Attachment in Psychotherapy
By:
David J. Wallin PhD
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Lowest New Price: $33.95
List Price: $42.00
Average Customer Rating: 5.0 out of 5
Description:
This eloquent book translates attachment theory and research into an innovative framework that grounds adult psychotherapy in the facts of childhood development. Advancing a model of treatment as transformation through relationship, the author integrates attachment theory with neuroscience, trauma studies, relational psychotherapy, and the psychology of mindfulness. Vivid case material illustrates how therapists can tailor interventions to fit the attachment needs of their patients, thus helping them to generate the internalized secure base for which their early relationships provided no foundation. Demonstrating the clinical uses of a focus on nonverbal interaction, the book describes powerful techniques for working with the emotional responses and bodily experiences of patient and therapist alike.
Publisher: The Guilford Press
Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Excellent! - As a practicing psychotherapist and educator at the graduate level, I cannot say enough about this book. The author does an excellent job of building a strong and well referenced basis for his review, understanding and use of attachment in psychotherapy. This book is not for those who are new to the field of psychology or therapy. This is a book to be read and digested in palatable bites in order to gain the full flavor, body and depth of this work. This book has changed the way I look at every relationship from day to day interactions, family, friends, students and business associates. A must read.
Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Not just for therapists - Many books will claim to change your life. By giving me the conceptual (not to mention terminological!) framework to understand myself at a fundamental behavioral level, this one actually is proving to be a significant contributor to accomplishing that very arduous task.
I can't recommend Wallin's tome too highly for those in search of self-knowledge, and in pursuit of self-repair. This is NOT just a book for therapists! Though as you can see from the reviews here, any serious practitioner of therapy WILL be putting this at the top of their must-read list. For the sake of emphasis, I'll repeat myself:
This is NOT a book just for therapists!
I'm not a therapist - far from it: I'm an engineer. An engineer with deficits in attachment security which I can now articulate and see with far more clarity, thanks to David Wallin. Subjectively speaking, the level of confidence that I feel in terms of my ability to resolve my own very painful attachment issues has increased markedly as a result of reading this book. I don't know that higher praise exists for a work dealing with this subject.
Objectively speaking, 'Attachment in Psychotherapy' represents a major work in the field of psychology (for both the clinical and theoretical aspects), standing comfortably - and rigorously - shoulder to shoulder with other major works in that discipline. In it, Wallin accomplishes two very significant milestones (in my non-professional opinion). The first is a synthesis of the current state of knowledge of attachment theory and intersubjectivity theory, offering lucid descriptions - often case studies - of how the application of this knowledge lies at the heart of efficacious relational psychotherapy. This alone makes the book damn near required reading for all students of the human psyche, but it's the 2nd accomplishment which marks it as a major milestone and which represents what I believe to be Wallin's more significant and original contribution: his seamless intergration of mindfulness, and the mindful self, into that aforementioned synthesis. This is brilliance. This is insight. This is major.
To put all of this another way, I will say this: if you are in psychotherapy, and your therapist has not yet read Wallin's book, insist that they do so. If possible, before your next session. It's that important.
Customer Review: 5 out of 5
A Psycho-spiritual Path to Wholeness - David Wallin has elegantly articulated a process that many of us in the psychotherapeutic field have practiced intuitively for many years. The contribution his book has made toward integrating psychotherapy with a mindful practice, with hands-on clinical teachings, has helped give a language and specific tools to the next stages of attachment theory and therapy.
Not only is he a great storyteller in giving us the background for attachment theory and therapy, his own practice evidences the deeper places that patients are able to open up within us, should we be humble enough, if we are open and available to the continuation of our own journey. As we are willing to progress in our own non-verbal, pre-verbal set of attachment issues in the room, work our own counter-transference as completely as we ask them to do their work, so our patients have space to grow.
We have known since Freud of the significance of the relationship in therapy. What Wallin does is take us to deeper places on a moment-to-moment basis. We are not the handler of the patient: we are the fellow traveler. Wallin inspires us to stay on the same road with the patient, not only in each clinical moment but in our other, less enlightened moments. It is a forever practice and not an event. Without this element of practice in psychotherapy, the inevitable challenges for all of us, would continue to erase the good work we do.
An invaluable contribution to the study of Self, for which I am grateful.
Valerie Johns, MA, MFT
Hermosa Beach, CA
Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Attachment in Psychotherapy - I just finished David J. Wallin's Attachment in Psychotherapy and found the book immensely helpful to me on a personal level. I am not a therapist or even at all involved in the field, but I do tend to read a lot and I read many books that would be characterized as self-help or psychology books. I found this book to be the best one I've ever read in terms of giving me self-definition and putting a name to much of what had before gone undefined and only noticed in a peripheral sense. I would highly recommend this book to anyone and everyone interested in self-knowledge and personal growth. While this book should be required reading for every therapist, I don't think its value for everyone else should be diminished. Any person who reads this book will gain a much deeper understanding of themselves and the people close to them and open the door to personal growth for all involved. I can't recommend it enough.
Customer Review: 5 out of 5
m shewfelt, Psychotherapist, Social Worker - I am sincerely thankful that I read this book! It propelled me into greater awareness of the therapeutic process, and helped me access a deeper more integrated sense of myself.
Wallin provides a powerful compound lens, integrating attachment theory, research on the impact of early relationships on the brain, relational psychotherapy and mindfulness. We're encouraged to apply our curiosity to the rich, complex, present moment between our self and our client, while holding in our awareness, each of our relational pasts. Wallin offers interventions, including and beyond empathy, to help us access more of our client's unconscious experience, through astute and conscientious awareness of the intersection of our own experience with our client's.
Much appreciated are Wallin's detailed case descriptions that paint the human picture of the therapist as an empathic, imperfect, accountable and secure base. This book conveys wonderful hopefulness for the profound healing power of the therapeutic relationship, and I could not recommend it more highly!
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