Traumatic bonding refers to emotional attachment to a harmful figure within relationships marked by abuse, control, suffering, manipulation, or severe neglect. The present study developed and provided an initial validation of the Traumatic Bonding Scale (TBS), a 22-item self-report instrument designed to assess core manifestations of traumatic bonding, including emotional attachment to a harmful figure, internalization of the perpetrator’s perspective, alterations in self-experience, and the persistence of coercively imposed relational patterns. The TBS was developed as a context-general measure of these relational-traumatic processes across different forms of interpersonal harm.

A convenience sample of 1,667 Italian adults (69.8% women; M _age  = 27.76 years), predominantly composed of university students (65.2%), was recruited through snowball sampling. Participants completed the TBS together with measures of childhood traumatic experiences, dissociative symptoms, and psychopathological symptoms. The factorial structure of the TBS was examined through exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses conducted in separate subsamples.

Exploratory analyses suggested a two-factor solution, whereas bifactor modeling indicated that item covariance was largely accounted for by a strong general factor, supporting an essentially unidimensional interpretation of the TBS. The scale showed excellent internal consistency (Cronbach’s α  = .94). TBS scores were positively associated with all dimensions of childhood maltreatment, dissociative symptoms, and broader psychopathological symptoms.

The findings provide initial evidence for the factorial structure and reliability of the TBS and document associations with selected external measures in an Italian adult sample. Further validation studies are needed to examine the validity of the TBS across different types of trauma and specific relational contexts, in order to determine whether it adequately captures traumatic bonding across these distinct contexts.