- Oxford Library of Psychology
- Oxford Library of Psychology
- Oxford Library of Psychology
- About the Editor
- Contributors
- Treatment Processes and Outcomes in Psychology: A Multidisciplinary, Biopsychosocial Approach
- Temperament and Personality
- Self-Regulatory Processes in Early Development
- Sociocultural Contexts and Stressors
- Immune System Functioning and Mental Health: Implications for Assessment and Treatment in Counseling and Psychotherapy
- Therapist Characteristics and Interventions: Enhancing Alliance and Involvement with Youth
- Therapist Characteristics and Strategies for Enhancing the Therapeutic Alliance and Treatment Outcomes with Adults
- Therapist Self-Care to Mitigate Secondary Traumatization
- Mental Health Professionals Working in a Shared Traumatic Reality
- Client, Therapist, and Treatment Variables: Client–Therapist “Matching”
- Potential Obstacles to Treatment Success in Adults: Client Characteristics
- Attachment as Moderator Variable in Counseling and Psychotherapy with Adults
- Collaborative/Therapeutic Assessment: Procedures to Enhance Client Outcomes
- Evaluating Treatments and Interventions: What Constitutes “Evidence-Based” Treatment?
- Fidelity with Flexibility: Treatment Acceptability and Individualized Adaptations of Evidence-Supported Treatments
- Prevention as Treatment: Enhancing Resilience in High-Risk Children
- Enhancing Positive Adaptation, Well-being, and Psychosocial Functioning in Children by Promoting Positive Parenting
- Treating the Child and Adolescent in the Family and Social Context
- Career Counseling with Adults: Theories, Interventions, and Populations
- Conceptualizing Placebo as Active Component and Adjunct in Psychological Treatment
- Pharmacological Adjuncts and Evidence-Supported Treatments for Trauma: The Role of Psychotropic Medications in Enhancing Treatment Effectiveness
- Client and Therapist Reports: Symptom Reduction, Functional Improvement, and the Therapeutic Alliance
- Dose Response and the Shape of Change
- Treatment Modalities: Comparing Treatment Outcomes and Therapeutic Processes in Individual, Family, and Group Counseling and Psychotherapy
- Neuroimaging Promises and Caveats: Methodological Issues and Implications for Research in Psychological Disorders and Treatments
- A Multidisciplinary, Biopsychosocial Approach to Treatment: Implications for Research and Practice
- Index
Abstract and Keywords
This chapter reviews John Bowlby’s attachment theory and examines how client attachments influence individual, couple, and group therapy treatments. Bowlby (1988) specifically emphasized how the individual counseling relationship provides a new secure attachment experience for clients that offers them the opportunity to internalize more positive working models of themselves and others. Similarly, in couple counseling, therapy challenges automatic negative expectations that hinder intimacy, and it facilitates each partner in becoming a secure base for the other. Group therapy, like the other modalities, encourages members to examine their internal representations of themselves and others in the group, and the group becomes a secure base from which to examine automatic thoughts and emotions that often hinder intimacy. The chapter includes an extensive review of the empirical work applying attachment theory to these three therapeutic modalities, and it concludes by addressing future research and clinical implications.
Keywords: attachment, secure base, counseling, group, couple, individual, transference, countertransference
Cheri L. Marmarosh is Professor of Professional Psychology at the George Washington University in Washington, DC.
Department of Psychology, The George Washington University
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- Oxford Library of Psychology
- Oxford Library of Psychology
- Oxford Library of Psychology
- About the Editor
- Contributors
- Treatment Processes and Outcomes in Psychology: A Multidisciplinary, Biopsychosocial Approach
- Temperament and Personality
- Self-Regulatory Processes in Early Development
- Sociocultural Contexts and Stressors
- Immune System Functioning and Mental Health: Implications for Assessment and Treatment in Counseling and Psychotherapy
- Therapist Characteristics and Interventions: Enhancing Alliance and Involvement with Youth
- Therapist Characteristics and Strategies for Enhancing the Therapeutic Alliance and Treatment Outcomes with Adults
- Therapist Self-Care to Mitigate Secondary Traumatization
- Mental Health Professionals Working in a Shared Traumatic Reality
- Client, Therapist, and Treatment Variables: Client–Therapist “Matching”
- Potential Obstacles to Treatment Success in Adults: Client Characteristics
- Attachment as Moderator Variable in Counseling and Psychotherapy with Adults
- Collaborative/Therapeutic Assessment: Procedures to Enhance Client Outcomes
- Evaluating Treatments and Interventions: What Constitutes “Evidence-Based” Treatment?
- Fidelity with Flexibility: Treatment Acceptability and Individualized Adaptations of Evidence-Supported Treatments
- Prevention as Treatment: Enhancing Resilience in High-Risk Children
- Enhancing Positive Adaptation, Well-being, and Psychosocial Functioning in Children by Promoting Positive Parenting
- Treating the Child and Adolescent in the Family and Social Context
- Career Counseling with Adults: Theories, Interventions, and Populations
- Conceptualizing Placebo as Active Component and Adjunct in Psychological Treatment
- Pharmacological Adjuncts and Evidence-Supported Treatments for Trauma: The Role of Psychotropic Medications in Enhancing Treatment Effectiveness
- Client and Therapist Reports: Symptom Reduction, Functional Improvement, and the Therapeutic Alliance
- Dose Response and the Shape of Change
- Treatment Modalities: Comparing Treatment Outcomes and Therapeutic Processes in Individual, Family, and Group Counseling and Psychotherapy
- Neuroimaging Promises and Caveats: Methodological Issues and Implications for Research in Psychological Disorders and Treatments
- A Multidisciplinary, Biopsychosocial Approach to Treatment: Implications for Research and Practice
- Index
