The Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) is both a mainstay of attachment research and a powerful clinical tool. This unique book provides a thorough introduction to the AAI and its use as an adjunct to a range of therapeutic approaches, including cognitive-behavioral therapy, psychoanalytic psychotherapy, parent-infant psychotherapy, home visiting programs, and supportive work in the context of foster care and adoption. Leading authorities provide detailed descriptions of clinical procedures and techniques, illustrated with vivid case material. Grounded in research, the volume highlights how using the AAI can enhance assessment and diagnosis, strengthen the therapeutic alliance, and facilitate goal setting, treatment planning, and progress monitoring.

The Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) is both a mainstay of attachment research and a powerful clinical tool. This unique book provides a thorough introduction to the AAI and its use as an adjunct to a range of therapeutic approaches, including cognitive-behavioral therapy, psychoanalytic psychotherapy, parent-infant psychotherapy, home visiting programs, and supportive work in the context of foster care and adoption. Leading authorities provide detailed descriptions of clinical procedures and techniques, illustrated with vivid case material. Grounded in research, the volume highlights how using the AAI can enhance assessment and diagnosis, strengthen the therapeutic alliance, and facilitate goal setting, treatment planning, and progress monitoring.

This book presents cutting-edge research on adult attachment together with a complete overview of the Adult Attachment Projective Picture System (AAP), the authors' validated developmental assessment. In addition to identifying attachment classification groups, the AAP yields important information about dimensions--including defensive processes--not evaluated by other available measures. Detailed case illustrations show what the AAP looks like "in action" and what it reveals about individuals' early experiences, sense of self, and capacity to engage in close, protective relationships. The AAP can be used in clinical or research settings; the concluding chapter discusses promising applications to studying the neurobiology of attachment.

From foremost authorities, this comprehensive work is more than just the standard reference on attachment-it has “become indispensable” in the field. Coverage includes the origins and development of attachment theory; biological and evolutionary perspectives; and the role of attachment processes in personality, relationships, and mental health across the lifespan.

Adult attachment style is a key framework for understanding problems in human relationships. This practical book introduces and explains an easily accessible assessment tool for adult attachment style, the Attachment Style Interview (ASI). It then discusses appropriate interventions that can be made to help families.

The applicability of attachment theory and research to social work and social policy relating to infants and children is well-established. Yet, its usefulness for enhancing the understanding of adults and their needs, both individually and as a group, has been less featured in the attachment literature. Adult Attachment in Clinical Social Work Practice is a wide-ranging look at attachment theory and research, its application to adults, and its natural fit with the social work profession. This edited volume covers the applicability of adult attachment theory to the clinical social work profession’s various domains that include human behavior, practice, policy, research, and social work education. It addresses the broad spectrum of clinical social work, including practice in a variety of public and private settings and with a number of diverse populations, including racial-ethnic groups, gays and lesbians, trauma survivors, and child welfare parents. The book highlights the underemphasized contribution of the social work profession to the development of attachment theory and research.

Attachment theory, the brainchild of child psychiatrist and psychoanalyst John Bowlby, has begun to have a worldwide impact among clinicians within the last ten years. This interest marks a departure from the early fate of attachment theory. At first shunned by the psychoanalytic community, Bowlby's brilliant and groundbreaking effort to recast basic psychoanalytic concepts within system theories and a new, ethologically based model of the importance of affectional ties across the life span was taken up by a group of gifted developmental researchers. Empirical research not only tested and confirmed many basic propositions of attachment theory, but also extended Attachment theory in unexpected and creative ways. Bowlby was surprised and gratified by this turn of events, but also disappointed that his intended clinical audience has not taken the theory and run with it. This edited book is in part a testament to the fact that clinicians are beginning to do just that; they are taking Attachment theory and research creatively to examine clinical issues. In doing so, new vistas and hypothesis are being put forward showing that Attachment theory is alive and well. In this volume the editors gathered a distinguished group of clinician-scholars from around the world (Argentina, Italy, Mexico, UK, USA and Spain) to examine and extend Bowlby's legacy.The book should be of interest to clinicians regardless of their orientation. Attachment theory cuts across boundaries of clinical modalities-individual, group or family therapy-and orientations-psychoanalytic, cognitive or behavioural. The book should also be of interest to researchers who may find the heuristic value of clinical insights a valuable addition to the legacy of Attachment theory.