ABSTRACT
The most credible method of assessing adult attachment status is probably the Adult Attachment Interview. Instead of the Adult Attachment Interview it was decided to use three ‘paper and pencil’ self-completion questionnaires. These were: Feeney, Noller and Hanrahan’s ‘Assessing Adult Attachment: Developments in the conceptualisation of security and insecurity’. The Adult Attachment Interview is seen as the gold standard in this area. Examination of the correlations and graphs suggested that there was a significant correlation between the ‘Insecure attachment’ score and the independent measure of empathic attunement. The students who got a rating of insecure attachment style did worse on the score for goal-corrected empathic attunement. This chapter develops some strategy with trainees for noticing when this happens, and for devising ways to get round it in order to open up the flow of communication again or to seek help in regaining their empathic capacity from a competent supervisor.
