News
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It is published no more than once a month.
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PDF of the latest issues: August 2025 issue April 2025 issue January 2025 issue
Previous posts:
Outlook
Free BondingBoard Beginner-Webinars (in German):
Tue March 24th 2026, 12:30-13:30h
Inscription: Webinare
General meeting of the association Netzwerk Bindung:
Tuesday, March 17, 2026, 19:00-21:00 h, in Zurich
With aperitif and plenty of time for exchange.
Link: https://netzwerkbindung.ch
January 2026 – Master’s theses 2025/26:
Once again, Master’s theses are in their implementation phase.
At the Lucerne University of Teacher Education , two students have developed a procedure for attachment-oriented parent-teacher conferences. It is based on ICF criteria and cantonal guidelines and focuses on getting to know each other as early as possible before stressful incidents make cooperation more difficult. The focus is initially on bonding and emotion-related concerns with the bonding board; factual topics are discussed in more depth in a further conversation. Initial feedback is encouraging, but the evaluation of the parent surveys is still pending.
At the Ludwigsburg University of Teacher Education a master’s thesis is focusing on pupil interviews. There, the situation interview is being used in a simplified form – already with a view to the more playful bonding board variant EmotionPingPong, which is due to be published in the first half of ’26. Above all, the feasibility and benefits for the teacher carrying out the project are being investigated.
We are very pleased that students are taking up the bonding board in their Master’s theses and thinking ahead. We follow and support these projects with great interest and are open to further theses in this area in the future.
December 2025 – Joining the kompetenzhoch3 team:
I am delighted to be part of the kompetenzhoch3 team, as for now on a small scale. The festive Christmas dinner was a nice expression of this.
Our collaboration began with individual training and supervision assignments and is now firmly established. The kompetenzhoch3 institute has offices in the Löwenbräu-Areal in Zurich, develops and evaluates concepts for youth welfare with labels such as KOFA, KOSS or KORJUS and supports institutions throughout Switzerland in their implementation. The partner organizations are active in a wide range of fields: Socio-educational family work, (school) homes, foster families, child protection authorities (KESB), youth welfare offices and juvenile courts as well as inpatient facilities for addiction disorders. I am responsible for supervision, support partner organizations in establishing attachment-oriented work and contribute to the further development of attachment-related concepts . I look forward to working with the supervisory and institute management team led by Kitty Cassée, Donat Ruckstuhl and Martina Rufer , as well as the other members of the team!
www.kompetenzhoch3.ch
November 2025 – SWIPPA Positive Psychology Conference at the University of Lucerne:
No emotion is bad. That was the core message of my presentation at the Positive Psychology Conference. I was able to present the beta version of the EmotionsLandscape – developed together with kompetenzhoch3.ch – and was delighted with the valuable positivepsychology feedback. Many thanks to everyone involved and to the organizers for an inspiring event.
One key insight: let’s never take away an emotional strategy that people rely on. Whether anger, withdrawal or a shrug of the shoulders in frustration – every strategy has or once had an important function and still carries information today. With the EmotionLandscape on the bonding board, clients can explore:
– what each emotion is good for
– which “favorite corners” they often use
– how they can use their emotional strengths in a more targeted way
– and which underused corners offer additional opportunities
If you don’t want to miss out on updates and access to the final version – which will also be published in German – subscribe to our newsletter (see link above).
Download the handout: PDF
November 2025 – Digital intervision in the attachment network:
In this interdisciplinary exchange space, professionals were able to discuss case and specialist issues – with a clear focus on attachment. In addition to individual case topics, there was also room for information on resources and different approaches to attachment-related issues.
The diversity of the professional groups represented in the network – from midwives and psychotherapists to teachers and social education workers – showed once again how enriching different perspectives are for working with people together.
The event was moderated by board members of the Netzwerk Bindung association; Martina Rufer and Lothar Steinke were responsible for the first event.
Further events are planned once a semester.
More about the association: https://netzwerkbindung.ch
October 2025 – Attachment at the Schaffhausen University of Teacher Education:
Schaffhauser:innen certainly don’t need to be taught anything about roaring waters…
but they were all the more engaged in the exercises on roaring emotions!
Many thanks for the warm and active welcome at the workshop of the Master’s program in Special Education – even if the bonding board (despite all its flexibility) is not suitable as a surfboard for the Rhine!
September 2025 – The bonding board at the PSY Congress in Basel:
“Psyche, people, brain – psychiatry at the center”: This was the focus of the 2025 congress of the Swiss Society for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy SGPP at the Congress Center Basel.
The bonding board was presented to a clinical audience for the first time in the poster session . The poster contains basic information on the bonding board as well as case vignettes from clinical practice, contributed by
Anna Haefeli, psychotherapist, MSc, and
Rüdiger Lorenz, psychotherapist, MSc, both University Psychiatric Clinics UPK, Basel,
Carole Steinke, psychotherapist, MSc, Luzerner Psychiatrie and
Lothar Steinke, PH Lucerne, both at the poster and available for questions at the Hogrefe sales stand.
Steinke, L., Steinke, C., Haefeli, A. & Lorenz, R. (2025). The bonding board – An innovative tool for patient interviews, psychoeducation and intervision [Poster]. “Psyche, Mensch, Gehirn – die Psychiatrie im Zentrum”, PSY Congress, Swiss Society for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy (SGPP), 18-19.09.2025, Congress Center Basel.
August 2025 – Article in the journal for transactional analysis:
I am not a transactional analyst – and that is precisely what attracted me when TA teaching supervisor Jürg Schläpfer invited me to talk about the parallels between transactional analysis and attachment.
This exciting exchange resulted in a written interview that has now been published in an issue of the Journal for Transactional Analysis of the German Society for Transactional Analysis (DGTA) dedicated to the topic of attachment.
I find the correspondence between the “I am OK – you are OK” concept by Thomas A. Harris (1969) and the four-field model of attachment patterns with positive and negative self-image and external image by Bartholomew & Horowitz (1991) particularly revealing. Everything is connected.
Schläpfer, J., & Steinke, L. (2025). Attachment and transactional analysis: an e-mail interview.
Journal of Transactional Analysis (ZTA), 42(2), 189-204. Beltz Juventa.
(PDF)
July 2025 – From poster to discussion: SGBF-SGL Annual Congress 2025 in Lucerne:
In July, ‘we’ hosted the joint annual congress of the Swiss Society for Educational Research (SGBF) and the Swiss Association for Teacher Education (SGL) at the Lucerne University of Teacher Education.
Our poster on the ongoing study on the BondingBoard in the context of special education in schools offered many opportunities for discussions, exchanges and new contacts.
June 2025 – ESE conference at the University of Hamburg:
How can attachment patterns, emotions and parenting styles be combined in one model?
Our answer – together with Dr. Robert Langnickel – in a workshop with further development potential: the PAD emotion cube adapted to the parenting cube . It extends the axes of the bonding board (‘arousal’ and ‘distance’) to include the third axis ‘pleasure’. The result is a playful and theoretically coherent tool that opens up new perspectives on emotion regulation.
The conference offered not only professional impulses, but also intensive exchange, new contacts and an impressive social space tour through the large housing estate and Mümmelmannsberg district school …. and, before the journey home, culture and harbor flair.
Many thanks to the organization team around Prof. Dr. Christine Schmalenbach!
And next year there will be a home game: June 25-27, 2026 at the PH Lucerne!
Steinke, L., Tschopp, C., & Langnickel, R. (2025, June 26-28). The parenting cube as an extension of the bonding board: New dimensions for attachment and emotion regulation in Emotion and Social Development [Workshop]. 17th Conference of Lecturers in Emotional-Social Development (ESE Conference), University of Hamburg, Germany.
June 2025 – Article in the ESE magazine :
With exercises on the topic of attachment – now with our web app!
In the latest article on the BondingBoard published in the journal for lecturers in the field of emotional and social development (ESE), we present the BondingBoard as a tool for discussion, supervision and teaching.
The article was written as part of the research project on the bonding board at the Lucerne University of Teacher Education, in Collaboration with Prof. Dr. Cécile Tschopp and Dr. Robert Langnickel . It offers a compact introduction to the BondingBoard, a theoretical anchoring of the method and a clear visualization of the attachment patterns.
Two interactive exercises can be carried out directly with our BondingBoard app via QR code or web link – an invitation to directly combine theory and practice.
The article can be downloaded here downloadable: ESE article (ResearchGate)
Steinke, L., Tschopp, C. & Langnickel, R. (2025). Emotion and relationship focus in everyday school life: The BondingBoard as a tool for discussion, reflection and psychoeducation. ESE Emotional and Social Development in Educational Support Pedagogy and Behavioral Disorders, 7, 198-209.
May 2025 – Course at the Association of Central Swiss Psychologists VIPP:
The one-day course entitled “Emotion regulation, relationship, mentalizing: Conversation management practice with the bonding board”, was a ‘home game’ at the invitation of ‘my’ regional professional association, but was also open to interested parties from other regions or professions.
It was a lively, intensive day during which I showed my colleagues everything that is still in development.
April 2025 – Article in the Swiss Journal of Special Needs Education SZH:
A larger technical article on the bonding board has been published! We are happy for multiple reasons:
First of all, the SZH is an important address when it comes to current topics relating to School support measures and is freely available under a Creative Commons license (CC-BY) and published articles achieve a very good range of circulation .
Secondly, with my school psychology background it is a concern of mine, that the BondingBoard is widely used in the school context .
And finally, the article was published together with the two authors of a Master thesis with the BondingBoard, Jennifer Schumacher and Katharina Rotenand their former supervisor at the PH Valais,, David Hischier. It presents the BondingBoard and and shows how attachment-oriented thinking and acting by means of small changes and interventions can be integrated into the classroom . For this purpose, the specially developed BondingCompass is being presented and supplemented by two case studies from the intervention study. Congratulations!
The article can be downloaded here downloadable: SZH article (ResearchGate)
Schumacher, J., Roten, K., Steinke, L., & Hischier, D. (2025). New tools for dealing with challenging behavior: Bonding board and bonding compass. Swiss Journal of Curative Education , 31(03), 38-44.
Further information and a free download of 6 sample cards: https://bondingboard.com/en/compass
March 2025 – Course at the Lucerne University of Teacher Education:
At the PH Lucerne I gave a one-day course on the topic of conducting attachment-focused conversations. It offered practical tools and exercisesto address the topic of attachment in conversations with parents, children, young people and colleagues. Included are two follow-up supervision appointments.. This is valuable in order to ensure implementation in practice . Current case questions provide the best examples of how versatile the instrument can be used.
February 2025 – Online networking meeting of the Attachment Network Association:
The Attchment Network hosted its first online networking meeting. Each board member introduced themselves and presented a practical example of how the topic of attachment is integrated into their own work. This was followed by a discussion with the members on their main areas of focus and interests. The event was exclusively for members.
The next online GetTogether is scheduled for Thursday 15.5.2025, 19-21h.
New members are welcome at any time: https://netzwerkbindung.ch
January 2025 – Modules on attachment at the PH Ludwigsburg and University of Würzburg:
First a two-day module on site at the University of Education in Ludwigsburg and then an online module for the University of Würzburg …. It was a pleasure to design these modules together with Dr. Robert Langnickel . We are already working together on research and writing articles. This has also resulted in a good exchange in the preparation and follow-up of courses. Thank you very much!
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