ABSTRACT
The various meanings and import of bonding easily get muddled with related concepts such as identification, group cohesion, and therapeutic and group alliance. Bonding interactions can be progressive or regressive. This chapter focuses particularly on the positive aspects. Bonding may be understood as a cognitive-affective state that precedes and prepares the way for the complex process of identification. Like identification, bonding refers to an intrapsychic state, but it may describe a mode of behavioral interaction, and also, bonding may be quite conscious. In any group alliance, there is an element of bonding; although if the activity is simple, the bond does not have to be strong and deep. Bonding, attachment, affect attunement, and mind reflectivity are but a few of the innumerable, valuable contributions that have begun to change the way people feel about the relationship of the infantile aspect of the analysand and his or her relationship to the analyst.
