An index of relationship quality based on attachment theory.

Two measures are reported of the nature or quality of a mother-offspring (MO) relationship during development using brown capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) as models. One is a qualitative classification of MO relationships as secure, resistant, or avoidant attachments. The other is an empirical ratio of relative affiliation to agonism called the MO relationship quality, or MORQ, Index. The two methods tapped similar relationship features so relationships high or low of a median split of MORQ values were heuristically labeled secure (n = 22) or insecure (n = 16), respectively. A comparison revealed extensive behavioral differences between secure and insecure MO relationships and suggested MORQ provided an objective, continuous measure of attachment security. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-determination theory as a fundamental theory of close relationships.

Though relatively young, the field of relationships science has an impressive body of research devoted to understanding a range of relational processes including attachment, communality, intimacy, and interdependence. However, relatively little research has examined the motivational underpinnings of these processes. Self-determination theory (SDT) offers a broad perspective on the mechanisms through which relational processes are related to personal well-being and relational functioning and the circumstances under which seemingly positive relational processes particularly result in benefits to relationships and the individuals of which they are comprised. The purpose of this review is to summarise the existing research applying SDT to relational processes and to suggest future avenues for research that will extend both relationships science and SDT. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Application of adult attachment theory to group member transference and the group therapy process.

Although clinical researchers have applied attachment theory to client conceptualization and treatment in individual therapy, few researchers have applied this theory to group therapy. The purpose of this article is to begin to apply theory and research on adult dyadic and group attachment styles to our understanding of group dynamics and processes in adult therapy groups. In particular, we set forth theoretical propositions on how group members’ attachment styles affect relationships within the group. Specifically, this article offers some predictions on how identifying group member dyadic and group attachment styles could help leaders predict member transference within the therapy group. Implications of group member attachment for the selection and composition of a group and the different group stages are discussed. Recommendations for group clinicians and researchers are offered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perceptions of Conflict and Support in Romantic Relationships: The Role of Attachment Anxiety.

Guided by attachment theory, a 2-part study was conducted to test how perceptions of relationship-based conflict and support are associated with relationship satisfaction/closeness and future quality. Dating partners completed diaries for 14 days (Part 1) and then were videotaped while discussing a major problem that occurred during the diary study (Part 2). Part 1 reveals that more anxiously attached individuals perceived more conflict with their dating partners and reported a tendency for conflicts to escalate in severity. Perceptions of daily relationship-based conflicts negatively impacted the perceived satisfaction/closeness and relationship futures of highly anxious individuals, whereas perceptions of greater daily support had positive effects. Part 2 reveals that highly anxious individuals appeared more distressed and escalated the severity of conflicts (rated by observers) and reported feeling more distressed. The authors discuss the unique features of attachment anxiety and how changing perceptions of relationship satisfaction/closeness and stability could erode commitment over time. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

When "New" Meets "Old": Configurations of Adult Attachment Representations and Their Implications for Marital Functioning.

Two studies addressed the implications of concordance versus discrepancy of attachment representations in individuals at 2 stages in their marital relationships. Engaged (n = 157) and dating (n = 101) couples participated in a multimethod 6-year longitudinal study of adult attachment. Individuals completed the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI), the Current Relationship Interview (CRI), and various questionnaires and were observed in interactions with partners. On the basis of AAI and CRI classifications, participants were placed in one of four groups: SecureAAI/SecureCRI, SecureAAI/lnsecureCRI, InsecureAAI/SecureCRI, or InsecureAAI/InsecureCRI. Each of the configurations showed a particular pattern of behavior, feelings about relationships and the self, and likelihood of relationship breakup. The findings of the studies address important points about the protective effects of attachment security and have interesting implications for the extension of attachment theory into adulthood. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attachment theory and research and the psychoanalytic process.

Attachment theory, along with relevant research, is reviewed in terms of its usefulness as a developmental theory for conceptualizing aspects of the psychoanalytic process. Because of its emphasis on the development of relationships through the process of dyadic interaction, attachment theory offers an alternative conceptualization for understanding the relationship aspects of the clinical psychoanalytic process. Manifestations of early attachment behavior can be understood as being recreated in the course of psychoanalysis and can contribute to a developmental understanding of the process. Because many psychiatric problems can be attributed to difficulties in the development of an attachment relationship, it is also possible that attachment theory may be helpful in providing further understanding of the etiology of deviations in development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Leadership and attachment theory.

Comments on the six articles contained in the special issue of the American Psychologist (January 2007) devoted to leadership, written by W. Bennis (see record 2006-23492-002); S. J. Zaccaro (see record 2006-23492-003); V. H. Vroom and A. G. Yago (see record 2006-23492-004); B. J. Avolio (see record 2006-23492-005); R. J. Sternberg (see record 2006-23492-006); and R. J. Hackman and R. Wageman (see record 2006-23492-007). The current authors opine that the inclusion of attachment theory in the study of leadership could strengthen leadership theories as a whole. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The relational self: An interpersonal social-cognitive theory.

The authors propose an interpersonal social-cognitive theory of the self and personality, the relational self, in which knowledge about the self is linked with knowledge about significant others, and each linkage embodies a self-other relationship. Mental representations of significant others are activated and used in interpersonal encounters in the social-cognitive phenomenon of transference (S. M. Andersen & N. S. Glassman, 1996), and this evokes the relational self. Variability in relational selves depends on interpersonal contextual cues, whereas stability derives from the chronic accessibility of significant-other representations. Relational selves function in if-then terms (W. Mischel & Y. Shoda, 1995), in which ifs are situations triggering transference, and thens are relational selves. An individual's repertoire of relational selves is a source of interpersonal patterns involving affect, motivation, self-evaluation, and self-regulation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attachment theory, childhood mistreatment, and religiosity.

Guided by attachment theory, the authors explore the relationship of verbal, physical, and sexual mistreatment to attachment to God, as well as to concepts of God. Each form of mistreatment was related adversely to the religiosity measures. Attachment to parents mediated the relationship between two maltreatment variables (verbal and physical mistreatment) and attachment to God, as well as the concept of God as loving and as distant. However, attachment to parents did not mediate the relationship between attachment to God and the sexual abuse variable. Sexual abuse was strongly related to difficulties with attachment to God and one's concept of God. The findings add support to the notion, even when childhood mistreatment is taken into account, that a secure attachment to parents provides the necessary context for socialization into religion. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A symbolic-connectionist theory of relational inference and generalization.

The authors present a theory of how relational inference and generalization can be accomplished within a cognitive architecture that is psychologically and neurally realistic. Their proposal is a form of symbolic connectionism: a connectionist system based on distributed representations of concept meanings, using temporal synchrony to bind fillers and roles into relational structures. The authors present a specific instantiation of their theory in the form of a computer simulation model, Learning and Inference with Schemas and Analogies (LISA). By using a kind of self-supervised learning, LISA can make specific inferences and form new relational generalizations and can hence acquire new schemas by induction from examples. The authors demonstrate the sufficiency of the model by using it to simulate a body of empirical phenomena concerning analogical inference and relational generalization. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reducing violence and prejudice in a Jamaican all age school using attachment and mentalization theory.

A study is reported of a psychoanalytic intervention in a very violent and prejudiced Jamaican school with disenfranchised children 7–9 grades who had failed academic streaming examinations. Over the period of 3 years of the intervention using mentalization and power issues approaches grounded in attachment theory, children were assisted to feel connected and valued by their school. There were striking improvements in academic performance, decreased victimization, and increased helpfulness especially in boys including significant trickle down effects to grades 1–6. Overall, the school became a place teachers wanted to join and the Jamaican government recognized their success and built a new school for them in a better location. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Me, myself, and us: Salient self-threats and relational connections.

Guided by their own amoebic self theory (C. T. Burris & J. K. Rempel, 2004), in 6 studies the authors explore the impact that involvement in an intimate relationship has on how a person appraises and responds to threat. They first show that people in relationship feel less constrained by their physical bodies compared with single people. In 3 subsequent studies involving physical size, blood/body donation, sexual activities, and responses to evil, they show that generalized sensitivity to bodily threat predicts self-protective reactions to specific physical threats among singles, but not among people in relationship, suggesting that intimate relationship involvement decreases the salience of the physical body. In the final pair of studies, they show that the salience of the physical body rebounds when people in relationship are primed, either subliminally or supraliminally, to think of themselves as distinct and separate from their partners. Thus, the present research shows how conceptualizing the self as "us" rather than "me" can transform an individual's response to the outside world, and highlights how physical cues in particular are affected by this process. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Parental attachment and adolescents' emotional adjustment: The associations with social skills and relational competence.

Young people learn from their interactions with their parents how to initiate and maintain satisfying and warm friendships. Attachment with parents thereby plays an important role in adolescents' social and emotional adjustment. The model tested in this study proposes that the relation between parental attachment and emotional adjustment is mediated by social skills and relational competence. Structural equation modeling was used to estimate the models and paths between concepts using data from a sample of 412 12–18-year-olds. In the 12–14-year-old age group, no effects of parental attachment on social skills and relational competence were displayed. However, in the 15–18-year-old age group, parental attachment was moderately related to social skills, which, in turn, affected middle adolescents' competence in friendships and romantic relationships. Parental attachment and relational competence were significant predictors of adolescents' emotional adjustment in both age groups. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The internet and relational theory.

Comments on the article by R. Kraut et al (see record 1998-10886-001) regarding the relationship of internet usage and social relationships, loneliness, and depression. Silverman notes that Kraut et al directed criticism to studies that reported positive findings regarding Internet usage on the grounds that they were anecdotal rather than empirical. The author argues that anecdotal evidence is usually the first step in setting up hypotheses that have empirical merit, and provides anecdotal evidence from members of a training institute on relational psychology who continued their dialog on line. The author argues that the Internet has given participants in the group a voice and an outlet to be heard and validated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attachment as a transformative process in AEDP: Operationalizing the intersection of attachment theory and affective neuroscience.

While many models of individual psychotherapy acknowledge the significance of attachment theory for clinical work, Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP) seeks to operationalize the intersection of attachment and affective neuroscience to introduce innovations in its clinical practice. AEDP's stance and techniques aim to (a) foster attachment security through the clinical process, and (b) harness the transformative resilience of secure attachment to potentiate deep and lasting psychological change. Viewing secure attachment as a transformative experience, case vignettes offer examples of AEDP attachment-based work: moment-to-moment experiential work processing attachment security as a powerful new experience; and then, its metatherapeutic processing. Integrating a new, positive relational experience in the here-and-now organically evokes the painful experiences of the original relational trauma. Thus, traumatic memories are also worked through in the service of positive psychological transformation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attachment disorganization and the controlling strategies: An illustration of the contributions of attachment theory to developmental psychopathology and to psychotherapy integration.

Attachment theory may be instrumental in providing a framework for psychotherapy integration, but to cope with the complexities of clinical realities it should be considered within an overall evolutionary approach to the basis of human interpersonal behavior and also in the perspective of developmental psychopathology. To illustrate these premises with materials that can be of immediate interest to practicing psychotherapists, this article focuses on the example of the clinical applications of research findings on attachment disorganization and its developmental sequels. The controlling strategies that usually follow in the preschool years infant disorganized attachment illustrate the relevance of considering the dialectics and the dynamic tensions between attachment motives and other evolved motives such as caregiving and dominance–submission. The role played by the disorganized-controlling strategies in psychopathological developments and in the relational dilemmas that often characterize the psychotherapy of difficult patients is discussed and exemplified through two clinical vignettes. It is argued that the model based on attachment disorganization and controlling strategies relies on concepts that are understandable and potentially acceptable to psychotherapists of different orientations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The dance of attachment.

This paper unites two sets of research findings on attachment to provide some guiding ideas for the monitoring and alteration of insecure therapeutic relationships. Only individual therapy with adults is considered. The aim is to explain how empirical findings can produce a guiding theoretical understanding of what can be the changing momentary dynamics between client and therapist. It is assumed that therapists enable change from insecure to more secure types of relating. The paper does not claim that attending to attachment dynamics in therapy will promote psychological change by itself. However, what is suggested is recognizing the major forces within intimate meaningful relationships. It is possible to relate the empirical findings to the terms resistance and misempathy (a restatement of transference) via the details of the dynamics of relating. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Identification, repetition, and psychological growth: An expansion of relational theory.

This article extends previous work (S. Stern, 2002) examining the place of identification within a contemporary intersubjective theoretical framework. It is argued that (a) identification is as central to psychological life as Freud thought--we merely have lost the conceptual lens to see its central position--and (b) identification has been implicitly central in many contemporary theories of the self. An unconscious search for a certain kind of identificatory experience animates many instances of pathological repetition as well as many transformative analytic encounters. This idea represents an expansion of current relational theory, which has held to a more conservative, Fairbairnian view of repetition as driven by attachment to old object ties. One extended and 2 brief clinical examples are offered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Risk and resilience in military families experiencing deployment: The role of the family attachment network.

Deployment separation constitutes a significant stressor for U.S. military men and women and their families. Many military personnel return home struggling with physical and/or psychological injuries that challenge their ability to reintegrate and contribute to marital problems, family dysfunction, and emotional or behavioral disturbance in spouses and children. Yet research examining the psychological health and functioning of military families is scarce and rarely driven by developmental theory. The primary purpose of this theoretical paper is to describe a family attachment network model of military families during deployment and reintegration that is grounded in attachment theory and family systems theory. This integrative perspective provides a solid empirical foundation and a comprehensive account of individual and family risk and resilience during military-related separations and reunions. The proposed family attachment network model will inform future research and intervention efforts with service members and their families. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Visual search for orientation among heterogeneous distractors: Experimental results and implications for signal-detection theory models of search.

Three experiments tested a signal-detection theory (SDT) model of visual search (e.g., as described in J. Palmer, C. T. Ames, & D. T. Lindsey, 1993). In Experiment 1, participants searched for a 0° line among distractors at (a) 30°; (b) ? at 30°, ? at 50°; (c) ? at 30°, 50°, and 70°; and (d) ? at 30°, ? at 70°. The SDT model predicts improved performance in the more heterogeneous conditions, as some distractors are more discriminable from the target. In contrast, in Experiment 1 human performance degraded in the more heterogeneous conditions (c and d). In Experiment 2, sparser displays improved the performance of the SDT model. In Experiment 3, search for θ° among homogeneous θ?+?20° distractors was compared with search for θ° among θ?±?20° distractors. Performance in the latter condition was often worse, relative to performance in the homogeneous condition, than predicted by the SDT model; however, this depended greatly on the identity of the target. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)