Psychological flexibility, attachment style, and personality organization: Correlations between constructs of differing approaches.

Abstract

Psychological flexibility is a theoretical construct associated with acceptance and commitment therapy, a "third wave" cognitive-behavioral therapy treatment focusing on mindfulness and acceptance of aversive internal events. Psychological flexibility has been thoroughly investigated in clinical and nonclinical populations. However, very little research has been done pertaining to the possible relationships between psychological flexibility and attachment style. Similarly, there is no research investigating the potential link between psychological flexibility and constructs associated with a psychodynamic formulation of personality organization, particularly identity integration and defensive operations. We hypothesized that psychological flexibility would be negatively correlated with attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance, as well as being negatively correlated with primitive defenses and identity diffusion. Our hypotheses were largely confirmed, with several significant correlations found. Psychological flexibility was negatively correlated with attachment anxiety, as well as being negatively correlated with primitive defenses and identity diffusion. We discuss these findings in terms of clinical practice and directions for future research.

Circle of Security–Parenting: A randomized controlled trial in Head Start

“…Evidence suggests that attachment anxiety is associated with heightened self-disclosure and overfocus on attachment issues (Slade, 2016); thus, group sessions might not offer needed challenges to these mothers' hyperactivating style. Moreover, some research has shown that attachment anxiety is associated with less psychological flexibility, the ability to change thoughts or behavior to serve valued ends (Salande & Hawkins, 2016); thus, anxious caregivers may need more time and practice to bring cognitions and behavior into alignment with intervention goals. It may also be that the intervention effected preliminary change in anxious mothers, but that the follow-up assessment occurred too soon after the intervention to capture the full effects.…”

An investigation of whether emotion regulation mediates the relationship between attachment insecurity and suicidal ideation and behaviour

“…It would be interesting to explore this factor as a mediator in the relationship between attachment and suicide ideation and attempts, as it is likely that an insecure attachment style would impact on an individual's ability to connect. Cognitive inflexibility or rigidity, is another psychological variable which has been associated with suicide (O'Connor & Nock, 2014 ) and attachment (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007 ; Salande & Hawkins, 2017 ) but to the author's knowledge, has not been explored alongside both variables.…”

Linguistic and Psychometric Validation of the Ukrainian Translation of the Inventory of Personality Organization-Revised (IPO-R-UKR)

“…During the last years, several new investigations of the connectedness of the structural characteristics of personality and public and mental health issues appeared. They prove correlations between IPO scales and verbalization ability, reflective function (Górska, & Soroko, 2017), negative maternal behaviors (Ensink et al, 2017), depressive symptoms, rumination mediates (Kovács et al 2021), traits of emotional intelligence, and early traumatic experience (Espinosa, & Rudenstine, 2018), psychological flexibility and attachment style (Salande, & Hawkins, 2017), and internalized relational patterns (Soroko, & Cierpiałkowska, 2018). The researchers studying how people cope with the COVID-19 pandemic and lock-down have found out that those who did not believe that the virus was life-threatening were more disposed to use maladaptive defense mechanisms than those who thought it was dangerous for life (Zajenkowska et al, 2021).…”