ABSTRACT
This chapter talks about patients who defy classification. Some people have particularly mixed patterns—perhaps being strongly dismissing with one parent and preoccupied with the other. Another group, they believe do have a predominant style but it has been overlaid and disguised so that they, in effect, have a deceptive attachment pattern which can divert us from understanding them. Culture and class impact strongly on the ways in which attachment patterns manifest and a notable instance of this happens when a child with an anxious ambivalent pattern is raised in a very strict environment. The chapter looks first at the elements that can make countertransference particularly challenging in work with this group, and then at strategies that can help sustain empathy alongside the uncomfortable negative feelings that may be evoked by a client's demanding or dependent behaviour. The chapter illustrates how the therapist can be drawn into an enactment, which in this case played out the client's expectation of being rejected.
