ATTACHMENT STYLE

MEYER, BJÖRN
PILKONIS, PAUL A.

¹Department of Psychology, Louisian State University
²Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic.

³Correspondence regarding this article should be addressed to Björn Meyer, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, 236 Audubon Hall, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803. E-mail: [email protected].

Portions of this article are adapted from J. C. Norcross (Ed.), Psychotherapy relationships that work. New York: Oxford University Press.

Psychotherapy: Theory/Research/Practice/Training 38(4):p 466-472, Winter 2001.

This article provides a brief review of attachment theory and recent research studies on its implications for individual psychotherapy. Attachment theory offers a conceptual framework that helps illuminate how past experiences with caregivers might influence current transactions between therapist and patient. Both patients and therapists may form internal working models that are based, in part, on early experiences of interpersonal responsiveness. Such working models are reflected in secure, anxious-ambivalent, and anxious-avoidant attachment styles, which describe whether patients (and therapists) tend to be comfortable and confident in relationships, fearful of abandonment, or defensively separate. Recent studies showed that attachment styles in the context of therapy can be measured reliably and related to therapeutic process (e.g., the alliance) and outcome (e.g., treatment response).