This book combines attachment theory and research with clinical experience to provide practitioners with tools for engaging with individuals who are indifferent, avoidant, highly defensive, and who struggle to make and maintain intimate connections with others. Composed of four papers presented at a Wimbledon Guild conference in 2017, this text examines the origins of avoidant attachment patterns in early life, describes research tools that offer a more refined understanding of this insecure attachment pattern, explores the internal object worlds of "dismissing" adults, and considers the impact on couple relationships when one or both partners avoid intimacy or dependency. Each chapter contains case studies with children and families, adolescents, adults and couples that acknowledge the challenges of engaging with these "shut down" individuals, with authors sharing what they have learned from their patients about what is needed for effective psychotherapy. It is an accessible book full of clinical richness and insight and will be invaluable to practitioners who are interested in deepening their understanding and clinical skills from an attachment perspective.
Using attachment theory as a lens for understanding the role of food in our everyday lives, this book explores relationships with other people, with ourselves and between client and therapist, through our connection with food. The aim of this book is twofold: to examine the nature of attachment through narratives of feeding, and to enrich psychotherapy practice by encouraging exploration of clients’ food-related memories and associations. Bringing together contributions from an experienced group of psychotherapists, the chapters examine how our connections with food shape our patterns of attachment and defence, how this influences appetite, self-feeding (or self-starving) and how we may then feed others. They consider a spectrum from a "secure attachment" to food through to avoidant, preoccupied and disorganised, including discussion of eating disorders. Enriched throughout with diverse clinical case studies, this edited collection illuminates how relationships to food can be a rich source of insight and understanding for psychotherapists, psychoanalysts and other counselling therapists working today.
Anxiously attached individuals feel chronically insecure and their relationships are often intense, angry, and enmeshed. In the spectrum of anxious attachment, some people tip into states of acute rumination following specific life events, while an extreme manifestation may be thought of as "borderline borderline" - inescapable brooding, raging, and inability to separate. Preoccupied clients can be difficult to work with, and these therapies often feel stuck or end badly. Anxiously Attached contains four papers presented at a conference in February 2016. They address the origins of anxious attachment in specific features of parent-infant relationships, findings from research about developmental aspects, typical features, concerns, and defences in adults, and how these may be presented in psychotherapy. Enmeshed dynamics in adult relationships, including the therapeutic relationship, are also highlighted, where threat of separation and loss activate intense attachment seeking. The aim is to increase understanding of preoccupied clients from an attachment perspective, to recognise the nature of their anxieties and resistances, and propose specific skills for therapeutic work.
This expanded and fully updated edition of Becoming Attached tells the story of one of the great undertakings of modern psychology: the hundred-year quest to understand the nature of the child and the components of good-enough care. Psychologist and journalist Robert Karen chronicles the origin and history of a groundbreaking idea - attachment theory - and its resounding impact on the fields of developmental psychology, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis.
As Bowlby himself points out in his introduction to this seminal childcare book, to be a successful parent means a lot of very hard work. Giving time and attention to children means sacrificing other interests and activities, but for many people today these are unwelcome truths. Bowlby’s work showed that the early interactions between infant and caregiver have a profound impact on an infant's social, emotional, and intellectual growth. Controversial yet powerfully influential to this day, this classic collection of Bowlby’s lectures offers important guidelines for child rearing based on the crucial role of early relationships.
This work shows how to give substance abusers an attachment experience and a sense of community where they feel they are accepted and belong. Therapy, directed along the lines described, allows the person to get close to others who are accepting of him without a cost to his identity and autonomy.
This is an open access title available under the terms of a [CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International] licence. It is free to read at Oxford Clinical Psychology Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Attachment theory is among the most popular theories of human socioemotional development, with a global research community and widespread interest from clinicians, child welfare professionals, educationalists and parents. It has been considered "one of the most generative contemporary ideas" about family life in modern society. It is one of the last of the grand theories of human development that still retains an active research tradition. Attachment theory and research speak to fundamental questions about human emotions, relationships and development. They do so in terms that feel experience-near, with a remarkable combination of intuitive ideas and counter-intuitive assessments and conclusions. Over time, attachment theory seems to have become more, rather than less, appealing and popular, in part perhaps due to alignment with current concern with the lifetime implications of early brain development Cornerstones of Attachment Research re-examines the work of key laboratories that have contributed to the study of attachment. In doing so, the book traces the development in a single scientific paradigm through parallel but separate lines of inquiry. Chapters address the work of Bowlby, Ainsworth, Main and Hesse, Sroufe and Egeland, and Shaver and Mikulincer. Cornerstones of Attachment Research utilises attention to these five research groups as a lens on wider themes and challenges faced by attachment research over the decades. The chapters draw on a complete analysis of published scholarly and popular works by each research group, as well as much unpublished material.
Winner of the 2022 Gradiva® Award for Best Edited Book! Understanding shame as a relational problem, Shame Matters explores how people, with support, can gradually move away from the relentless cycle of shame and find new and more satisfying ways of relating. Orit Badouk Epstein brings together experts from across the world to explore different aspects of shame from an attachment perspective. The impact of racism and socio-economic factors on the development and experience of shame are discussed and illustrated with clinical narratives. Drawing upon the experience of infant researchers, trauma experts and therapists using somatic interventions, Shame Matters explores and develops understanding of the shameful deflations encountered in the consulting room and describes how new and empowered ways of relating can be nurtured. The book also details attachment-informed research into the experience of shame and outlines how it can be applied to clinical practice. Shame Matters will be an invaluable companion for psychotherapists, clinical psychologists, counsellors, social workers, nurses, and others in the helping professions.
Has your romantic partner called you clingy, insecure, desperate, or jealous? No one wants to admit that they possess these qualities; but if you find yourself constantly on the alert, anxious, or worried when it comes to your significant other, you may suffer from anxious attachment, a fear of abandonment that is often rooted in early childhood experiences. In Insecure in Love, you'll learn how to overcome attachment anxiety using compassionate self-awareness, a technique that can help you recognize your negative thoughts or unhealthy behavior patterns and respond to them in a nurturing way—rather than beating yourself up. You’ll also learn how insecurity can negatively affect healthy dialog between you and your partner (or potential partners) and develop the skills needed to stop you from reverting back to old patterns of neediness and possessiveness. If you suffer from anxious attachment, you probably know that you need to change, and yet you have remained stuck. With compassionate self-awareness, you can successfully explore old anxiety-perpetuating perceptions and habits without being overwhelmed or paralyzed by them. By understanding the psychological factors at the root of your attachment anxiety, you will learn to cultivate secure, healthy relationships to last a lifetime. If you’re ready to stop getting stuck in the same hurtful relationship patterns and finally break the cycle of heartache, this book can show you how to get the love you deserve—and keep it!
Jeb Kinnison's previous book on finding a good partner by understanding attachment types (Bad Boyfriends: Using Attachment Theory to Avoid Mr. (or Ms.) Wrong and Make You a Better Partner) brought lots of readers to JebKinnison.com, where the most asked-about topic was how to deal with avoidant lovers and spouses. There are many readers in troubled marriages now who are looking for help, as well as people already invested in a relationship short of marriage who'd like help deciding if they should stick with it. People in relationships with Avoidants struggle with their lack of responsiveness and inability to tolerate real intimacy. Relationships between an Avoidant and a partner of another attachment type are the largest group of unhappy relationships, and people who love their partners and who may have started families and had children with an Avoidant will work very hard to try to make their relationships work better, out of love for their partner and children as well as their own happiness. The Avoidants in these relationships are more than likely unhappy with the situation as well-retreating into their shells and feeling harassed for being asked to respond with positive feeling when they have little to give. The other reason why so many people are looking for help on this topic is that it is an almost impossible problem. Couples counsellors rarely have the time or knowledge to work with an Avoidant and will often advise the spouse to give up on a Dismissive, especially, whose lack of responsiveness looks like cruelty or contempt (and sometimes it is ) Yet there is some hope-though it may take years and require educating the Avoidant on the patterns of good couples communication, if both partners want to change their patterns toward more secure and satisfying models, it can be done. How can you tell if your partner is avoidant? Does your partner: - Seem not to care how you feel? - Frequently fail to respond to direct questions or text messages? - Accuse you of being too needy or codependent? - Talk of some past lover as ideal and compare you to them? - Act coldly toward your children and the needy? - Remind you that he or she would be fine without you? - Withhold sex or affection as punishment? If that sounds familiar, then your partner is likely avoidant. At about 25% of the population, Avoidants have shorter, more troubled relationships, and tend to divorce more frequently and divorce again if remarried. What can be done? Individual therapy for the motivated Avoidant can move their default attachment style toward security, and to the extent that problems have been made worse by an overly clingy and demanding anxious-preoccupied partner, therapy can help there, as well. Partners who read and absorb the lessons of these books will have a head start on noticing and restraining themselves when they are slipping into an unsatisfying communications pattern, and an intellectual understanding of the bad patterns is a step toward unlearning them. Not all difficult Avoidants can be reformed; that depends on both partners, the depth of their problems, and their motivation and ability to change over time. But many troubled marriages and relationships can be greatly improved, and the people in them can learn to be happier, with even modest improvements in understanding how they can best communicate support for each other. For those reading who have not read Bad Boyfriends or are less familiar with attachment types, a beefed-up section on attachment theory and attachment types from Bad Boyfriends is included. Regular readers of JebKinnison.com will find edited versions of some relevant material previously posted there.
