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The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential of the Adult Attachment Projective Picture System (AAP) as a measure of attachment state of mind in adults with intellectual disabilities. The AAP is a free response picture system method of assessing patterns of adult attachment with established validity and reliability in community and clinical samples.

The paper reports on five cases of adults with intellectual disabilities who were administered the AAP as part of routine clinical work. The AAP administration procedure was modified to take account of the participants’ intellectual disabilities.

It was possible to code and classify each AAP using the established coding and classification system. The authors coded four cases blind to each other ' s classification; they agreed on classifications for three cases and reached consensus on the fourth. The AAP analysis showed strong correspondence with case history material.

The AAP demonstrates the potential to assess attachment state of mind in adults with intellectual disabilities and is the first developmental measure of attachment status that has shown potential in this population. The paper discusses clinical application of the AAP and directions for future research.

The purpose of this paper is to assess whether the Adult Attachment Projective (AAP) Picture System is a reliable and face valid measure of internal working models of attachment in adults with intellectual disabilities (ID).

The AAPs of 20 adults with ID were coded blind by two reliable judges and classified into one of four groups: secure, dismissing, preoccupied, or unresolved. Inter-rater reliability was calculated using κ. Six participants repeated the assessment for test-retest reliability. Two independent experts rated ten cases on the links between the AAP analysis and the clinical history.

There was significant agreement between AAP judges, κ=0.677, p<0.001. Five out of six participants showed stability in their classifications over time. The majority of expert ratings were “good” or “excellent”. There was a significant inter-class correlation between raters suggesting good agreement between them r=0.51 (p<0.05). The raters’ feedback suggested that the AAP had good clinical utility.

The inter-rater reliability, stability, face validity, and clinical utility of the AAP in this population is promising. Further examination of these findings with a larger sample of individuals with ID is needed.

This is the first study attempting to investigate the reliability and validity of the AAP in this population.

The purpose of this paper is to report on the initial validation of a new method, called the “Meaning of the Child Interview” (MotC), to assess the psychological meaning all children have for their parents, but which in cases of risk, submerge or distort the child’s identity. The MotC analyses parental discourse using a method developed from the discourse analysis used to classify the Adult Attachment Interview together with patterns derived from the infant CARE-Index, a procedure that evaluates face-to-face parent-child interaction. This allows the MotC to illuminate how the parent’s thinking influences the developing relationship between parent and child.

Parents are interviewed using the Parent Development Interview (PDI), or an equivalent, and then the interview transcript is classified using the MotC system. The coding method was developed from interviews drawn from the first author’s work with children and families in the family court system, and then tested with a sample of 85 mothers and fathers, 62 of whom were parents drawn from an “at risk” context. The parents were also videoed in a short free play interaction, using the CARE-Index.

The study found a strong correspondence between the levels of risk as assessed by the MotC patterns of parental representation of care giving, the risk to the parent-child relationship observed using the CARE-Index. There was also corroboration of the patterns of interaction identified by the MotC.

The results of the study provide good evidence for the Meaning of the Child as an identifiable construct, and as an assessment tool to identify and assess the nature of “at risk” parent-child relationships. MotC was developed in a clinical setting within the Family Court justice system, and is designed to offer assistance to child protection and mental health practitioners deciding how to intervene in particular parent-child relationships.

Childhood trauma is very likely to produce ill‐health and psychiatric disorder in adulthood. The paper discusses attachment theory and various forms of insecure attachment to the parent/caregiver, particularly disorganised attachment behaviour and the traumatic attachment response. Eliciting the (usually hidden) traumatic attachment in adults can give access to the patient's representational models of their parents, allowing a basis for treatment of disorders. The paper describes and illustrates the use of the TAIT technique for eliciting such models.

The purpose of this paper was to determine the attachment strategies of prospective adoptive parents and any correlation between attachment and the defensive strategies they used when talking about loss of fertility. The study also examined whether attachment strategy of the applicants had a bearing on the decision by the local authority to place a child.

The sample was comprised of 48 respondents (21 couples) representing 84 per cent of all people who applied to one UK Social Services Department in a 12-month period. Placement of a child was reviewed two years following the assessment. The study used the dynamic maturational model version of the adult attachment interview (DMM-AAI), together with added questions on loss of fertility to assess the applicants’ attachment strategies together with unresolved loss and trauma and the DMM modifiers.

Unlike adoption studies using the Main and Goldwyn system, this study rated very few of the applicants’ AAIs as secure (13 per cent), 48 per cent were in the normative low-risk range and 52 per cent of the AAIs were coded in the more complex DMM insecure strategies. There was a significant bias towards marriages where the partners deployed opposite low-risk/DMM strategies (13 (62 per cent) of couples). Compared with data on non-clinical populations the AAIs showed a high level of unresolved loss or trauma (58 per cent). Using a six-way distribution (A1-2, C1-2, B, A3-4, C3-6 and A/C) there was an 87 per cent correspondence between discourse about loss of fertility and that about attachment, thereby supporting the established proposition that reproduction is part of the attachment system. Twenty one per cent of the AAIs were coded as “disorientated” and this is discussed in terms of conflict for adoptive of parents concerning the raising of a child who carries their own genes or those of strangers. A case is made to conceptualise negative impact of infertility in terms of unresolved trauma rather than loss.

This study adds to research showing that the DMM approach is more finely calibrated than the ABC+disorganised model with the latter likely over coding for security. The results emphasise that fertility and reproduction are legitimate subjects for attachment studies and that AAI discourse analysis is a valid methodology for future research. However coder agreement as to whether or not loss of fertility was resolved was only fair (64 per cent) κ. 0.25 (po0.33). More work is required in order to determine what constitutes unresolved loss of fertility and what impact, if any, this has on parenting an adopted child.

The practice implications are considered in a separate paper.

The findings are contentious in that they suggest a significant number (48 per cent) of adoptive parents have needs not dissimilar to other clients of psychological services.

This is the first DMM-AAI study with prospective adoptive parents and the findings show significant differences when compared with previous studies using the Main and Goldwyn AAI. It is also the first study to establish fertility as a legitimate area for attachment studies by using AAI discourse analysis.

This article considers some of the implications of research findings into relational conflict and couple violence and suggests links with elder abuse. An outline of a research design to study elder abuse from an attachment perspective is discussed.

Attachment Theory can be regarded as central to the concept of relational security. There is a paucity of research examining the coherence of this construct for ward-based staff. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Five female nurses from the acute admission and assessment ward of a UK medium secure unit acted as participants. Semi-structured interviews were conducted, and inductive thematic analysis was applied.

Six themes; “staff-service user relationships”, “staff diversities”, “service user backgrounds”, “variability in service users’ presentations”, “service users with personality disorder are problematic” and “nurses do not use attachment” emerged from the data. The nurses used heuristic models of attachment-related behaviour and they lacked knowledge of constructs associated with Attachment Theory.

Acute admissions may not be representative of all treatment contexts. Traditional models of attachment style may have only limited relevance in forensic services.

Limited knowledge and confidence in the nurses regarding how Attachment Theory might apply to service users is interesting because it may limit the extent to which care, treatment and risk management might be informed by an understanding of service user representations of therapeutic relationships. Training and educational interventions for nurses that enhance understanding of personality development and attachment styles are warranted.

The importance of nurses for achieving relational security is emphasised and the adequacy of their training is questioned.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether different patterns of workplace attachment exist and to explore the relations between adult attachment styles and the level of workplace attachment.

Participants were 351 Italian employees who completed a questionnaire composed of the Workplace Attachment Scale and the Relationship Questionnaire. Data were analyzed using correspondence analysis.

The results showed that high scores on workplace attachment correlated significantly with secure attachment style, while low scores correlated with insecure attachment styles. These results shed light on different workplace attachment styles.

The limitation in this study mostly concern the use of self-reporting instruments to measure the participants’ attachment style, since they may be susceptible to distortions. However, the distribution of attachment styles in this sample is similar to the worldwide distribution, which supports the authors’ choice.

To the extent that it is possible to identify a specific workplace attachment style, it should also be possible to change some of the human resource management practices inducing employees to develop a workplace secure attachment style.

Researchers tended to ignore the extension of the adult attachment behavioral system to examine core environmental relationships. The present study, applying attachment theory to workplace attachment, provides theoretical support that the bonds that an individual forms with workplace can be classified as attachment bonds.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the parental sensitivity and self-protective strategies of parents with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and those of their children.

Six parents with ADHD and their under 3-years-old children participated. One parent took part with her both children. The data included seven parent-child dyads. The parents were interviewed with the modified Adult Attachment Interview. Parental sensitivity was assessed using the CARE-Index. The self-protective strategies of the children were assessed with The Strange Situation Procedure or the Preschool Assessment of Attachment.

The study showed a variety of the self-protective strategies of parents with ADHD as well as those of their children. Three subgroups were formed on the basis of risk as indicated by Crittenden’s gradient of transformation of information. Parents displayed complex self-protective strategies as well as unresolved traumas, which impaired their sensitivity and ability to engage in mutual regulation of arousal and emotion. The parents’ needs of self-protection compromised their ability to protect and comfort their child that is their sensitivity. The children’s protective strategies matched those of their parents in regard to complexity as mediated by parental sensitivity.

This multiple-case study demonstrates new ideas to be tested with quantitative methods in larger samples. There are no previous studies which have examined both the attachment strategies and sensitivity of parents with ADHD connecting these with the evolving attachment strategies of their children.

This paper aims to explore the care experiences of individuals using short-term homeless services in the UK, who identify as being neglected in childhood. The study endeavours to give voice to the subjective experiences of homeless individuals in these specific domains and optimise therapeutic and housing services provided to individuals from this sub-population.

Semi-structured interviews containing elements of the “Adult Attachment Interview” (AAI) were conducted with eight individuals who had experienced childhood neglect and used short-term homeless services in adulthood. Interviews were analysed using an attachment informed version of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (AI-IPA).

Analysis parsed participants’ data into four master themes: “Everything was wrecking all the time”: Unsafe spaces; “Kind of pretending I was […] dead”: Strategies for survival; “My mum didn’t believe me”: Traumatic self-shaping; and “My first reckoning with self”: Restoration & Recovery. Together, themes indicated that participants had undergone traumatic early and later-life care experiences but were engaged in idiosyncratic recovery journeys. The meanings that participants derived from their past experiences of neglect were nuanced and interacted with their current relationships in complex and highly personal ways.

By applying an innovative methodology to a predominantly unchartered empirical area, this project extends existing research and presents a meaningful set of results. Implications for the delivery of short-term homeless services and therapeutic practitioners are discussed.