The heritage of disorganised attachment

Abstract

Clients who characteristically relate in a disorganised way present particular clinical difficulties. A better understanding of what might be going on for the client is helpful to the therapist in the face of the client's erratic responses. To that end we offer this article which provides a description of disorganised attachment and reviews a selection of recent studies in several fields in order to better comprehend the heritage of disorganised/disoriented attachment behaviour, its precursors and outcomes. We include a heuristic framework of the emotional socialization of attachment. The article ends with some thoughts on psychotherapy with disorganised clients attachment and proposes a story-reclaiming framework.