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Attachment in Psychodynamic Practice: recognizing styles and adapting your interventions

Attachment theory ranks among the most solid and clinically fertile advances of the last decades — yet psychodynamically trained psychologists often find it hard to convert its concepts into concrete moves in session. Closing precisely that gap is what this course is for.

In two hours of asynchronous content you will learn to read a patient’s attachment style in the very form of their narrative, to see what an attachment lens reveals about the therapeutic relationship, and to adjust your psychodynamic interventions accordingly — whether the patient in front of you is anxious-ambivalent, avoidant or disorganized.

The progression is deliberate: from the theoretical bedrock of Bowlby, Ainsworth and Main to concrete clinical intervention, including the detailed analysis of four full clinical cases. Every module weaves in vignettes, countertransference markers and commented intervention guidelines.

What distinguishes this course from most content on attachment: it refuses to stop at classification. It goes where trainings seldom go — the clinical gesture itself, the therapeutic relationship, and the therapist’s reflective awareness of their own attachment functioning.

It is intended for clinical psychologists, psychotherapists and mental health professionals who want to enrich a psychodynamic practice with a clinical reading of attachment, deepen their grasp of transference and countertransference, and gain concrete tools for patients with complex relational profiles.

A downloadable certificate of completion is issued on passing the final integration quiz.

Register for the training — registration with certificate.

Training by Christophe Herbert, psychologist (AI-enhanced course).

4 learning objectives

• Identify a patient’s attachment style in interview. Recognize the verbal, non-verbal and narrative markers of the secure, anxious-ambivalent, avoidant and disorganized patterns — no formal instrument required, only the quality of your clinical listening.
• Analyse the attachment dynamics inside the therapeutic relationship. See how the patient’s style shapes the transference, know the countertransference reactions each style provokes, and catch attachment-driven enactments before they endanger the treatment.
• Adapt psychodynamic interventions to the identified style. Modulate frame management, the timing of interpretation and relational distance, with distinct guidelines for each of the three insecure styles.
• Use the relationship to transform internal working models. Create the conditions for a new relational experience in session, bring working models progressively into awareness, and track the clinical indicators of movement toward earned security.

Training outline

Module 1 — Attachment theory: what you actually need (Bowlby, 1969; Ainsworth et al., 1978; Main & Solomon, 1990). Bowlby’s founding break; the behavioural systems (attachment, exploration, caregiving); Ainsworth and the patterns — secure, anxious-ambivalent, avoidant; Main and disorganization; adult attachment, continuity and reorganization; internal working models; what research says about attachment and psychotherapy (Levy et al., 2011; Mikulincer & Shaver, 2016).

Module 2 — Recognizing attachment styles in interview (Main et al., 1985; Hesse, 2016). Listening to form before content (Grice, 1975); the secure narrative — fluency, integration, freedom; the anxious-ambivalent narrative — hyperactivation and preoccupation (Cassidy & Berlin, 1994); the avoidant narrative — deactivation and defensive self-sufficiency (Dozier & Kobak, 1992); disorganization — the absence of a coherent strategy (Main & Hesse, 1990; Liotti, 2004); attachment and psychopathology; mixed styles and complexity; vignettes: identifying style from interview excerpts.

Module 3 — Attachment in the therapeutic relationship (Bowlby, 1988; Holmes, 1996; Wallin, 2007). The therapist as attachment figure; how each style organizes the transference (Slade, 2008); style-specific countertransference (Dozier et al., 1994); the therapist’s own style as blind spot and resource (Tyrrell et al., 1999); attachment enactments (Bromberg, 1998); rupture threat as maximal activation (Safran & Muran, 2000); what “building a secure base” means concretely (Sroufe, 2005); vignette: an enactment recognized and worked through.

Module 4 — Intervening according to style (Wallin, 2007; Fonagy et al., 2002; Holmes, 2001). With the anxious-ambivalent patient: holding the frame with warmth, building tolerance of separation, naming patterns without rejecting, session endings as clinical territory, when to interpret and when to contain. With the avoidant patient: respecting distance as a road to contact, receiving micro-openings, approaching emotion without triggering closure, honouring autonomy while opening healthy dependency, silence as presence. With the disorganized patient: safety and stabilization first (Liotti, 2004; van der Kolk, 2014), understanding alternations without premature interpretation, working with in-session dissociation (Ogden et al., 2006), holding through tests of the bond, long-term therapy as necessity. Working with internal working models: making the model visible, the complementarity of new relational experience and insight (Stern et al., 1998; Lyons-Ruth, 1998), and the clinical indicators of pattern transformation (Levy et al., 2006).

Module 5 — Four in-depth clinical cases. Camille — anxious-ambivalent, between-session contact requests, emotional escalation. Marc — avoidant, therapy circling, apparent absence of change. Leïla — disorganized, traumatic history, alternations and relational rupture. Julien — mixed style, identity void, diagnostic complexity and dissociative zones.

Module 6 — Integration and reflective practice. The four styles at a glance; what this course cannot do; guided self-reflection — my own attachment style in my practice; developing the sensitivity further through supervision (Watkins, 2011), recommended readings and assessment tools (Main et al., 1985; Brennan et al., 1998); the three essential clinical gestures.

Integration quiz and certificate. Knowledge validation test and certificate. The course includes slide-illustrated videos and a downloadable training certificate.

Instructor: Christophe Herbert, Psychologist. Specialist in the psychotherapeutic care of trauma survivors and the severely bereaved. Director of H4 Éditions.

Who is this for? Reserved for professionals (psychologists, psychotherapists, psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, sexologists, psychiatric nurses, and so on) and students of psychology or psychiatry. Other professionals on request: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

How to register and access the course. Create your personal training account and pay the registration fee (invoice available). The course — video lectures and downloadable materials — then appears in your personal space. Work across as many sittings as you like, starting whenever you choose, with no time limit, and with the instructor available for questions.

Register now — immediate access to the training.

Bibliography

• Ainsworth, M. D. S., Blehar, M. C., Waters, E., & Wall, S. (1978). Patterns of attachment: A psychological study of the strange situation. Erlbaum.
• Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and loss: Vol. 1. Attachment. Basic Books.
• Bowlby, J. (1973). Attachment and loss: Vol. 2. Separation: Anxiety and anger. Basic Books.
• Bowlby, J. (1980). Attachment and loss: Vol. 3. Loss: Sadness and depression. Basic Books.
• Bowlby, J. (1982). Attachment and loss: Vol. 1. Attachment (2e éd.). Basic Books.
• Bowlby, J. (1988). A secure base: Parent-child attachment and healthy human development. Basic Books.
• Brennan, K. A., Clark, C. L., & Shaver, P. R. (1998). Self-report measurement of adult attachment. Dans J. A. Simpson & W. S. Rholes (Éds.), Attachment theory and close relationships (pp. 46–76). Guilford Press.
• Bromberg, P. M. (1998). Standing in the spaces: Essays on clinical process, trauma, and dissociation. Analytic Press.
• Cassidy, J., & Berlin, L. J. (1994). The insecure/ambivalent pattern of attachment. Child Development, 65(4), 971–991.
• Dozier, M., & Kobak, R. R. (1992). Psychophysiology in attachment interviews. Child Development, 63(6), 1473–1480.
• Dozier, M., Cue, K. L., & Barnett, L. (1994). Clinicians as caregivers: Role of attachment organization in treatment. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 62(4), 793–800.
• Dozier, M., Stovall-McClough, K. C., & Albus, K. E. (2008). Attachment and psychopathology in adulthood. Dans J. Cassidy & P. R. Shaver (Éds.), Handbook of attachment (2e éd., pp. 718–744). Guilford Press.
• Fonagy, P., Gergely, G., Jurist, E. L., & Target, M. (2002). Affect regulation, mentalization and the development of the self. Other Press.
• George, C., Kaplan, N., & Main, M. (1984). Adult Attachment Interview. Unpublished manuscript, University of California, Berkeley.
• Hesse, E. (2016). The Adult Attachment Interview: Protocol, method of analysis, and selected empirical studies: 1985–2015. Dans J. Cassidy & P. R. Shaver (Éds.), Handbook of attachment (3e éd., pp. 553–597). Guilford Press.
• Holmes, J. (1996). Attachment, intimacy, autonomy: Using attachment theory in adult psychotherapy. Jason Aronson.
• Holmes, J. (2001). The search for the secure base: Attachment theory and psychotherapy. Brunner-Routledge.
• Levy, K. N., Meehan, K. B., Kelly, K. M., Reynoso, J. S., Weber, M., Clarkin, J. F., & Kernberg, O. F. (2006). Change in attachment patterns and reflective function in a randomized control trial of transference-focused psychotherapy for borderline personality disorder. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 74(6), 1027–1040.
• Levy, K. N., Ellison, W. D., Scott, L. N., & Bernecker, S. L. (2011). Attachment style. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 67(2), 193–203.
• Liotti, G. (2004). Trauma, dissociation, and disorganized attachment. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training, 41(4), 472–486.
• Lyons-Ruth, K. (1998). Implicit relational knowing. Infant Mental Health Journal, 19(3), 282–289.
• Main, M., & Hesse, E. (1990). Parents' unresolved traumatic experiences are related to infant disorganized attachment status. Dans M. T. Greenberg, D. Cicchetti, & E. M. Cummings (Éds.), Attachment in the preschool years (pp. 161–182). University of Chicago Press.
• Main, M., & Solomon, J. (1990). Procedures for identifying infants as disorganized/disoriented during the Ainsworth Strange Situation. Dans M. T. Greenberg, D. Cicchetti, & E. M. Cummings (Éds.), Attachment in the preschool years: Theory, research, and intervention (pp. 121–160). University of Chicago Press.
• Main, M., Kaplan, N., & Cassidy, J. (1985). Security in infancy, childhood, and adulthood. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 50(1–2), 66–104.
• Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2012). An attachment perspective on psychopathology. World Psychiatry, 11(1), 11–15.
• Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2016). Attachment in adulthood: Structure, dynamics, and change (2e éd.). Guilford Press.
• Ogden, P., Minton, K., & Pain, C. (2006). Trauma and the body: A sensorimotor approach to psychotherapy. Norton.
• Safran, J. D., & Muran, J. C. (2000). Negotiating the therapeutic alliance: A relational treatment guide. Guilford Press.
• Slade, A. (2008). The implications of attachment theory and research for adult psychotherapy. Dans J. Cassidy & P. R. Shaver (Éds.), Handbook of attachment (2e éd., pp. 762–782). Guilford Press.
• Sroufe, L. A. (2005). Attachment and development. Attachment & Human Development, 7(4), 349–367.
• Stern, D. N., Sander, L. W., Nahum, J. P., Harrison, A. M., Lyons-Ruth, K., Morgan, A. C., Bruschweilerstern, N., & Tronick, E. Z. (1998). Non-interpretive mechanisms in psychoanalytic therapy. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 79, 903–921.
• Tyrrell, C. L., Dozier, M., Teague, G. B., & Fallot, R. D. (1999). Effective treatment relationships for persons with serious psychiatric disorders. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 67(5), 725–733.
• van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Viking.
• Wallin, D. J. (2007). Attachment in psychotherapy. Guilford Press.
• Watkins, C. E. (2011). Does psychotherapy supervision contribute to patient outcomes? The Clinical Supervisor, 30(2), 235–256.