Applying Attachment Theory in Clinical Practice

CPD

Handouts

Speaker

Linda Cundy Related seminars and products

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Linda Cundy is an attachment-based psychoanalytic psychotherapist and supervisor in private practice, and a trainer specialising in attachment. She has taught on a number of psychotherapy training courses since the 1990s, including a long association with the Wimbledon Guild where she developed a Post Graduate Diploma in Attachment-Based Therapy. She has contributed a number of articles to professional journals and has written / edited four books to date: Love in the Age of the Internet: Attachment in the Digital Era (2015, Karnac), Anxiously Attached: Understanding and Working with Preoccupied Attachment (2017), Attachment and the Defence Against Intimacy: Understanding and Working with Avoidant Attachment, Self-Hatred, and Shame (2018), and Attachment, Relationships and Food: From Cradle to Kitchen (2021). She continues to be involved in training on a freelance basis and plans to spend more time writing. Her main practice is in Stoke Newington, where she offers attachment-based psychotherapy, counselling and clinical supervision.

Objectives

1. Understand the theory underpinning this model.
2. Understand the ways in which deficits in key areas of relational experience contribute to patterns of Insecure Attachment.
3. Be able to recognize the major patterns of Insecure Attachment in the therapy room.
4. Use this model to inform clinical work.
5. Recognize how different patterns of Insecure Attachment call for different emphases when using the proposed model. 
6. Understand how the key Areas of Focus relate to, and inform, each other.

Outline

The Basics: From Classical to Contemporary Attachment Theory

• From Maternal Deprivation to Developmental Deficit 
• Insecure Attachment: categories and adaptations to unique relational ecosystems 
• Impact of trauma 
• Core patterns of attachment-seeking and defenses 

The Aims of Attachment-Based Therapy 

• Qualities of Secure Attachment 
• Aims of Attachment-Based Therapy: Areas of Focus 
• How to use the model 
• Losses, deficits, mourning 

Key Areas of Focus (i)

• Intergenerational narrative 
• Affect regulation 
• Mentalization 

Key Areas of Focus (ii)

• Relationship with oneself 
• Relationships with other people 
• Internalizing a new ‘Secure object’ 

Target Audience

• Counsellors
• Psychotherapists from all modalities
• Psychoanalysts
• Clinical and Counselling Psychologists
• Trainees in any of these areas

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