This volume describes the characteristics and role of attachment in the adult years and provides a new perspective for understanding, studying, and changing an adult's ability to form life-sustaining personal relationships. Providing a powerful tool for both social research and therapeutic intervention, the authors define attachment for adults, present their own original research and clinical evidence to support their definition, explicate the varieties of adult attachment patterns, and demonstrate the clinical relevance of these constructs.

This book presents cutting-edge research on adult attachment together with a complete overview of the Adult Attachment Projective Picture System (AAP), the authors' validated developmental assessment. In addition to identifying attachment classification groups, the AAP yields important information about dimensions - including defensive processes - not evaluated by other available measures. Detailed case illustrations show what the AAP looks like "in action" and what it reveals about individuals' early experiences, sense of self, and capacity to engage in close, protective relationships. The...