Foster Cline

Foster W. Cline

(Westword)

Foster Cline is arguably the premier figure in Attachment Therapy, a psychiatrist residing in Idaho, but lecturing and consulting nationwide. He is also co-creator of “Love and Logic,” a popular system of child discipline.

Dr. Cline is publicly candid about the “intrusive” and “confrontive” therapy he has done and why. He has written at least three books defending what he initially called “rage reduction therapy” and later came to be called “holding therapy” and finally Attachment Therapy (AT). As Cline admits himself in these books, his approach engendered much professional and official opposition. He even quotes one “honest and perceptive” criticism:

The practitioners appear to be taking a sadistic sort of pleasure from their maltreatment of the child. They call him names, ridicule and berate him, direct profanity toward him, and require him to direct profanity toward them in return. They require intense and unrelenting physical contact which is in itself over-stimulating and could easily be construed by the child in sexualized terms. In addition, they frequently “knuckle” the ribs of the child in a way which appears quite aggressive, and appears to be perceived by the child as aversive and both physically and mentally painful.

In short, the “therapy” appears to indicate the belief that the end justifies the means; hence, it is acceptable to strip a child of his basic rights as a human being of treatment in a caring and respectful manner, and that it is also acceptable to exploit the small stature and weakness of the child relative to that of an adult in a physically abusive fashion so long as it is aimed at ridding the child of his “inner anger” (which most likely derives from a past history of abuse much like that which is now billed as “therapy”).

In the 1970s, Cline founded an AT center in Colorado called the Youth Behavior Program. This later become the Attachment Center at Evergreen (ACE), the most prominent center for AT for many years. (It has recently been renamed the Institute for Attachment and Child Development.) Cline was eventually to voluntarily surrender his license to practice medicine in Colorado — and retire to Idaho — soon after the Board of Medical Examiners disciplined him for an AT-related incident at ACE.

Dr Cline’s own words are a clear revelation of the seminal views and practices that led to the Attachment Therapy available today. We invite parents, educators, academics, child-welfare workers, adoption agencies, policy makers, human rights organizations and other concerned parties to review these statements so that they may form their own opinions.

In His Own Words

— A Vision and a Mission —

—“Fearsome and Dangerous” —

— Holding Therapy —

— Holding Therapy … for Parents —

— Parenting —

— “Therapeutic Parenting” —

— “Reparenting” —

— Corporal Punishment —

— Professionalism —


[There are approving references in Can This Child Be Saved? to Nancy Thomas and to books by Vera Fahlberg, Gregory Keck, Regina Kupecky, Carole McKelvey, Terry Levy, Michael Orlans, Elizabeth Randolph, Lynda Mansfield, Christopher Waldmann, Daniel Hughes, Richard Delaney, Ken Magid, Martha Welch, Terry McNerney, Frank Kunstal, Thomas Verny, and Nancy Verrier. Books and articles appearing in the bibliography of Conscienceless Acts are some by Vera Fahlberg, Barbara Hartring, Carole McKelvey, JoEllen Stevens, Jay Haley, Jacqui Schiff, Thomas Verny, and Bruno Bettelheim.]

* Conscienceless Acts was re-published by Love & Logic Press in 2001 and retitled Uncontrollable Kids: From Heartbreak to Hope. Though retitled and labelled a “first edition,” the later book does not appear to have any significant changes to distinguish it from the original 1995 version.

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