Similar to EFT, Stan Tatkin's Psychobiological Approach, sometimes referred to as "PACT" focuses on early attachment, its effect on the developing brain, and the autonomic nervous system.
The parent/infant attachment system creates a life-long model for what it means to be in relationship. What we know about that system, a secure relationship is based on attraction and the ability to reach for our partner and ask for what we need in a way that invites our partner to move closer. By contrast those with an insecure attachment may fear abandonment or the smothering of their authentic self. The goal in Tatkin's approach is to create between romantic partners what is known as a secure functioning relationship: one that is high in positives, mutually amplified, and low in negatives that are quickly repaired and corrected. A secure functioning relationship is a two-person psychological system based on true mutuality, good for me and good for you, versus a one-person psychological system with excessive concern for self-interest or self-preservation. This means in a healthy and secure functioning relationship, that both partners bind themselves to the bedrock principles of non-abandonment, and that the safety and security of the relationship takes priority over personal values.
To achieve a secure functioning relationship and obtain clarity about the critical need for relational bedrock foundations, we engage in psychodrama. Instead of merely talking about events we attempt to recreate conflicts and then resolve them under therapeutic supervision, as they are being felt. Working out early attachment events in real time allows us to observe how these memory-based traumas show up in the here-and-now of the body's systems, the heartbeat, in cortisol release, in oxytocin, in the mind's propensity to compulsively play out an obsolete trauma loop that may not have much connection to the facts of the world anymore.
