The Dangers of Holding Therapy
By Jan Hunt
Holding therapy is a practice described and recommended in the book Holding Time by Martha Welch. It consists of forced holding by a therapist or parent until the child stops resisting or until a fixed time period has elapsed; sometimes the child is not released until there is eye contact. Although this technique was initially intended for autistic adults, it has also been used for autistic children, teenagers and younger children with "attachment disorders" and infants with "residual birth trauma."
Proponents of this practice defend it as being "for the child's own good," the very same justification that many use for spanking and other punishments. Because it is labeled "therapy," it can be difficult to regulate this practice by professionals or to help parents to recognize its dangers.
At odds with gentle parenting
I consider this practice to be completely at odds with attachment parenting, which is above all a relationship based on mutual trust. It can be immensely difficult for a child to regain full, genuine trust after being forcibly held, regardless of the parent’s good intentions or the resulting surface behavior. As Alice Miller wrote:
I regard [holding therapy] as a kind of violation. People with the best intentions just don’t feel what they are doing when they violate the rights of another person (the child). The aim is to release forbidden, repressed feelings, but the violence of this technique makes it absolutely impossible to benefit from such a release.1 Force, the therapy implies, is used for the child’s own good, and the child will be rewarded and loved for his tolerance in letting it happen. He will come to believe that force contributes to his well-being and is ultimately beneficial. A more perfect deception and distortion of someone’s perceptions is barely imaginable.2
It is human nature to resent and resist the use of force. The use of forced holding by a parent inevitably engenders strong feelings of fear, confusion, helplessness, anger and betrayal as the child’s natural attempts to break free are disregarded by those they have come to love and trust.
When held by force, children finally understand that freedom comes only by giving in to outside control -- a dangerous lesson. Their wills can be broken, but that is not what I would call psychological health. Imposing any action by force on a child who is in no position to make an informed choice is unconscionable. Even if there were an emotional breakthrough from this therapy, it would come at a great hidden cost; there is no way to avoid the child's feelings of anger, frustration, resentment and betrayal. These intense feelings cannot be measured in the present, nor can their future ramifications be known.
The value of the uncoerced “yes”
As with spanking and all other forms of punishment, children who are held may appear to comply, yet their deeper feelings become submerged until they can be more freely expressed. Furthermore, when force is used, the authenticity of any success is forever in doubt. When a child cannot say "no," what does his "yes" really mean? The coerced child has learned to feign attachment behavior. Such dissimulation is at the core of the sociopathic personality.
The use of force on a child is always a risk factor and is never justified unless the child's life or health is immediately endangered and there is no better alternative. There are alternatives, many of them, to nearly all parental acts of forced submission. For the unhappy or out-of-control child, the best alternative is prevention. Meet the child's legitimate needs (undivided attention, food, sleep, attention to hidden allergies, relief of family stress factors, etc.). Where force is simply unavoidable (the proverbial child running into a street situation), it should be kept to the barest minimum possible and followed by gentle explanations and apologies.
Forced holding when there is no immediate danger should be challenged on humanitarian grounds that are self-evident. Far from having health benefits, as proponents claim, it may also pose a serious psychological risk:
... one of the most important advances in our understanding of health and disease in the past few decades... has been identifying the prototype of pathogenic (disease creating) situations - being trapped in adverse or threatening circumstances and being unable to either fight or flee. When we can only passively submit, our health tends to deteriorate.3 On the other hand, being in a position to take the initiative is health enhancing.-- The Scientification of Love, Michel Odent, 1999
There is yet another compelling reason to challenge this procedure: how can we justify forced holding in a society where children are cautioned to say no to unwanted touch?
A violation of trust
Whether by a parent, therapist or stranger, physically overpowering a helpless child is wrong. Justifying it by calling it "love" or "therapy" is a violation of the child’s trust and understanding of life as he has come to know it. Like all other forms of forced compliance, forced holding associates love and submission. Delusional defenses are likely to arise as the child tries to comprehend and make sense of something he knows in his heart to be a distortion of what love should look like.
Gentle, empathic approaches are far less stressful for all concerned than forced holding, more effective for the long term and more respectful of the child, who deserves above all our love and compassion. How sad that something as lovely as having a child in our arms -- when the desire is mutual -- has been perverted into such a heartless practice.
1 Miller, Alice. Personal communication.
2 Miller, Alice. Breaking Down the Wall of Silence. New York: Penguin USA, new edition 1997.
3 Maier, S. F. and Seligman, M.E.P. "Learned Helplessness: Theory and Evidence." J. Exp. Psychol. General 1976; 105:3-46.
Reprinted with permission of the author.
Jan Hunt, M.Sc., is a parenting counselor, director of the Natural Child Project and editorial assistant for the Canadian journal Empathic Parenting. She is an advisor to Attachment Parenting International, Child-Friendly Initiative and Northwest Attachment Parenting. A parenting columnist and writer for many years, she is the author of The Natural Child: Parenting from the Heart. Jan and her 22-year-old son (who homeschooled from the beginning with a learner-directed approach) live in central Oregon. You can see Jan’s work at The Natural Child Project.
