You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Attachment theory (Bowlby 1969, 1973, 1980, 1989) proposes that early attachment experiences with significant caregivers during early childhood provide internal working models of self and others that guide
behavior and relationships. To build upon his theory, many researchers have attempted to measure these internal working models and to understand how they develop, are maintained, change, and influence a variety of human interactions.
A number of empirical studies have applied attachment theory to individual psychotherapy and psychoanalysis (for reviews, see Slade 1999; Daniel 2006) and found that it facilitates the understanding of the working alliance (Mallinckrodt 2000), countertransference (Ligiero and Gelso 2002; Mohr, Gelso, and Hill 2005), transference (Woodhouse et al. 2003), and treatment outcome (Diamond et al. 2003; Fonagy et al. 1996; Majors and Marmarosh 2005; Levy et al. 2006; Shorey and Snyder 2006), as well as the specific attachment relationship clients have with their therapist (Mallinckrodt, Gantt, and Coble 1995; Mallinckrodt, Porter, and Kivlighan 2005). Although the empirical study of attachment theory as it relates to individual treatment has received much attention, its application to group psychotherapy is just gaining recognition (Kilmann, Urbaniak, and Parnell 2006; McClusky 2002; Shechtman and Dvir 2006; Shechtman and Rybko 2004).
The capacity for group therapy patients to depend on the group and join the therapy group has been a major focus of the group therapy literature. Researchers and clinicians have addressed group therapy cohesiveness (Budman et al. 1990; Rutan and Stone 2004), group climate (MacKenzie 1983), group objects (Segalla 1998), and group therapy identity (Marmarosh, Holtz, and Schottenbauer 2005) to understand patients' perceptions and emotional reactions vis-à-vis group treatment. Although these studies address the need to study members' experience within the group, they do not empirically study how the differences in