ABSTRACT
Emotionally focused therapy therapists choreograph prototypical bonding events that build trust and secure attachment. The application of attachment theory to adult relationships is a revolutionary event for couple therapy, because, for the first time, it provides the couple therapist a coherent, relevant, well-researched framework for understanding and intervening in adult love. Attachment behaviors become heightened and intense as anxious clinging, pursuit, and even aggressive attempts to control and obtain a response from the loved one escalate. Angry criticism, viewed through the attachment lens, is most often an attempt to modify the other partner’s inaccessibility, and as a protest response to isolation and perceived abandonment by the partner. Research into adult attachment has added to our understanding of adult attachment style. In the attachment literature the term attachment styles, which implies an individual characteristic, is often used interchangeably with the term attachment strategies, which implies behavior that is more context specific.
