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Current attachment theory suggests that security in the presence of another—that is, secure attachment—is part of the same psychic process as the ability to understand the distinction between one's own mind and the external world (Main 1995; Fonagy and Target 1996). This is a dramatic innovation with rich and varied implications for the psychoanalytic views of psychopathology, clinical technique, and therapeutic action; yet at the same time it converges with basic analytic values. It corresponds in focus remarkably closely to the everyday conduct of analysis, relying as it does on moment-to-moment efforts to understand the analysand's mind in an appropriately secure environment. In contrast, many other theories of therapeutic action require a kind of awkward translation from metapsychology to what analysts actually do. Inasmuch as current attachment researchers have now provided extensive empirical verification of their perspective, an exceptionally encouraging and stimulating convergence of developmental research and psychoanalytic thinking is now available, and is well illustrated in this panel.
Many of these innovations, including the ones reported upon here, rest on a crucial finding from the Adult Attachment Interview: it is the extent to which we can reflect coherently on our experiences, in both narrative and affective modes, that determines the level of security and organization in our psychic lives, more even than the experiences themselves. This discovery, in turn, links to a sophisticated and creative elaboration of the original attachment theory with its emphasis on felt security in the presence of a reliable object: a powerful account has