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Quaderni di Psicoterapia Cognitiva - Open Access

SEZIONE GENERALE - ADHD: nuove prospettive

No. 55 (2024)

Pleasure as a shared interpersonal experience for healing parent-child bonds. To take a fresh look at developmental psychotherapy

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3280/qpc55-2024oa20374
Submitted
giugno 12, 2025
Published
2025-07-08

Abstract

We humans as social beings evolved and constantly develop interacting with others of our species and we weave bonds that are crucial both to our survival and well-being (Gallese et al., 2024). Looking at relationships to heal bonds, through a second-person approach (León et al., 2022; Reddy, 2003) certainly has central value in psychotherapy treatments, where we make the patient aware of the adaptive strategies of individuals to maintain bonds, even when
they uncover high levels of suffering. Especially in developmental psychotherapy, treatments have often been focused on understanding the symptoms and suffering borne by the child or parent, but what has always been overlooked is a fundamental constitutive element underlying the parent-child relationship and the creation of a sense of us with one another: pleasure as a
shared interpersonal experience.
The aim of the article is to shed light on the importance of pleasure in parent-child relationships, according to an evolutionary approach (Liotti & Farina, 2011) and on the basis of interpersonal affective neurobiology (Schore, 1994; Hill, 2020), in order to lay a shared foundation for the choice of consistent treatment methods for bonding care, aimed at promoting connection, and well-being. A clinical case will be analyzed according to the model of an integrated attachment-based approach (Lender, 2023), with Theraplay (Norris & Lender, 2020) and developmental dyadic therapy (Hughes, 2009; Hughes & Golding, 2024).

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