Attaccamento, trauma, mentalizzazione e personalità nell'Intimate Partner Violence: un'indagine preliminare.

Violence against women and girls is both a human rights and a public health issue. It is a global phenomenon, which adversely affects individuals who experience it and carries social and financial costs for the societies in which it occurs. The World Health Organisation (WHO) recently estimated that more than 35% of women worldwide have experienced either intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime. Violence against women is both a cause and a consequence of gender inequality in society. Intimate partner violence (IPV) is one of the most common forms of violence against women and includes physical, sexual, and emotional abuse and controlling behaviours by an intimate partner (WHO, 2013). It has been examined from a range of theoretical perspectives, one of those being attachment theory, identified as a way to assess several psychosocial risk factors for violence (Mahalik et al., 2005). In the previous literature, the child’s exposure to violence in the family resulted as a major predictor of subsequent exposure to IPV victimization (Widom, et al., 2008). Research on abused and traumatized samples has shown high frequencies of unresolved/disorganized attachment in adults. Attachment disorganization is associated with major problems of affect regulation and mentalizing deficits. An extensive body of research highlighted that mentalization was elaborated in terms of polarities (Fonagy et al., 2012). Moreover research findings strengthen existing evidence that partner violence contributes to women's poor mental health. Women assaulted by an intimate partner experience significant health consequences including injury, chronic pain, gastrointestinal problems, sexually transmitted infections, depression, suicidality, post-traumatic stress disorder, and death. Despite the increasingly well-documented literature on this association there has been relatively less empirical focus on the interactions between IPV and personality disorders. This research has different aims: to analyze the relationship between childhood trauma and victimization in adulthood; to investigate attachment and mentalization ability in order to identify specific mentalizing and attachment profiles of women IPV victims; to investigate the associations between personality features and IPV; to identify therapist countertransference in relation to IPV. A sample of 31 women, recruited through anti-violence centers, were administered the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI, George et al., 1984) and completed the Reflective Functioning Questionnaire (RFQ, Fonagy et al., 2016). The Complex Trauma Questionnaire (ComplexTQ, Vergano et al., 2015), and the Reflective Functioning Scale (RFS, Fonagy et al., 1998) were applied to AAI transcripts. The interviews were audiotaped and transcribed verbatim. Coding was conducted by two trained coders, and certified as reliable in the use of the AAI. The protocols were double coded for RFQ, ComplexTQ and RFS. The clinicians completed Shedler-Westen Assessment Procedure–200 (Shedler et al., 2014), Modes of Mentalization Scale (MMS; Colli & Gagliardini, submitted; Gagliardini et al., 2017; Colli et al., 2016); Mentalization Imbalances Scale (MIS; Gagliardini et al., 2018; Gagliardini & Colli, 2017; Colli & Gagliardini, 2015) and Therapist Response (Countertransference) Questionnaire (TRQ, Betan, et al. 2005; Tanzilli et al., 2015):. Data have shown a higher percentage of women with disorganized attachment and a reflective function decrease. Results will be discussed in terms of clinical and theoretical implications. Efforts to understand the etiology of intimate partner violence are critical to reduce this public health threat.