Attachment-based psychotherapy: helping patients develop adaptive capacities

"Our early attachment experiences with our primary caregiver influence the adult that we become. These experiences forge our patterns of communication, emotional experience, intimate relationships, and way of living in the world. If our early attachments are secure, we learn to access and communicate adaptive feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. In contrast, if our early attachment experiences are insecure, we may struggle with dysregulated, maladaptive emotions and have difficulties in our intimate relationships--leading to anxiety, depression, and excessive or misdirected anger. This book presents an attachment-based approach to therapy that addresses the limiting and detrimental effects of negative early attachment experiences. Attachment-based psychotherapy has two major components: establishing a security-engendering therapeutic relationship and helping the patient to communicate more openly and thus to access more adaptive feelings, thoughts, and behaviors."--Publisher's description.

ch. 1. Attachment, communication, and affect : an introduction -- Part I. An attachment-based view of development -- ch. 2. Why mother matter : the evolution of maternal care -- ch. 3. The neural sculpting -- ch. 4. Attachment -- ch. 5. Communication -- ch. 6. Affect -- Part II. Attachment-based psychotherapy -- ch. 7. Defensive exclusion and the focus of attachment-based therapy -- ch. 8. Anxiety, depression, and maladaptive anger -- ch. 9. The security-engendering therapeutic relationship -- ch. 10. Deconstructing aloness : helping the patient access and communicate excluded thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.