose deep relational vulner-
abilities, where the principal focus for members had often been to manage pain in
isolation. Perhaps most importantly, the emergent capacity for group members to
recover from attachment trauma and to restore mentalizing indicated that there
was the conceptual and reflective infrastructure that formed the foundations
for further work and would enable members to engage with explorative forms of
psychotherapy.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the following people for their dedication to the
development of the programme as honorary researchers: Charlotte Barker, Kirstin
Leyton-Boyce, Dr. Jennifer Townell and the participants for their commitment to
the project.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Reimagining Attachment Traumas: Perspectives on Using Image-Making in Psychoeducation…
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.93406
Author details
DominikHavsteen-Franklin1*, MariaPatsou2, GretaSomaini2
and Jorge CamarenaAltamirano2
1 CNWL NHS Foundation Trust, Brunel University, London, UK
2 CNWL NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK
*Address all correspondence to: dominik.havsteen-franklin@nhs.net
© 2020 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms
of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is properly cited.

Mental Disorders
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ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any citations for this publication.
Article
Full-text available
Background: Arts Psychotherapies (art, music, drama and dance/movement) have been integral to mental health care services for several decades, however consensus and transparency about the clinical process is still being established. This study investigates practice with a team of six arts psychotherapists working with severe mental illnesses in London, inpatient and community services. The study examines what in-session practice elements are used, whether there is consensus about what the practice elements are and why the arts therapists use them. Method: The methods employed in the first phase of the project are interview-based with thematic analysis, repertory grid technique and nominal group techniques used to analyse the data with the aim of triangulating results to establish greater validity. Results: The results showed that there is scope for developing a shared language about in-session practice elements within a mental health context. However the research examining the timing and reasons for employing those practice elements is still being undertaken. In this study the first results from an extract of the interviews illustrates a complex relationship between theory and practice. Conclusion: From the findings so far it would appear that within this specific context it is possible to see that there are ways of categorising the therapist’s actions that becomes comparable across the arts psychotherapies. From the therapist’s personal descriptions of his or her own practice, there also appears to be a close correlation between arts psychotherapies in a mental health community and inpatient context. Additionally, evidence-based practice models such as mentalisation-based therapies appear to have a close correlation.
Book
We wrote this book because most clinicians will need to treat patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) and can use help in so doing. Patients with BPD represent about one in every four to five psychiatric hospitalizations and a similar fraction of outpatient clinic visits (Chanen et al. 2008; Korzekwa et al. 2008; Zimmerman, Chelminski, & Young 2008). They comprise about one in ten visits in the emergency room (Chaput & Lebel 2007; Tomko, Trull, Wood, & Sher 2014) and one in twenty visits to primary care providers (Gross et al. 2002). Not only are they a major presence in virtually all clinical care sites, they are frequently experienced as impatient, needy and burdensome—especially when they perceive that their particular needs are not being addressed. Thus, this book is written to provide helpful how-to advice and wisdom about how their care can best be managed. The word “managed” is key: this book is not about lengthy intensive interventions; it is about management strategies, i.e., calming, encouraging, advising, and otherwise facilitating getting your patients with BPD in a position to pursue productive lives.
Article
Please cite as: Stawarczyk, D., Bezdek, M. A., & Zacks, M. J. (in press). Event representations and predictive processing: The role of the midline default network core. Topics in Cognitive Science. 2 ABSTRACT The human brain is tightly coupled to the world through its sensory-motor systems-but it also spends a lot of its metabolism talking to itself. One important function of this intrinsic activity is the establishment and updating of event models-representations of the current situation that can predictively guide perception, learning, and action control. Here, we propose that event models largely depend on the default network (DN) midline core that includes the posterior cingulate and anterior medial prefrontal cortex. An increasing body of data indeed suggests that this subnetwork can facilitate stimuli processing during both naturalistic event comprehension and cognitive tasks in which mental representations of prior situations, trials, and task rules can predictively guide attention and performance. This midline core involvement in supporting predictions through event models can make sense of an otherwise complex and conflicting pattern of results regarding the possible cognitive functions subserved by the DN. 3
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Are personality disorders (PDs) associated with emotional neglect? Draijer (2003) developed a dimensional model of trauma-related disorders and PD. The first dimension consists of the severity of the trauma endured. The second dimension consists of emotional neglect, which is assumed to be related primarily to personality pathology. In this article, we investigate whether an association between retrospective reports of emotional neglect and the presence and severity of PD exists. A sample of 150 patients was systematically assessed. Results indicate that there is little evidence to support a link between emotional neglect and problematic personality functioning at the disorder level; however, there might be a link between emotional neglect and problematic personality functioning in a dimensional way. Findings indicate a relationship between lack of parental warmth and problematic personality functioning, supporting the existence of the emotional neglectaxis of the proposed model in a dimensional framework of viewing personality pathology.
Chapter
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Few studies have examined the psychosocial impact on practitioners when carrying out group work with clients who are survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV), substance use, and childhood abuse. This article begins with a review of the literature on social and psychosocial problems associated with women who experience IPV, types of group interventions with this client group, and the impact that this work may have on practitioners. It then describes the use of an action research method of inquiry groups involving six facilitators at an agency in Ireland. Three themes emerged from the analysis of transcripts drawn from four group interviews: conscious collaboration, reflections on professional expertise and life experience, and attention to safety. The findings suggest that building collaborative relationships with group participants is a complex, skilled process and that the worldviews of facilitators were strongly affected. The article concludes with a discussion about implications for practice.