Ghosts in the consulting room. An attachment perspective on intergenerational transmission

Intergenerational transmission of attachment patterns--Selma Fraiberg's classic account of 'ghosts in the nursery'--is one of the basic assumptions of attachment theory, amply confirmed by empirical studies which link narrative style in parents (as measured by the Adult Attachment Interview) with security or insecurity of attachment in infants, as measured by the Strange Situation test. This paper argues that a 'sense of self' and Fonagy's 'reflective function', vital to healthy psychic functioning, arise out of early parental handling, and particularly out of the kind of mirroring experiences hypothesized by Winnicott and elaborated by Gergely and Watson, in which the parent defines her or himself as a 'mirror', by 'marking' (exaggeration of response) and 'contingency' (scrupulously following the child's lead in interactive play). The paper argues that in psychotherapy a similar responsiveness on the part of the therapist is called for. Dealing with 'ghosts in the consulting room' (i.e. transference) is a three phase project comprising (a) calling up the ghosts, through the development of narrative function (b) attempts to expel the ghosts through anger at environmental failure and differentiation of the self from its past (c) coming to terms with ghosts, thus seeing that one's parents were themselves products of intergenerational transmission. An illustrative case is presented.