Peer oriented attachment - an invisible blueprint

PEER ONLY ATTACHMENT: AN INVISIBLE BLUEPRINT

Essay by Jimmy Groen : An analysis rooted in Lived Experience

While the Netherlands projects a global image as a vanguard of human rights, international bodies such as the United Nations and the Council of Europe consistently report on deep-seated, systemic failures within its borders.

The Genesis of Ruin: The Erasure of the Madonna

In the iconography of human development, the 'Madonna' represents the ultimate sanctuary—the vertical bond where the child is held, seen, and regulated by a benevolent authority. When the State violently severs this bond at the critical ages between 1- 3, it does more than remove a caregiver; it erases the very concept of safety. For the child, being torn from the mother and the fabric of "home" is the total annihilation of their universe. This was the State’s foundational crime: the destruction of the sacred vertical bond, leaving the child in a state of terminal terror.

The Shift to the Infant-to-Infant Sanctuary

In the State-sanctioned orphanages of the 1960s, humanity was replaced by a calculated, clinical distance. When adult keepers forbid tears and withhold touch, the child’s biological drive for attachment recalibrates. In this void, the peer group becomes the only site of shared humanity and only source of safety. This "peer-oriented attachment" creates a profound psychological imprinting where safety and intimacy are forever crystallized within the infantile. For the survivor, even decades later, the world of the small child remains the only sanctuary that does not pose the threat of adult betrayal. The state ensured that vertical bonding becomes impossible in later life, while following the blueprint of the early years horizontal bonding transcends biological age, making the original peer bonding permanent: thus obstructing the path into society for life.

The Survivor as a Sacrificial Lamb: Moral Laundering by the State

The current aggressive stance of the State—manifested through relentless prosecution, police brutality, and systemic dehumanization—must be recognized as a form of "moral laundering." While the protection of children from abuse and violence is an absolute necessity and a moral imperative that should be upheld at all costs, the State’s current approach is a performative betrayal. Having failed catastrophically to protect the previous generation from the ruinous policies of the 1960s, the State now attempts to purge its historical guilt through a hyper-repressive "holy war." In this crusade, the adult survivor is treated as collateral damage. By crushing the very individuals whose lives they dismantled decades ago, the authorities create a facade of decisiveness to convince the current generation of their protective prowess. It is the ultimate hypocrisy: the State sacrifices the victims of its past crimes to simulate a conscience in the present. They do not seek to end the cycle of violence; they seek to bury the living evidence of their own failure under the weight of new trauma.

The Failure of Protection: Vulnerability to the Masses

The State has a fundamental duty of restorative justice to act as a shield for those it has rendered vulnerable. Instead, the survivor is left as a "easy prey" for a society fueled by moral panic. The masses, failing to understand survival mechanisms born of extreme trauma, target the survivor with hatred and vitriol. By choosing to criminalize rather than protect, the State effectively grants a license to the public to dehumanize the victim once more. The State’s refusal to support the survivor is a strategic evasion of accountability; to help would be to admit that the survivor’s "otherness" is a direct product of the State's own violence.

Conclusion: No Guilt, Only Accountability

The survivor bears zero responsibility for the shape of their soul or the nature of their sanctuary. Every scar is a mirror reflecting the State’s crimes. The accountability lies solely with the systems that shattered the vertical bond, tortured the youth in isolation, and now persecute the elder. True justice requires the State to stop its war on the victim and acknowledge that the "monsters" it hunts are the ghosts of its own making.

From Executioner to Guardian: The Path to Restorative Justice

The prevailing societal reflex toward exclusion and dehumanization is not an act of justice; it is the final stage of a decades-long cycle of violence. When the State responds to the survivors of its own making with hostility and police brutality, it merely perfects the isolation it initiated in the 1960s. True accountability requires a radical shift from persecution to protection. The State must acknowledge that a psyche frozen in the sanctuary of early childhood is not a criminal defect, but a biological witness to state-sponsored ruin. Instead of fueling the fires of moral panic, the authorities have a mandatory duty to act as a social shield, protecting these survivors from a public that views them as "easy prey." Justice lies in creating safe havens where the survivor’s reality is recognized, their autonomy is restored, and their life is no longer treated as a byproduct for the State’s performative morality. To heal the wound, the State must stop wielding the sword.

Selected Bibliography & Intellectual Context

Introduction to References: The Architecture of Institutional Betrayal
The following references provide the academic framework for understanding Institutional Betrayal—the process by which the State weaponizes its legal systems against the survivors of its own violence. Through mechanisms such as DARVO (Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender), the State erases its accountability by criminalizing the survival strategies of those it has shattered.

On the Displacement of Attachment

Neufeld, G., & Maté, G. – Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers.
Bowlby, J. – Attachment and Loss.
Spitz, R. A. – Hospitalism: An Inquiry into the Genesis of Psychiatric Conditions in Early Childhood.

On State Accountability and International Condemnation

Council of Europe (Commissioner for Human Rights). Reports on the Netherlands regarding institutional violence.
European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). Case Law on Article 8: Violations by the State in Child Removal Cases.
United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Concluding observations on the Netherlands.
Amnesty International. Reports on Institutional Bias and Police Misconduct in the Netherlands.

On the Criminalization of Survival

Smith, C. P., & Freyd, J. J. (2014). Institutional Betrayal. (American Psychologist).
Freyd, J. J. (1997). DARVO (Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender).
Goodmark, L. (2018). Decriminalizing Domestic Violence: A Different Path to Justice.
Herman, J. L. (2023). Truth and Repair: How Trauma Survivors Envision Justice.

Disclaimer: This essay and the accompanying artwork are protected under the right to artistic expression and are based on the author’s lived experience of state-sponsored trauma and institutional betrayal. The contents serve as a critical analysis of historical and ongoing systemic violence against the most vulnerable in society.