Mary Connors Attachment Theory

Mary Connors published an article in 2011 relating attachment theory to aspects of psychotherapy. She focuses on narratives of childhood and how they impact psychological thinking later in life. She goes on to state that looking into the development of an attachment contributes to understanding how an individual arrived at the current state that they are in and what can be done to change their current state. Connors (2011) explains further the implications of both secure and insecure attachments in childhood and how this affects the regulation of attachment relationships and how that impacts not only the child’s future relationships with others but also with themselves. Connors mentions a study that was performed by John Bowlby where similar

More research has been done on younger children because it is believed that young children depend more on their attachment figures. The interventions for younger children tend to focus on parental skills and behaviors with a goal of allowing the parents to recognize sensitive parental behaviors and promote secure attachment. When the attachment is disrupted, parents are taught to “decode” the child’s responses and understand their child’s behaviors. All studies done for interventions of attachment for older children have focused primarily on children whose attachment has been disrupted previously. These studies have been known to focus on either independent skill building (Blaustein & Kinniburgh, 2010) or building empathetic coregulation with the attachment figure (Becker-Weidman, 2006). The goal of these studies is to show the affects of consistent caregiving and reflecting on both the child and the caregiver’s behaviors. Zilberstein (2014)goes on to explain that while “attachment-focused” treatments are not used in therapeutic techniques, attachment theory has been involved in multiple treatments of psychodynamic and psychoanalytic therapy. Attachment theory states that individuals bring their personal “attachment patterns” to all of their relationships, including therapeutic relationships, which makes it easier

The research done included studying a supervised/observed relationship and how an intervention in that relationship can affect the attachment pattern. In these cases, the supervisor represents the secure base of attachment. Marmarosh (2015) continues to explain the collaboration between research and neuroscience and how it relates to psychotherapy. This is most significant in therapy that includes more than one person, like couples therapy where one person relies heavily on another for emotional support. She also discusses the newer therapy practices that include technology like skype therapy and social networking and how it can be damaging to the relationship between therapist and patient depending on the attachment style. Overall, this article focuses on the attachment between therapist and patient and how it relates to attachment theory