Reflections on "Attachment: A Perspective for Couple and Family Therapy"

Ronald Jay Werner-Wilson, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor

Iowa State University

"Attachment: A Perspective for Couple and Family Therapy" was the first AFTA-hosted event that I have attended, but it won't be my last. Although I had read about attachment theory in my graduate training, it was never mentioned in any of my formal clinical courses in marriage and family therapy so I have only recently "discovered" the attachment literature. I was drawn to the conference because I was excited about my "discovery" and wanted to interact with other marriage and family therapists who were integrating this literature in research and clinical practice.

I encountered a similar sense of excitement at the conference. It seemed as though many of us who were present recognized the potential contribution that attachment literature could make to an understanding of marriage and family therapy. This creative zeitgeist was poignant, though, because the person who has been pointing our field in this direction for over a decade was absent. John Byng-Hall, who I understand is now retired and has taken up painting, was not in attendance. My "discovery" of the relevance of attachment to marriage and family therapy occurred because I happened upon a chapter he contributed to the Handbook of Attachment entitled, "Family and Couple Therapy: Toward Greater Security." That chapter led me to his other writings. Although disappointed that he was not in attendance, it seems to me now as I reflect in my office, that his contribution to our field should be acknowledged.

I left the conference ruminating about three themes: (1) fathers as caregivers, (2) conceptual clarity, and (3) barriers to recognizing potential contributions from the attachment literature to a systems perspective.

During several presentations, participants inquired about the role of fathers as caregivers. It seemed, participants suggested, that the role of fathers as attachment figures was not being addressed. In response, presenters often commented on difficulties associated with recruiting fathers or commented that the mother was the primary caregiver. The lack of father involvement and our resignation about it has prompted me to spend some more time reflecting on fathers' role in families and wondering about strategies for inviting men to participate as caregivers in the lives of their children.

During one of our sessions, Jay LeBow, from the Family Institute, suggested to the panel of presenters that it would be helpful to be conceptually clear about types of attachment. I spent some time thinking about his comment, reflecting on the attachment literature, and was able to identify five ways that the word attachment is used. Informally, it is a term that is used to refer to a general level of affection. In the professional realm, four additional conceptualizations come to mind. First, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders describes features of "reactive attachment disorder." Then we have the three conceptualizations directly connected to Bowlby's work: (1) attachment in children (as measured via the Strange Situation), (2) adult nuclear family attachment (as measured by the Adult Attachment Interview), and (3) adult romantic attachment. Jay's admonition for conceptual clarity seems particularly salient because empirical evidence suggests that the two forms of adult attachment are discrete, so it seems important to ensure that assessment/measurement be linked to the conceptualization of interest.

In addition to reflecting on Jay's admonition for conceptual clarity, I spent some time thinking about the presentation by Karen Wampler, in which she indicated that she was struggling to integrate attachment constructs into her clinical and research work because attachment research seemed dyadic rather than systemic. This is, of course, a serious issue facing researchers who study families, because data is often only collected from one member of a family. It occurred to me that Jay's suggestion for conceptual clarity might also, paradoxically, address the systemic nature of attachment. If we become clearer about type of attachment (e.g., child attachment, adult nuclear family attachment, adult romantic attachment) we could begin to investigate the relationship between these different domains. There seems to be strong evidence that adult nuclear family attachment (as measured by the AAI) predicts attachment style of children (as measured using the Strange Situation). Research on attachment relationships in families could become more systemic if researchers addressed the correspondence between the adult attachment style of multiple caregivers and the attachment style of a particular child with each adult. To provide a more sophisticated picture of systems, researcher's could study changes in romantic attachment across time as a predictor of relationship satisfaction which, in turn, could be investigated as an influence on parenting strategies and/or attachment in children.

Overall, the conference was a splendid opportunity to think in depth about attachment from a multi-disciplinary perspective that could help enhance the field of marriage and family therapy.

Ron Werner-Wilson is an Assistant Professor and Director of the Marriage and Family Therapy Clinic in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at Iowa State University. He has recently published a book Developmental-Systemic Family Therapy with Adolescents (ISBN 0789001187) that describes an interdisciplinary approach to therapy that emphasizes attachment between parents and adolescent children. He has two primary areas of research interest: (1) adolescent sexuality, and (2) process research on gender and power in marriage and family therapy.