Attachment as a transformative process in AEDP: Operationalizing the intersection of attachment theory and affective neuroscience.

Abstract

While many models of individual psychotherapy acknowledge the significance of attachment theory for clinical work, Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP) seeks to operationalize the intersection of attachment and affective neuroscience to introduce innovations in its clinical practice. AEDP's stance and techniques aim to (a) foster attachment security through the clinical process, and (b) harness the transformative resilience of secure attachment to potentiate deep and lasting psychological change. Viewing secure attachment as a transformative experience, case vignettes offer examples of AEDP attachment-based work: moment-to-moment experiential work processing attachment security as a powerful new experience; andthen, its metatherapeutic processing. Integrating a new, positive relational experience in the here-and-now organically evokes the painful experiences of the original relational trauma. Thus, traumatic memories are also worked through in the service of positive psychological transformation.

Clinical recommendations for psychotherapists working during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic through the lens of AEDP (Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy)

“…Attention to processing and repairing therapeutic ruptures Attention to therapeutic ruptures and their repair is essential for helping the patient experience being seen, cared for, and attended to, and for strengthening the therapeutic attachment bond (Lipton & Fosha, 2011;Prenn, 2011). Ruptures can be experienced as a break in attunement or connection.…”

Attachment, A Matter of Substance: The Potential of Attachment Theory in the Treatment of Addictions

“…Therapy provides an opportunity to begin to activate an individual's capacity for secure attachment (Lipton and Fosha 2011). Within the therapeutic context, an attachmentinformed therapist can help clients like Jason acknowledge how their substance use is inextricably linked to their attachment traumas.…”

Clinical Translation of Memory Reconsolidation Research: Therapeutic Methodology for Transformational Change by Erasing Implicit Emotional Learnings Driving Symptom Production

“…At the outset of psychotherapy, the implicit emotional memories and learnings underlying and maintaining a therapy client's specific symptom-(s) are largely or completely outside of awareness, as a rule. However, in nearly all cases they can be brought into direct, conscious experience and accurate verbal representation not through analytical insight, but using experiential methods developed for that purpose (e.g., Badenoch, 2011;Ecker and Hulley, 1996;Ecker et al, 2012;Ecker and Toomey, 2008;Greenberg et al, 1993;Lipton and Fosha, 2011;Shapiro, 2001). Though initially implicit and nonverbal, the symptom-generating learnings prove to be well-defined and sufficiently retrievable and accessible for further therapeutic processing to proceed.…”