Knowledge Isolation, Protective Adaptation, and Long-Term Impacts: Betrayal Trauma Theory’s Contribution to Our Understanding of Complex Trauma and Dissociation in Childhood

More than three decades of theoretical, empirical, and clinical scholarship document the complex impact of betrayal trauma on children. Betrayal trauma theory (BTT) provides an explanatory framework for knowledge isolation as an adaptive response to interpersonal trauma—differentiating it from fear- and shattered assumptions-based theories of childhood trauma. In this chapter, I (1) provide an overview of BTT as a framework that helps situate complex childhood trauma and knowledge isolation in the interpersonal, familial, institutional, and cultural contexts in which violations of trust occur; (2) describe what is known about the impacts of betrayal trauma on child development, with an emphasis on the role adaptive dissociation may play in protecting attachment relationships with adult caregivers; (3) highlight the implications of BTT for clinical interventions and research with traumatized children; and (4) argue for the importance of further work explicating the impact of betrayal trauma on families who are increasingly at the epicenter of dramatic social and environmental change.