ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on individual therapy with adults, outlining what preoccupied attachment looks like in general and in the consulting room, highlighting difficulties that commonly arise in therapy, and proposing aims and a specific focus for therapeutic work with preoccupied clients. It uses the masculine pronoun when describing anxiously attached individuals and the feminine pronoun in relation to therapists. The unifying factors among this spectrum of self-experience are the core anxiety of being abandoned and patterns of defence aimed at preventing separation; all else stems from this. From childhood on, attachment-eliciting behaviours are resorted to in order to attract the care and attention of others and hold on to them once their attention has been captured. Coercive helplessness, angry protest, and even illness are found to be effective in preventing desertion. A distinctive feature of psychotherapy with preoccupied clients concerns boundaries. Anxiously attached clients may arrive early and often overstay session times.
