Product Description

Viewing attachment-based therapy as a variant of object relations, the book argues strongly for a rapprochement between psychoanalysis and attachment theory.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #42069 in Books
• Published on: 2001-07-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 200 pages

From the Back Cover
With The Search for the Secure Base, attachment becomes, for the first time, a therapeutic modality in its own right. The book introduces an exciting new attachment paradigm in psychotherapy with adults, describing the principles and practice of attachment-informed therapy in a way that will be useful to beginners and experienced therapists alike. Using a range of clinical and literary examples to illustrate techniques used (such as providing a secure base, methods of listening and responding, facilitation of emergent meaning and reflexive practice), it argues strongly for a rapprochement between psychoanalysis and attachment theory. The Search for the Secure Base will be welcomed by practitioners and trainees in psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, psychiatry, psychology, counselling, social work and nursing.

About the Author
Jeremy Holmes is Consultant Psychotherapist in North Devon and Senior Lecturer in Psychotherapy in the University of Exeter. He is current chair of the psychotherapy faculty of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. He is the author of over 100 papers and book chapters as well as 10 books, including the acclaimed John Bowlby and Attachment Theory and Introduction to Psychoanalysis, with Anthony Bateman.

Customer Reviews

A Poet's Response
This is a book to read with a highlighter. It is complex and multi-layered though written in an accessible style; its concepts are fully explicated with plenty of interesting clinical examples. There is a brief attachment based intervention handout in the index that asks such emotionally bulls-eye questions as: 'Who did you turn to as a child when distressed, ill or tired?', 'What happened when you were upset or cross?' and 'Did you ever try to run away?'.

The ideas and research findings of Attachment Theory (AT) founded by Bowlby alongside Mary Ainsworth have been gaining popularity in therapy circles over the last decade. AT puts the search for security above all other psychological motivations. Secure pathology arises when the individual is confronted with danger but has no secure base to turn to - or the secure base itself is a source of threat. Aggression towards the self or others is a result of the anxiety this provokes. Insecure children do not relate successfully towards their peers and tend to being victims of bullying. Extreme failures of care in our society such as Victoria Climbie and Baby P. were immediately evoked upon reading this.

In discussing the six domains of AT, Holmes relates that seventy per cent of infants become securely attached, the rest insecurely. The three categories of insecure attachment are avoidant, ambivalent and disorganised. The avoidant person (child or adult) tries to be in control and keeps intimacy at bay. Ambivalent people cling to care-givers (or abusive partners) so they are less at the mercy of their inconsistency. Disorganised people tend to have radically unstable relationships such as is characteristic of borderline personality disorder sufferers. Holmes examples these categories in both children and adults and details therapeutic techniques such as providing a secure base, methods of listening and responding, facilitation of emergent meaning and reflexive practice. He also discusses topics such as the 'Basic Fault', the intergenerational transmission of attachment insecurity and working with abused and traumatised clients. The book argues persuasively for a rapproachment between psychoanalysis and AT.

I read this book by way of an introductory course in psychoanalytic therapy, not as a clinician but as an interested reader and poet. As my own home-spun theory of the origin of emotionally arresting poetry is the invariable suffering and survival of some form of childhood trauma, I was especially pleased by the discussion of links between poetry and psychotherapy. Holmes asserts the importance of remaining open to a poem as it stands on its own terms without pathologising the poet (the poem not being the poet being my favourite tenet). He also reminds us of Lacan's concept of 'the word being the paternal Oedipal sword, categorising and separating' and yet how, paradoxically, poetry uses words to establish to re-establish that lost pre-verbal unity. This helped me appricate the importance of my own self-reflective writing - specifically the poetry I have written over the last three years in strenghtening my own internal working models and bolstering a somewhat provisional secure base. In fact, after reading, I went on to write a poem which included a line about 'The Search for the Secure Base' sticking out of my basket.

A fascinating, humane and complex book, I am certain that lay-readers, students, poets and clinicians alike will find in it a treasure trove of discovery.