The Adult Attachment Interview and Observed Couple Interaction: Implications for an Intergenerational Perspective on Couple Therapy

Abstract

One of the assumptions of intergenerational family therapy is that how a person thinks and talks about family-of-origin experiences has important implications for current family relationships. The Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) is a measure of attachment security based on how coherently the person can discuss attachment experiences in childhood. This study examined the relationship between attachment security, as measured by the AAI, and couple interaction, as measured by the Georgia Marriage Q-Sort (GMQ), in a sample of 28 couples in therapy for relationship problems. During a conflict resolution discussion, those individuals who were less coherent in discussing their family of origin expressed more negative affect, less respect, less openness, more avoidance, and less willingness to negotiate when interacting with their partner. No evidence of intra-couple effects or "buffering" was found. The findings support a key assumption of intergenerational approaches to family therapy and suggest that applying attachment theory is a promising direction for refining and developing new interventions for couples.

Perceptions of Conflict Behavior and Relational Satisfaction in Adult Parent–Child Relationships

“…Secure individuals are less likely to use avoiding (Creasey, Kershaw, & Boston, 1999) and, in martial relationships, to report fewer arguments and less verbal aggressiveness (Kobak & Hazan, 1991;Wampler, Shi, Nelson, & Kimball, 2003). Similar patterns have been found for parent-child relationships.…”

The relation of insecure attachment states of mind and romantic attachment styles to adolescent aggression in romantic relationships

“…However, the results of the current study begin to find associations between certain relationship patterns and specific types of insecure attachment, which may lend further support to recent findings that it is the specific type of attachment insecurity that may matter in certain contexts (McElhaney, Immele, Smith, & Allen, 2006). Further, these findings highlight the importance of considering the dyadic role of both teen and partner romantic attachment styles on relationship outcomes, and may help inform the development of interventions that incorporate both attachment-related processes and couple-oriented approaches (Mikulincer, Florian, Cowan, & Cowan, 2002; Wampler, Shi, Nelson, & Kimball, 2003). Gaining a better understanding of the origins of such anger responses may ultimately guide therapeutic interventions to help individuals more effectively regulate and constructively express anger during interpersonal distress, in order to reduce their risk for involvement in partner aggression.…”

Assessing Attachment of Couples in Therapy: A Factor Analysis of the Experiences in Close Relationships Scale

“…Specifically, individuals experiencing high attachment anxiety often exhibit particular behaviors that contribute to distress, such as heightened emotion and negative thought processes (Bifulco et al 2002;Hankin et al 2005;Wampler et al 2003). Clinical interventions may be implemented with such clients to highlight, block, or alter negative thought processes and heightened emotion surrounding the corresponding attachment themes (i.e., time spent together, desire for personal closeness).…”

“…In contrast, anxious husbands were found to be more vulnerable to depression in the event that their spouses demonstrated higher levels of avoidance. Although attachment has been studied extensively as an influencing factor of relational variables, such as satisfaction, adjustment, and distress (Frei and Shaver 2002;Scott and Cordova 2002;Treboux et al 2004;Wampler et al 2003), original results were not compared between men and women (Brennan et al 1998). The differences found between men's and women's attachment influences on mental health symptoms further highlight the need to examine the assessment of attachment separately by gender among a clinical sample.…”