The Applications of Attachment Theory to Psychotherapy

Attachment-informed technical approaches in psychoanalyzis

Some psychotherapists and psychoanalyzts may conduct therapy in a way that causes harm to the patient. We need to identify and classify iatrogenic (unintended but damaging) interventions in order to avert them. Many negative interventions result from a complex set of factors, including strict adherence to certain theoretical and technical dictums. However, it is here proposed, these primarily result from the analyst’s enactment of their own internal working models of dysfunctional attachments in their family of origin, which have not been adequately resolved in their own analysis. We will consider types of unhelpful psychotherapeutic intervention such as false neutrality, derogation, probing, invalidating experience, persecutory spirals, intrusive interpretations, and how these can evoke attachment re-traumatization in the patient.