ABSTRACT
This chapter briefly outlines two related psychoanalytic theories helpful in understanding people and their difficulties. Attachment theory holds that an essential need for people is positive human attachments. If an individual in childhood is deprived of positive human attachments, he may find a substitute. A common precipitating factor in the exacerbation of psychiatric symptoms is the loss of, threatened loss of, or disappointment in important attachments. It is important not only to identify these losses, but also to identify their importance and meaning to the patient, based on predisposing factors, such as early attachment patterns. Two defensive tendencies in which interpersonal experiences are repeated instead of remembered involve an individual’s projection of either a self- or object-image on to another person, concurrently identifying respectively with the internal object or with the self.
