What is Attachment Theory?
What began as a way to explain the different ways infants would react to separating from their mothers or primary care givers has become the preeminent theory explaining how we learn to love and attach in relationships. From Robert Karen’s book Becoming Attached, he explains attachment as encompassing “both the quality and strength of the parent-child bond, the ways in which it forms and develops, how it can be damaged and repaired, and the long-term impact of separations, losses, wounds, and deprivations. Beyond that, it is a theory of love and its central place in human life.”
“[T]he great promise of attachment theory,” Karen writes, “has been the prospect of finally answering some of the fundamental questions of human emotional life: How do we learn what to expect from others? How do we come to feel the way we do about ourselves in the context of an intimate relationship? How do we come to use certain futile strategies in a vain effort to get the love (often unconsciously) feel was denied us as children? How do we pass on our own parenting style to our kids?”
In therapy, I use attachment focused therapy to help clients explore past and present attachment injuries and attachment styles to form a more complete picture of the underlying problems. Each one of us has an attachment story, and understanding how that story informs our behavior and our relationships is central to knowing how to free ourselves from the emotional wounds of the past. Attachment theory is one way clients can better understand their relationships, their partners, their children, and family, as well.