Childhood Trauma, Attachment Patterns, and Psychopathology: An Evolutionary Analysis

Abstract

In the last two decades, hundreds of studies have converged on the same conclusion: children who experience severe chronic stressors are vulnerable to a plethora of medical and psychiatric problems across the life span. In this chapter, the relationship between childhood trauma and psychopathology will be analyzed from the vantage point of two interrelated theoretical perspectives: attachment theory and evolutionary theory. Childhood trauma is associated with a variety of different psychiatric symptoms and syndromes. The most likely explanation for such nonspecific effects is that childhood trauma impacts on basic psychobiological mechanisms that underlie various diagnostic entities. Dysfunctional attachment is a strong candidate for the development of a transdiagnostic model of psychopathology linked to early adverse experiences. Attachment is an evolved behavioral system that functionally integrates a variety of components ranging from genes to social relationships, and this makes the evolutionary perspective necessary to explore the links between attachment and childhood trauma. This will emerge clearly from the theoretical models outlined throughout the chapter: the predictive adaptive response model, the constraints model, the differential susceptibility model, and the adaptive calibration model. An evolutionary understanding of the physical and mental effects of childhood trauma, as summarized in this chapter, may have important implications for clinical practice and public health.