The Adult Attachment Interview: Rating and classification problems posed by non-normative samples

Abstract

Non-normative samples can pose major procedural and coding challenges to interviewers and raters of the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI). With reference to interview transcripts drawn from a population of personality disordered offenders detained in a high-security hospital, specific difficulties are identified and discussed. These difficulties have their roots in three separate but overlapping areas: extreme attachment-related experience; interviewees' psychological or psychiatric state; and factors relating to the context in which the interview is conducted. They raise questions about whether and when the use of the interview should be restricted, the rating rules elaborated and/or the rating system expanded. Suggestions are made as to how some of the difficulties might be addressed.

Anxious and avoidant attachment styles and indicators of recovery in schizophrenia: Associations with self‐esteem and hope

“…We chose this instead of the more widely used Adult Attachment Interview (AAI; Main & Goldwyn, 1984), which consists of an interview and is then rated along multiple dimensions. This decision was influenced by difficulties using the AAI with patients with psychosis and following trends treating attachment style as a dimensional phenomenon (Smith, Msetfi, & Golding, 2010;Turton et al, 2001). The ECR is a frequently used method of assessing individual differences in attachment style, however, like many attachment questionnaires, it focuses on close interpersonal relationships, with some items referring particularly to romantic relationships and might be less appropriate for individuals with psychosis, the majority of whom are not often in a stable relationship.…”

Attachment to the clinical team and its association with therapeutic relationships, social networks, and clinical well‐being

“…It may have been a drawback of this study that we used the RSQ as a measure of attachment rather than the more well‐known AAI (Main, Kaplan, & Cassidy, 1985). The AAI, however, although widely used with clinical groups, is known to present considerable coding challenges in groups with severe mental illness (Turton et al , 2001). The RSQ has the strength, moreover, that it rates attachment classification in four dimensions rather than categorically, which may better reflect the heterogeneous and overlapping attachment styles of this clinically somewhat diverse group.…”

Attachment organization, emotion regulation, and expectations of support in a clinical sample of women with childhood abuse histories

“…However, studies of high risk and clinical populations have focused very specifically on the relationship of attachment to psychopathology (see Dozier et al, in press, for review). These include, for example, the presence of psychopathology such as demonstrated by the MMPI (Pianta, Egeland, & Adam, 1996), fits of anger/derogation (Turton, McGauley, Marin-Avellan, & Hughes, 2001), selfreported depression and eating disorder symptoms (Cole-Detke & Kobak, 1996) or by empirically diagnosed psychiatric disorders such as depression, borderline personality disorder (Fonagy et al, 1996) and posttraumatic stress disorder (Riggs et al, 2007;StovallMcClough & Cloitre, 2006). The association between insecure attachment and presence of a psychiatric disorder and increased psychiatric symptoms has been interpreted as being related to underlying disturbances in emotional and interpersonal functioning (see Westen et al, 2006).…”