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Christopher Clulow has set out to bring together 17 contributors to write about psychotherapy with couples from an attachment perspective. The book aims to provide a framework for assessing and working with people in both secure and insecure partnerships. It includes the viewpoints of both contemporary clinical practice and research.
When I was asked to do this review my first thought was, like many individual psychotherapists, what do I know about couples' psychotherapy? On reflection I realized that I do work with many individuals for whom the issues around their couple relationship can be the focus of their therapy. Exploration of the joys but, sadly, more often the disappointments, preoccupations of hopelessness, the painful dilemmas and longings for intimacy within a relationship can be central concerns. Often these experiences are re-enacted within the therapeutic relationship giving an opportunity to explore their complex unconscious origins. As a psychotherapist whose work is informed by attachment theory, and with a spirit of enquiry and some trepidation I embarked on reading and reviewing this book.
Clulow identifies the aims of this book as twofold. The first is to develop further dialogue between clinical practice and research. He sees participation in research as having the potential for therapeutic effects. He identifies his stance as a couple therapist as one of a collaborator in a research endeavour, the focus of which is the the participants' exploration of their different experiences and subjectivities in the therapeutic relationship. This is a very timely contribution to the discussion.
The book illustrates well the ways in which attachment research can inform practice. For example, Clulow suggests that the Adult Attachment Interview categories of states of mind which are ‘unresolved’ or ‘unclassifiable’ in relation to trauma or loss are a way of identifying the vulnerabilities of couples whose strategies for managing anxiety have broken down. ‘This