CHAPTER 1 Attachment and Change

In the world according to Bowlby, our lives, from the cradle to the grave, revolve around intimate attachments. Although our stance toward such attachments is shaped most influentially by our first relationships, we are also malleable. If our early involvements have been problematic, then subsequent relationships can offer second chances, perhaps affording us the potential to love, feel, and reflect with the freedom that flows from secure attachment. Psychotherapy, at its best, provides just such a healing relationship. Precisely how as psychotherapists we can enable our patients to grow beyond the limits imposed by their history is a question that attachment theory does not directly address. Yet the ongoing research inspired by Bowlby’s original insights has enormous clinical value, offering us a progressively clearer view of the development of the self in a specifically relational context. In attempting to harness the power of this research, I have identified three findings that appear to have the most profound and fertile implications for psychotherapy: first, that co-created relationships of attachment are the key context for development; second, that preverbal experience makes up the core of the developing self; and third, that the stance of the self toward experience predicts attachment security better than the facts of personal history themselves.