Development I: Birth to 5 Years

Adult Psychoanalytic Training (APT)
2020-21, 1st Trimester — Fridays, 1:45-3:15pm
Judy K. Eekhoff, PhD
Kelly Lippman, LMHC

View Whole Syllabus

October 2, 2020 — Attachment Theory

[52 pages]

Attachment theory and research has helped us understand how infants are intrinsically motivated to preserve relationships with their caregivers, how disruption in primary attachment relationships creates vulnerability in cohesion, affective experience and ways of relating and how patterns of attachment create psychological structure.  Listening to patients with an ear to attachment patterns and compromises allows an analyst to understand the underlying dynamics of a patient’s psychic structure and how to work with these dynamics in the clinical realm.

Sroufe, L.A. (2017) Ch1, “Attachment Theory: A Humanistic Approach for Research and Practice Across Cultures” in Attachment Across Clinical and Cultural Perspectives: A Relational Psychoanalytic Approach, New York: NY. Routledge. pp1-24.

Slade, A. (2000). The Development and Organization of Attachment: Implications for Psychoanalysis. J. Amer. Psychoanal. Assn., 48(4):1147-1174.

Optional Reading

Tronick, E. (2002). The Increasing Differentiation and Nontransferability of Ways of Being Together. J. Infant Child Adolesc. Psychother., 2(4):47-60.

Fonagy, P. (2001) “Key Findings of Attachment Research”, from Attachment Theory and Psychoanalysis, pp19-46

Seligman, S. (2000). Clinical Implications of Current Attachment Theory. J. Amer. Psychoanal. Assn., 48(4):1189-1194.