ABSTRACT
The Adult Attachment Interview is structured entirely around the topic of attachment, principally the individuals' relationship to their mother and father during childhood. Attachment theory and research is the theoretical and methodological underpinning of the study with ties to broader issues in psychoanalysis and developmental psychology. It is hoped that the interview measures deployed successfully in the study may come into wider use in the applied fields that were of so much interest to Anna Freud, Albert Solnit, and Joseph Goldstein. This might lead to evidence-based strategies for providing support for those involved in the complicated social and judicial task of deciding how to provide for a child's best interests when birth parents, and perhaps the public care system. The chapter summarizes some of the findings from a London-based longitudinal study of attachment representations and adoption outcome.
