Attachment Across the Lifespan - Supporting Relational Security: Practice-Focused Interventions and Approaches for Specific Developmental Periods. Final 5th Updated 2022 Series.

This year’s newly revised, and final Attachment Seminar Series (5th)—(1) Lifespan Survey, (2) Adult Disorganisation and (3) Attachment and DV—seeks both to update our knowledge/skills and to contribute to closing the research-to-treatment gap for mental health practitioners. [The presenter is retiring at the end of 2022 after contributing a decade of attachment seminars with PDP].

Attachment Theory suffers twin challenges in achieving its therapeutic charge to bring relief for human suffering. First, like many robust theories, coping with permanent expansion and increasing research complexity requires continual updating. Next, empirical successes typically face a ‘research-to-treatment gap’ that resembles similar empirical conundrums in lifespan developmental sciences. In addition to integrating relevant attachment empirical findings for 2021 and 2022, the three workshops will bring greater focus on the underappreciated relevance of research such as the approach to lifespan attachment processes emerging form Karlen Lyons-Ruth and her team within the Cambridge (MA) Health Alliance.

This initial lifespan foundational attachment seminar (the first of three in 2022) provides a unique overview of practical interventions applicable across the full attachment lifespan. For each age group, evidence-based approaches will be engaged whereby specific skills and activities are explored with a focus on applicability for practice. Although fewer practitioners work with every lifespan age group, awareness of the full spectrum remains valuable for understanding clients, their families and their relations.

After an initial introduction to recent developments in Attachment Theory in 2022, the seminar focuses on five specific age groups:

1. The initial glance reviews caregiver pre-natal experiences through development of pre-language attachments in infancy where implicit patterns of interaction dominate. Much of the clinical progress in the attachment world has emerged in supporting first attachments with key caregivers.
2. The emergence of first goal-corrected partnerships in preschool years [ages 2-5] and further school period also includes greater integration within the family system and new attachments possibly formed with key mentors such as teachers and sports coaches.
3. Adolescence sees the fascinating emergence of an individual’s first peer or symmetrical attachments as adulthood beckons. This ‘sensitive period’ remains only partially understood presenting research and practice challenges. Our general attachment styles or orientations emerge distinct from specific relationships, along with new realities for security. After a look at the more efficacious interventions for parent-child and peer relations, a helpful look at the practical needs for the intersections of Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) [i.e., neurodiversity] and adolescent attachment will be engaged.
4. Adolescence overlaps with Adulthood as new longer-term relationships—both romantic and close friendships—emerge. The application of attachment to couples work as depicted in Susan Johnson’s important work with Emotionally Focused Therapy [EFT] for couples takes the next focus. In addition, Feeney & Collins more recent ‘Thriving through Relationships’ approach offers a complementary look at building attachment resilience via relational catalysts. [Please note the more in-depth work with adolescent/adult maladaptive attachment is considered in Seminars 2 and serious relational conflict in the DV focussed Attachment Seminar 3.]
5. Finally, the seminar concludes with a vital glimpse of emerging research on shifts in attachment in later life. Existential and familial considerations will also be taken up for this period. A look at the impact of dementia in the context of attachment and care concludes the survey.

In summary, the seminar seeks to skill up mental health workers by providing a relatively focussed but still comprehensive survey of the most current research and available practical interventions by lifespan period.