Rebecca Klott

Doctoral Dissertation Announcement

---

Candidate: Rebecca Klott

Degree of: Doctor of Philosophy

Department: Counselor Education and Counseling Psychology

Title: What Psychotherapists Have to Teach Us about Childhood Developmental Trauma: The Roles of Attachment Orientation and Coping Strategy

Committee:
Dr. Eric Sauer, Chair
Dr. Mary Z. Anderson
Dr. C. Richard Spates

Date: Friday, May 21, 2012 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.
3208 Sangren Hall

Abstract:
Psychotherapists have been found to have higher rates of childhood developmental trauma when compared to non-clinicians, yet they do not report more distress. The current study added to the literature regarding the experiences of psychotherapists and explored a theoretical model integrating attachment and coping as mediators for the relationship between childhood developmental trauma and psychological distress.
A total of 130 master’s level psychologists participated in this study. These participants were asked to complete the following measures: The Child Abuse and Trauma Scale (Sanders & Becker-Lausen, 1995), the Ways of Coping-Revised (Folkman & Lazarus, 1985; Folkman, Lazarus, Denkel-Schetter, DeLongis, & Gruen, 1986), the Brief COPE (Carver, 1997), the Experiences in Close Relationships-Revised (Fraley, Waller, & Brennan, 2000), the Brief Symptom Inventory (Derogatis & Melisaratos, 1983), and a demographic survey.
Descriptive statistics, correlations, and path analyses were employed to investigate the variables of childhood developmental trauma, attachment, coping, and distress. Participants reported higher levels of childhood developmental trauma than did normed samples, were more likely to use problem-focused coping over emotion-focused coping when encountering work-related stressors, and were not significantly more distressed than were non-patient normed samples. However, the participants had higher levels of both attachment anxiety and avoidance than did the normed samples. Finally, an exploratory path analysis model in which childhood developmental trauma’s effects were hypothesized to be all indirect through (over) the variables of anxious attachment and emotion-focused coping was found to be plausible. Findings were discussed and suggestions for future research were made.