Luminary Series Inaugural Presentation

John Bowlby’s theory of attachment at first was so controversial that he had to move his practice down the road from the Anna Freud Center in London, then the home of British psychoanalysis. Today attachment theory and its empirical base have a growing presence in clinical practice and popular psychology. Indeed, as Wachtel suggests, attachment theory can be thought of as a plural noun, which can make it difficult to know how to make the best use of it in psychodynamic work with adult clients.

This workshop is designed to give practitioners a clear understanding of Bowlby’s theory, its relation to later iterations, and a framework for using it in psychodynamic practice. The first half of the workshop with present the essence of the theory and Ainsworth’s and others’ perspective on security, insecurity, organization and disorganization, internal representations, along with examples of how these constructs are assessed in a research context. In the second half a framework for thinking about attachment related issues will be presented along with clinical case examples that show the applicability of attachment as well as its limitations.

Presenter:

 Dr. Judith Solomon is internationally recognized for her pioneering research and theory-building on attachment and caregiving, including her discovery, with Mary Main, of the infant disorganized/disoriented attachment category. She conducted the first longitudinal study of infants in separated and divorced families and developed key representational measures of caregiving and child attachment, including the Caregiving Interview and the Attachment Doll Play Projective Assessment. Dr. Solomon is the first editor of Attachment Disorganization (1999) and Disorganized Attachment and Caregiving (2011). She was recently a Fulbright Visiting Professor at the University of Vienna, a Visiting Researcher in the Department of Public Health and Primary Care, Cambridge University, UK, and a 2018 recipient of the John Bowlby Award for Contributions to the Field of Attachment from the Bowlby Centre, London, UK. Dr. Solomon also maintains a private clinical practice in Connecticut comprised of adults and parent-child relationships.