The Applications of Attachment Theory to Psychotherapy

How the attachment patterns of therapist and patient interlock: from collusion and collision to collaboration

Considering enactments as the inter-personalization of internal conflict, David Wallin here describes the matrix of enactments that can arise depending on the attachment pattern of the therapist as it intersects with that of the patient. He proposes that focusing on ways in which therapist and patient act-out in their relationship allows us to recognize how our own attachment patterns may be compromising our efforts to create for the patient a new and healing attachment relationship. Such a focus can also open a “royal road” to dissociated experience, the access to which is a precondition for its integration. Through identifying some common collusions and collisions, the goal of this talk is to identify some of the enactments in which therapists are regularly vulnerable to becoming ensnared.