This book rectifies a much neglected area in the conceptualization and
treatment of attachment disorders. The interface between attachment,
psychic structure, and character pathology has been largely ignored in
the clinical literature until recent years, and when discussed, it has
been generally relegated to the domain of child psychopathology. Because
human attachment is such a basic aspect to motivation and adjustment,
attachment disruptions in childhood color psychic development and often
leave deep and enduring deficits in personality and adaptive
functioning. The author shows that patients with attachment deficiencies
and associated characterological vulnerabilities have fundamental
structural deficits in personality organization that lie at the heart of
our current understanding of disorders of the self. Offering the first
comprehensive paradigm on the psychoanalytic treatment of adult and
adolescent attachment disorders, Jon Mills argues that attachment
pathology is a disorder of the self based on developmental trauma that
predisposes patients toward a future trajectory marked by structural
deficits, character pathology, and interpersonal discord that fuel and
sustain myriad forms of clinical symptomatology. This pivotal work
constitutes a treatise on the governing psychic processes of attachment
on self-organization, adaptation, and conflicted intersubjective
dynamics in non-childhood populations, and on the intervening relational
parameters in treating their emergent clinical pathologies. Through
conceptually astute technical strategies grounded in sold clinical
practice, the author offers one of the most extensive and original
frameworks in the psychoanalytic treatment of attachment disorders.
