Susan Hart on Attunement and Brain Development: Why Attachment Matters, Part One

Welcome to Attachment Theory in Action! Our podcast is dedicated to therapists, social workers, counselors and psychologists who are working with clients from an attachment-based perspective. Interviews are conducted with individuals who are doing clinical work as well as leading attachment theory researchers. Your host, Karen Doyle Buckwalter will introduce you to Dr. Susan Hart, who will discuss the role of attachment in attunement and brain development.  Susan Hart, Ph.D. is a psychologist, specialist and supervisor in psychotherapy and child psychology. With a background in child psychiatry, family and adult therapy, Susan is now self-employed. She is the originator of the neuroaffective development theory, which is based on modern brain research, and which she began to develop about 20 years ago by connecting neuroscience with developmental psychology. Her overriding goal is to develop assessment methods aimed at providing the right intervention method for individual child or family by identifying and mapping their zone of proximal development. She is currently developing ways to translate the neuroaffective concept into practice through her extensive lecture and workshop activity, publications, manuals and the present doctoral dissertation, which is based on research into newly developed assessment methods within the neuroaffective framework. She is the author, co-author and editor of 14 books on trauma, dissociation and neuroaffective developmental psychology and psychotherapy. Four of her books have been translated and published in English. Together with colleagues she has also developed two developmental programmes, one for children’s groups and one for parent’s groups.