In a special session Ben Grey will live code a MotC transcript Charley Shults will provide. Charley, a Manchester UK therapist, uses attachment assessments to help his clients. He has conducted a Meaning of the Child interview (MotC) of a client and transcribed it. Ben, a developer of the MotC, hasn’t seen the transcript yet, and (with the client’s permission) he will code it live during the session, demonstrating how the process works and what he is noticing from the transcript. Ben and Charley will discuss what Ben is seeing and what Charley is experiencing with his client as they explore how assessment meets clinical reality. This will be a unique opportunity for an inside view into the workings of a DMM-based assessment by a master therapist and the director of the Roehampton University Attachment Studies programme.

The MotC is an application of DMM thinking to interviews with parents about their child. It uses a systemic understanding of parent-child relationships, drawing on the CARE-index in its understanding of Sensitive caregiving, and the DMM-AAI in its information processing approach to attachment. If you are not familiar with the MotC please join the session 35 minutes early, as there will be a brief introduction to the MotC for those who have not encountered it before. More information is also available at the MotC website www.meaningofthechild.org.
We will replay the session recording on Thursday. The US and EU/UK will have both reset their clocks so both sessions will be on the usual days and times for them, but Australians will need to tune in at 7 am on Friday.
Session details
Date session A: Tuesday, 30 March 2021 (live, recorded)
Date session B: Thursday, 1 April 2021 (video replay)
Length: 90+ minutes
Price: Free
Host/Facilitator: Ben Grey and Charley Shults
Platform: Zoom meeting
Sponsor: Conflict Science Institute
Multiple sessions: Each session will be unique, please join both! Invite your colleagues.
Session times:
Session A (US/EU/Africa/India): Tuesday, 9:00 a.m. Seattle (UTC -7) (1:00 pm in Miami; 5:00 p.m. in London; 7:00 p.m. in Cape Town; 9:00 p.m. in New Delhi; midnight in Bangkok.)
Session B (US/EU/AUS/Asia): Thursday, at 1:00 p.m. in Seattle (5:00 p.m. in Miami; 9:00 p.m. in London; and (in Australia/Thailand/China on Friday) at 7:00 a.m. in Sydney. (AUS/ASIA participants should confirm their local start time against Seattle time.)
Session hosts
Dr. Benedict Grey is the Programme Convenor (Director) and Senior Lecturer for the Attachment Studies program, Department of Psychology, University of Roehampton, London. He is also co-director of Cambridge Centre for Attachment (www.attachment.services) and has been using the DMM in the family court arena for nearly 20 years. He also developed and validated the Meaning of the Child interview (www.meaningofthechild.org), a system of analysing parenting discourse based on the DMM.
Charley Shults, MA, J.D., is an American living in the U.K. where he works as a psychotherapist. He is a member of the UK Council for Psychotherapy and certified by the UKCP as an Integrative Psychotherapist through the Metanoia Institute. Charley is developing Attachment Centred Therapy, an approach which often includes the use of attachment assessments including the Adult Attachment Interview. Charley’s web page is https://www.charleyshults.co.uk/, and offers here an overview of Attachment Centred Therapy.
This will be the 100th DMM Coffee House session!