ABSTRACT
In the second part of my 1976 Maudsley Lecture, ‘The making and breaking of affectional bonds’ (1977), I described some of my ideas on the therapeutic implications of attachment theory. Much that has been learned since then has strengthened my confidence in the approach. The present account therefore should be regarded as an amplification of the earlier one. In it I give more detailed attention to the ways a patient’s earlier experiences affect the transference relationship and discuss further the therapist’s aim as being that of enabling his patient to reconstruct his working models of himself and his attachment figure(s) so that he becomes less under the spell of forgotten miseries and better able to recognize companions in the present for what they are. 156a thing which has not been understood inevitably reappears; like an unlaid ghost, it cannot rest until the mystery has been resolved and the spell broken. Sigmund Freud 1909 Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. George Santayana 1905
