This change may have been hastened by the publication of a Task Force Report on the subject in January 2006, commissioned by the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children (APSAC) which was largely critical of attachment therapy.
Attachment therapy is a treatment used primarily with fostered or adopted children who have behavioral difficulties, including disobedience and perceived lack of gratitude or affection for their caregivers.
[8][9] The controversy, as outlined in the 2006 American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children (APSAC) Task Force Report,[4] has broadly centered around "holding therapy"[10] and coercive, restraining, or aversive procedures.
These include deep tissue massage, aversive tickling, punishments related to food and water intake, enforced eye contact, requiring children to submit totally to adult control over all their needs, barring normal social relationships outside the primary caretaker, encouraging children to regress to infant status, reparenting, attachment parenting, or techniques designed to provoke cathartic emotional discharge.
[15]According to the APSAC Task Force, A central feature of many of these therapies is the use of psychological, physical, or aggressive means to provoke the child to catharsis, ventilation of rage, or other sorts of acute emotional discharge.
The purported correction is described as "... to force the children into loving (attaching to) their parents; ... there is a hands-on treatment involving physical restraint and discomfort.
[17]Psychiatrist Bruce Perry cites the use of holding therapy techniques by caseworkers and foster parents investigating a Satanic Ritual Abuse case in the late 1980s, early 1990s, as instrumental in obtaining lengthy and detailed alleged "disclosures" from children.
[18] Therapists often instruct parents to follow programs of treatment at home, for example obedience-training techniques such as "strong sitting" (frequent periods of required silence and immobility) and withholding or limiting food.
[6] Proper appreciation of total adult control is also considered vital, and information, such as how long a child will be with therapeutic foster parents or what will happen to him or her next, is deliberately withheld.
Therapy based on this viewpoint emphasizes providing a stable environment and taking a calm, sensitive, non-intrusive, non-threatening, patient, predictable, and nurturing approach toward children.
Such children are said to fail to develop a conscience, to not trust others, to seek control rather than closeness, to resist the authority of caregivers, and to engage in endless power struggles.
"[16] Both the APSAC Task Force and Prior and Glaser describe the proliferation of alternative "lists" and diagnoses, particularly on the Internet, by proponents of attachment therapy, that are not in accord with either DSM or ICD classifications and which are partly based on the unsubstantiated views of Zaslow and Menta[41] and Cline.
Posting these types of lists on internet sites that also serve as marketing tools may lead many parents or others to conclude inaccurately that their children have attachment disorders.
[46] In addition to concerns about the use of non-specific diagnostic checklists on the Internet being used as a marketing tool, the Task Force also noted the extreme claims made by proponents as to both the prevalence and effect of attachment disorders.
[6] Foster Cline, in his seminal work on attachment therapy, Hope for High Risk and Rage Filled Children, uses the example of Ted Bundy.
[48] According to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) practice parameter published in 2005, the question of whether attachment disorders can be reliably diagnosed in older children and adults has not been resolved.
[16] The advocacy group ACT states, "Attachment Therapy is a growing, underground movement for the 'treatment' of children who pose disciplinary problems to their parents or caregivers.
[21] The British Association for Adoption and Fostering, (BAAF), has issued an extensive position statement on the subject which covers not only physical coercion but also the underlying theoretical principles.
In 2012, first-hand accounts from a survivor and a number of professionals provided evidence that the coercive Evergreen model of holding therapy had been systematically used to treat children in Local Authority care within a programme in North West England.
Proponents argue that their therapies present no physical risk if undertaken properly and that critics' concerns are based on unrepresentative occurrences and misapplications of techniques, or misunderstanding by parents.
In 2001, after the death of Candace Newmaker they stated "The child will never be restrained or have pressure put on them in such a manner that would interfere with their basic life functions such as breathing, circulation, temperature, etc.
They acknowledge ATTACh's historical links with catharsis, provocation of rage, and intense confrontation, among other overtly coercive techniques (and indeed continue to offer for sale books by controversial proponents) but state that the organization has evolved significantly away from earlier positions.
They state that their recent evolution is due to a number of factors including tragic events resulting from such techniques, an influx of members practicing other techniques such as attunement and a "fundamental shift ... away from viewing these children as driven by a conscious need for control toward an understanding that their often controlling and aggressive behaviors are automatic, learned defensive responses to profoundly overwhelming experiences of fear and terror.
[5] Matthew Speltz of the University of Washington School of Medicine states that the roots of attachment therapy are traceable to psychologist Robert Zaslow and his "Z-process" in the 1970s.
[60] Zaslow believed that creating pain and rage and combining them with eye contact would cause attachment to occur, long after the normal age for such developments.
[64] In addition to the notion of "breaking through" defense mechanisms, other metaphors were adopted by practitioners relating to the supposed effects of early deprivation, abuse or neglect on the child's ability to form relationships.
[20] In addition, proponents believed that holding induced age regression, enabling a child to make up for physical affection missed earlier in life.
[8] It has also been described as potentially abusive and a pseudoscientific intervention, not based on attachment theory or research, that has resulted in tragic outcomes for children including at least six documented child fatalities.
Becker-Weidman's study was described by the Task Force as "an important first step toward learning the facts about DDP outcomes" but falling far short of the criteria necessary to constitute an evidence base.
[11] In March 2007, attachment therapy was placed on a list of treatments that have the potential to cause harm to clients in the APS journal, Perspectives on Psychological Science.