This article summarizes the development and validation of the Adult Attachment Projective System (AAP), a measure we developed from the Bowlby-Ainsworth developmental tradition to assess adult attachment status. The AAP has demonstrated excellent concurrent validity with the Adult Attachment Interview (George, Kaplan, & Main, 1984/1985/1996; Main & Goldwyn, 1985-1994; Main, Goldwyn, & Hesse, 2003), interjudge reliability, and test-retest reliability, with no effects of verbal intelligence or social desirability. The AAP coding and classification system and application in clinical and community samples are summarized. Finally, we introduce the 3 other articles that are part of this Special Section and discuss the use of the AAP in therapeutic assessment and treatment.

In this paper, we describe the development of and our preliminary work to empirically validate the Adult Attachment Projective (AAP), a new adult attachment classification system that is based on the analysis of individuals' responses to a set of seven attachment-related drawings. The AAP classification system uses evaluations of three dimensions (Discourse, Content and Defensive Processing) to designate four major adult classification groups: Secure, Dismissing, Preoccupied, and Unresolved. Preliminary validation of the AAP is based on 75 participants drawn from three separate samples. The results indicate strong interjudge reliability and convergent agreement between the AAP and Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) classifications. The AAP, thus, appears to be a promising developmental measure for assessing the representation of attachment in adults. Contributions of the AAP to attachment theory and research are discussed. The similarities and differences between AAP stories and other child and adult representational measures are also discussed.

One hundred thirty-three adolescents in psychiatric treatment participated in a case-comparison study investigating the association of attachment patterns with a history of suicidal behaviors. The comparison group comprised 64 adolescents who had never experienced suicidal ideation or behaviors; the case group included 69 adolescents with histories of suicidal behavior (n = 53) and severe suicidal ideation (n =16). Attachment patterns were assessed using the Adult Attachment Interview. In accordance with definitions provided in the scoring system, 86% of case and 78% of comparison adolescents in psychiatric treatment had experienced attachment-related trauma. Lapses in the monitoring of reasoning or discourse occurred during the attempted discussion of these events in 73% of adolescents in the case group but in only 44% of adolescents in the clinical comparison group (p = .002), suggesting that cognitive disorganization may be an important variable mediating between traumatic experience and suicidal behavior. Female adolescents and older adolescents were significantly more likely than other adolescents to be in the case group. Preoccupied attachment, in interaction with unresolved-disorganized attachment, was associated with the case group, whereas dismissing attachment was associated with the comparison group.

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