[ultramar]

There have been a couple of threads lately directly and indirectly about attachment in therapy, so I did some research and found some great summaries of attachment (especially preoccupied/insecure) theories of the gurus of this field. I'm going to quote a couple here and post the link -it's full of great information which of course can't all be posted here. Enjoy!

Attachment and Therapy

Bowlby:

Under attachment theory, a major goal in psychotherapy is the reappraisal of inadequate, outdated working models of self in relation to attachment figures, a particularly difficult task if important others, especially parents, have forbidden their review. As psychoanalysts have repeatedly noted, a person with inadequate, rigid working models of attachment relations is likely to inappropriately impose these models on interactions with the therapist (a phenomenon known as transference). The joint task 0f therapist and client is to understand the origins of the client’s dysfunctional internal working models of self and attachment figures, Toward this end, the therapist can be most helpful by serving as a reliable, secure base from which an individual can begin the arduous task of exploring and reworking his or her internal working models.

Peter Fonagy:

Fonagy speaks about the hallmark of secure attachment being the ability to reflect on one's internal emotional experience, and make sense of it, and at the same time reflect on the mind of another. One can immediately see how these capacities are imbued in the infant through sensitive attunement of the caregiver. When a caregiver reads the verbal and non-verbal cues of the child and reflects them back, the child sees him or herself through the eyes of the attachment figure. It is through this attunement and contingent communication process that the seeds of the developing self are planted and realized. Insecurely attached individuals lack this reflective function either because their emotional responses are so repressed as in the case of the dismissing attachment status or exacerbated as in the case of the preoccupied attachment status that they are unable to either identify their own internal experience or reflect on that of the other. When either one of these extremes are the method of regulating the attachment behavioral system, the capacity for reflection (on oneself and others) is compromised.

Jeremy Holmes:

In the case of preoccupied attachment, where anxiety overruns the client's story in that it becomes convoluted and saturated with anger and disappointment, the therapist's role is to help break the negative cycle of the narrative, manage the affect more effectively and create a story that is balanced and coherent.

Allen Schore:

He spells out very clearly how insensitive parenting leads to emotion dysregulation patterns in childhood and later in adulthood. He understands insecure attachment as emotion dysregulation and therefore the goal of psychotherapy is to learn new capacities to manage attachment distress-that psychotherapy is the process of changing neural patterns in the brain, the right brain in particular.

By author of these summaries:

If one way of conceptualizing attachment status is that it is a form of affect regulation that occurs in the context of relationships in general, and how individuals deal with emotions associated with separation, loss and reunion specifically, it seems that attachment theory would be relevant to one of the most significant areas affecting the work of psychotherapists-the therapeutic alliance.

Attachment Theory and Psychotherapy

Allen Schore:

He spells out very clearly how insensitive parenting leads to emotion dysregulation patterns in childhood and later in adulthood. He understands insecure attachment as emotion dysregulation and therefore the goal of psychotherapy is to learn new capacities to manage attachment distress-that psychotherapy is the process of changing neural patterns in the brain, the right brain in particular.


This one totally relates to my attachment style in therapy.
Thanks Ultramar, this is very interesting.