Hello all,
In my world of attachment theory and in Wikipedia articles, there is
sometimes confusion about a general and specific topic when both use the
same or similar words. For example, attachment therapy is a specific
modality of treatment, and attachment-based therapy are a collection of
various attachment-informed therapies.
This has created a big problem for Wikipedia users. Attachment therapy is a
based on a distortion of attachment theory and is soundly regarded as a
fringe and abusive form of therapy. The problem is that most people
interested in learning about the various attachment-based therapy
modalities land on the Attachment therapy article, which gets 5,000 visits
per month. The primary article people should be interested in is the
Attachment-based therapy article, which gets 300 visits per month. Another
article likely of interest is Attachment-based psychotherapy, a particular
form of attachment-informed therapy, and which gets 400 users per day.
There's a similar problem with Attachment parenting (generally not a great
specific model, but a fantastic topic), and Biopsychosocial model. Both of
those are minor specific models, and both represent a larger concept.
For the Biopsychosocial model article, I resolved the problem by
reorienting the article. A guy named George Engel created "the
biopsychosocial" model in the 1970's. It was a brilliant idea to help the
medical community think beyond the human body as a mere machine. But he
died and the model floundered, while other models started using the generic
BPS phrase. The original article was only about Engel's model. I changed
the article to talk about both, and left in info about Engel's model and it
being part of the history of the development of BPS models. One question I
have, was that a fair thing for me to do?
The Attachment therapy article can't be so easily modified in the same way.
It seems like a nicely written article, more or less, it's long and
acknowledges the therapy's shortcomings and has a good bit of history on
the specific therapy.
One solution is to delete and redirect the Attachment therapy article to
Attachment-based therapy. There is already a section on "attachment
therapy" in the latter article and I could import more info from the
Attachment therapy page. But, is that too dramatic a solution?
It's a serious problem since attachment-based therapies are a very good
thing for humanity, but everyone asking Wikipedia about it is only going to
the worst form of an attachment-based therapy.
Can anyone point me in a useful direction for how to most elegantly resolve
this problem?
Mark Baumann
Mark(a)MarkBaumann.com