ABSTRACT
Attachment theory is almost unique among psychoanalytic theories in bridging the gap between general psychology and clinical psychodynamic theory. Many have noted the gulf that exists to this day between theories of the mind that have their roots in empirical social science (largely psychological research), and clinical theories that focus on the significance of individual experience in determining life course, including psychopathology. Paul Whittle (in press) recently described this discontinuity of theories as a fault line that runs across the entire discipline of psychology. Indeed, it is easy to discern the fault line between the tectonic plates of psychoanalysis, where giving meaning to experience is seen as the primary cause of behavior as well as the royal road to its therapeutic change, and the abutting plate of experimental psychology, with its emphasis on parsimony, insistence on reliable observation, and abhorrence of rhetoric and speculative theory-building. Yet attachment theory has a home on both sides of the fault line. How can this be?
