ABSTRACT
Attachment concepts and research have enlarged, expanded and sharpened the lens through which we view the therapeutic process and relationship. They guide our therapeutic interventions, help us to understand patients’ communications and define the nature of their difficulties or pathology (Diamond, Stovall-McClough, Clarkin & Levy, 2003; Mills, 2005; Wallin, 2007). Following Bowlby (1988), a number of clinicians and clinical researchers have explored how internal working models of attachment or generalized expectations about others and beliefs about the self may profoundly influence the therapeutic relationship, activating the attachment system of both the patient and the corresponding caregiving system of the therapist in ways that affect therapeutic alliance, transference and countertransference dynamics. Joseph Lichtenberg (Lichtenberg, Lachmann & Fosshage, 2011) has been a pioneer in delineating how attachment and caregiving are among the most fundamental of the seven motivational systems. Each motivational system is characterized by emergent and co-constructed affects, intentions and goals, each in dialectical tension with each other and each operating at both the unconscious (or implicit procedural) and conscious (explicit) levels.
