[Treatment of divorce families--considerations from the viewpoint of object relations theory and contextual therapy]

Abstract

A child's relationship to both parents in divorcing families is discussed on the background of attachment research. Empirical data emphasize the effects of quality of attachment to both parents on child development, which arises out of the absence or the provision of a secure base. As a consequence the child develops internal working models of attachment figures and self, which is increasingly individually organized during the preschool years and shows considerable continuity throughout early and middle childhood. Adverse effects on attachment and its internal representations are expected to the degree to which through divorce the provision of a secure base is impaired. In psychological practice, parents have to be helped not only in balancing their adult conflicts but in providing a secure base for their children, without missusing them as alies or exposing them to pathological form of parentificaiton. All those are important issues of contextual therapy, which usefullness is especially discussed with respect to its key concept "multidirected partiality".