Attachment Therapy with Adolescents and Adults: Theory and Practice Post Bowlby

by Dorothy Heard, Una McCluskey, Brian Lake

Overview

This is a revised edition of an important title originally published in 2009. It is written primarily for psychotherapists and other practitioners and describes a new and effective form of dynamic therapy designed for working with adults and with adolescents. The theory, on which the new form of therapy is based, is centred in a paradigm that extends and crucially alters the paradigm for developmental psychology opened by the Bowlby/Ainsworth attachment theory. It describes a pre-programmed process, the dynamics sustaining attachment and interest sharing, which is activated as soon as people perceive that they are in danger. This process is made up of seven pre-programmed systems which interact with one another as an integrated whole. They include Bowlby's two complementary goal-corrected behavioural systems: attachment (also referred to as careseeking) and caregiving. Whenever the process is able to function effectively, it enables people to adapt more constructively and co-operatively to changing circumstances.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781780490427
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	12/31/2012
Edition description:	Revised Edition
Pages:	268
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Dorothy Heard is a pyschoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice and was formerly a Consultant in John Bowlby’s Department at the Tavistock Clinic, London.

Brian Lake was formerly Consultant in Psychotherapy at St James’s University Hospital, Leeds.

Una McCluskey is a senior lecturer in social work at the University of York. She has had a long-standing interest in relationship work and has written extensively on working with individuals, couples, families, and groups. She is a Member of the Scottish Institute of Human Relations and the Systems-Centered® Training and Research Institute in Philadelphia. She is a Registered Member of the United Kingdom Council of Psychotherapy (psychodynamic and systemic divisions) and is the first European licensed Systems-Centered® practitioner. She is a co-editor (with Carol-Ann Hooper) of The Psychodynamics of Abuse: The Cost of Fear.

Table of Contents

CONTENTS PART 1: THE THEORETICAL BACKGROUND OF AN AUTONOMOUS SELF THAT IS IMMERSED IN THE DYNAMICS OF ATTACHMENT AND INTEREST SHARING 1. Introducing a new attachment paradigm 2. Introducing a new conceptualisation of the self 3. How the self communicates with other people and with itself 4. The defensive self 5. The careseeking self 6. The caregiving self 7. The interest sharing self 8. The sexual self 9. Diagrams depicting the interplay between five of the systems that take part in the dynamics of attachment and interest sharing 10. The self under threat and alone: supported or unsupported by the sixth and seventh systems PART 2: THERAPY GUIDED BY THE NEW ATTACHMENT PARADIGM 11. The principles of therapy guided by the dynamics of attachment and interest sharing 12. Descriptions of training events that enable participants who are professional caregivers to experience the effects on the self of achieving and not achieving the goal of careseeking. 13. Working with an individual adult client with a focus on her defensive identity 14. Exploring the dynamics of attachment and interest sharing with groups of professional caregivers: The structure, composition and timing of the course of therapy attended by a group of professional caregivers 15. Exploring the dynamics of attachment and interest sharing with groups of professional caregivers: Findings that support a paradigmatic shift in therapeutic practice 16. Exploring the dynamics of attachment and interest sharing with groups of professional caregivers: How learning from attending the course is applied in a variety of work settings. PART 3 Appendix 1. Bowlby's original ideas Appendix 2. Ainsworth's contribution to Bowlby's ideas Appendix 3. The Strange Situation Test Appendix 4. The Adult Attachment Investigation The Glossary

Editorial Reviews

"This book should appeal to a very wide audience. All of us seek to understand one another and in doing so we all draw on a kind of biological insight into what behaviour ‘means’. Watching children from another culture and with another language we understand instinctively much of what their behaviour is about. This is a book that draws systematically on watching people and thinking about behaviour in a biological way. It is both thoughtful and fascinating. It is surely a foundation on which others will want to build."

Ian Sinclair

"This book should appeal to a very wide audience. All of us seek to understand one another and in doing so we all draw on a kind of biological insight into what behaviour ‘means’. Watching children from another culture and with another language we understand instinctively much of what their behaviour is about. This is a book that draws systematically on watching people and thinking about behaviour in a biological way. It is both thoughtful and fascinating. It is surely a foundation on which others will want to build."

From the Publisher