Description

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Winner of the 2018 International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD) Pierre Janet Writing Award.

A comprehensive treatment approach for the repair and resolution of attachment disturbances in adults, for use in clinical settings.

With contributions by Paula Morgan-Johnson, Paula Sacks, Caroline R. Baltzer, James Hickey, Andrea Cole, Jan Bloom, and Deirdre Fay. 

Attachment Disturbances in Adults is a landmark resource for (1) understanding attachment, its development, and the most clinically relevant findings from attachment research, and (2) using this understanding to inform systematic, comprehensive, and clinically effective and efficient treatment of attachment disturbances in adults. 

It offers an innovative therapeutic model and set of methods for treating adult patients with dismissing, anxious-preoccupied, or disorganized attachment. In rich detail, it integrates historical and leading-edge attachment research into practical, effective treatment protocols for each type of insecure attachment. Case transcripts and many sample therapist phrasings illustrate how to apply the methods in practice.

Part I, "Foundational Concepts," features a comprehensive overview of the field of attachment, including its history, seminal ideas, and existing knowledge about the development of attachment bonds and behaviors.

Part II, "Assessment," addresses the assessment of attachment disturbances. It includes an overview of attachment assessment for the clinician and a trove of practical recommendations for assessing patients' attachment behavior and status both outside of and within the therapeutic relationship.

In Part III, "Treatment," the authors not only review existing treatment approaches for attachment disorders in adults, but also introduce an unprecedented, powerful new treatment method. This method, the "Three Pillars" model, is built on three essential clinical ingredients:

1. Systematically utilizing ideal parent figure imagery to develop a new positive, stable internal working model of secure attachment


2. Fostering a range of metacognitive skills


3. Fostering nonverbal and verbal collaborative behavior in treatment

Used together, these interdependent pillars form a unified and profoundly effective method of treatment for attachment disturbances in adults—a must for any clinician.

In Part IV, "Type-Specific Treatment," readers will learn specific variations of the three treatment pillars to maximize efficacy with each type of insecure attachment.

Finally, Part V, "A Treatment Guide and Expected Outcomes," describes treatment in a step-by-step format and provides a success-assessment guide for the Three Pillars approach.

This book is a comprehensive educational resource and a deeply practical clinical guide. It offers clinicians a complete set of tools for effective and efficient treatment of adult patients with attachment disturbances.

About the Author

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Daniel Brown, PhD, is Associate Clinical Professor of Psychology at Harvard Medical School, where he teaches courses on performance excellence for health professionals and judges. He is the author of sixteen books, including Memory, Trauma-Treatment, and the Law (with Alan Scheflin and Cory Hammond), winner of the 1999 Guttmacher award from the American Psychiatric Association for outstanding contribution to forensic psychiatry.

David S. Elliott, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and former president of the Rhode Island Psychological Association. He is on the faculty of the International School for Psychotherapy, Counseling, and Group Leadership, in St Petersburg, Russia, and teaches internationally on attachment, personality, and psychotherapy process.

Praise For…

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The book provides a very thorough guide of how attachment disturbances can be related to psychopathology such as emotional distress, somatic disorders, trauma, addictions, and personality disorders. . . . [A]n incredibly thorough resource for someone who needs an advanced understanding of attachment issues for a course or for the mental health professional who wishes to integrate this information into their work.
— PsychCentral

I thoroughly recommend reading this book. . . . [F]ull of practical detail about the three-pillars method, and sample ‘scripts’ and sessions, which I found extremely valuable. I intend, when appropriate, to put the elements that I have described into practice.
— Human Givens Journal

A masterpiece of integration, creativity, and clinical wisdom, Attachment Disturbances in Adults stands out as a vibrantly innovative treasure that will endure, one of those rare trail-blazers. Mental health professionals across disciplines will delight in the rich depth and breadth of this essential book, which seamlessly interweaves research, theory and treatment. Brown, Elliott and colleagues have written a tour de force that is surely destined to become an instant classic.

— Kathy Steele, MN, CS, Clinical Director, Metropolitan Counseling Services, and author of Coping with Trauma-Related Dissociation

This is an incredibly important volume that makes a stunning contribution to the field. It spectacularly achieves an integration of the lifespan literature on attachment and its sequelae with intervention. Rarely does a scholarly work contribute to the understanding of the processes underlying attachment and its dysfunction while simultaneously providing a clearly delineated prescription for treatment. Practitioners will profit from the detailed clinical vignettes and researchers will gain many ideas warranting empirical investigation.
— Dante Cicchetti, PhD, McKnight Presidential Chair, Professor of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota

This is an extraordinary achievement. The must-have book on attachment, it includes everything you need to know about attachment, and then some—history, research, typology AND treatment! Richly comprehensive, precise, and wise, it is honed by real clinical experience, with step-by-step treatment protocols tailored to each attachment classification. This book should be required reading for all graduate students in clinical programs, be they clinical psychology, psychiatry, counseling, or social work. It should be a sine qua non for all attachment researchers. It is a book that any clinician who works with trauma and attachment disturbances—which means all clinicians, for attachment disturbances underlie most major syndromes—should have and master.

— Diana Fosha, PhD, developer of AEDP, author of The Transforming Power of Affect, Director of the AEDP Institute

Attachment Disturbances in Adults is a book of genius, an unequalled account of how far the attachment field has evolved since Bowlby's groundbreaking studies of attachment bonds. It presents an outstanding, encyclopedic, and integrative overview of theoretical understanding, assessment, and treatment. All this leads to a highly inspirational and effective treatment model, consisting of three "pillars": The Ideal Parent-Figure Protocol, Metacognitive Interventions for Attachment Disturbances, and Fostering Collaborative Capacity and Behavior. These pillars not only include the best of what has been written before in the attachment field, but also integrate the authors' wonderful work from other domains. This extraordinary book will set the bar for many years to come.

— Onno van der Hart, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Psychopathology of Chronic Traumatization, Utrecht University, and author of The Haunted Self

Attachment Disturbances in Adults is a comprehensive resource for understanding attachment, its development, its dysfunctions, its assessments, and its treatments. It covers relevant research in all these areas, grounding it in evidence-based actualities. But it is the book's comprehensiveness, its thorough inclusiveness—not only with regard to all the important aspects of attachment but to the full field of treatment approaches available for each aspect, drawn together into a coherent and compelling synthesizing framework—that make it clearly the exemplary and definitive book to date on this extraordinary topic. A brilliant must-have for clinicians, therapists, and interested laypeople alike.

— Ken Wilber, Integral Psychology