Attachment figures essentially provide individuals with the training ground for the ability to mentalize – a key ability in our species for making sense of ever unpredictable interpersonal relationships In fact, as Peter Fonagy explains – many forms of mental disorder might be considered manifestations of attachment-related failures in social communication linked with epistemic mistrust, hypervigilance or outright epistemic freezing – a complete inability to trust others as a source of knowledge about the world.

With this as an underlying framework, Fonagy and other researchers have suggested that psychotherapy can support clients’ recovery and resilience by facilitating the re-emergence in clients of epistemic trust, benefiting from the benign aspects of their environment.

At this unique workshop, three luminaries from the field of attachment theory who are driving the agenda forward on attachment and communication, come together to examine the questions of how we can listen effectively and intervene helpfully through the lens of attachment theory.

Starting by explaining the basis for narrative coherence, Dr Gwen Adshead first discusses the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) to explain the capacity to speak about emotions, going on to explain:

• The importance of Attachment for mentalization and symbolic function – especially the capacity to articulate felt experience in language
• Which, in turn, relates to the capacity to trust in dialogue start all the way from mother-ease to the detailed adult language of relationships
• The main tenet to be explored by her is that attachment security is expressed in how we talk about attachments, not just the content of what is said – this is a radical approach which links early psychoanalytic ideas with evidence-based research using linguistic analysis
• To discuss how epistemic trust may related to the development of a relational language as part of mentalization

Gerry Byrne then develops on Gwen’s discussions and presents clinical material to explain:

• How we can establish epistemic trust with clients who have high epistemic mistrust levels
• The role of transparency and/or disclosure in therapeutic dialogues
• And the importance of authenticity on the therapeutic encounter

Professor Alessandro Talia draws on his and his colleagues original research to reveal how individual differences in attachment states of minds (secure, dismissing, preoccupied, and unresolved/disorganized) influence clients and therapists’ behaviour in Psychotherapy.

Special emphasis will be given to the Patient Attachment Coding System (PACS) and the Therapist Attunement Scales (TASc), two measures that accurately predict patients’ and therapists’ AAI status based on the occurrence of distinct communication markers during therapy sessions.

Alessandro will discuss:

• how attachment differences are linked to individual differences in epistemic trust
• how one can identify in-session communication markers that reflect the client’s attachment pattern
• how differences in therapist’s interventions also reflect underlying individual differences in the therapist’s own attachment
• What the implications for intervention are

The remaining panellists will present clinical material in support of these approaches.

© nscience 2022 / 2023