ABSTRACT
This chapter explores couple psychotherapy some of the therapeutic applications of attachment theory that J. Bowlby had pulled together late in his publishing lifetime. Psychoanalysis places interpretation, and especially interpretation of the transference, as the foremost agent of therapeutic change. From J. Strachey's paper onwards, the quest for the "mutative" interpretation has featured in the development of psychoanalytic thinking and practice. Developmental research has adopted two methods of capturing patterns of relating: observing behaviour and representing experience. In terms of the relationship between the partners themselves, analytic couple therapists relied almost exclusively on the mutative power of understanding or interpretation, not on the reprocessing of affect. Attachment and affect mirroring constitute the process by which the self is constituted through interactions with others; the capacity for self-regulation develops from the experience of co-regulation in relationships with others. Dismissing narratives attempt to limit the influence of attachment relationships and experiences in their representations of past family relationships.
