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There cannot now be many psychotherapists not influenced in their clinical practice by attachment theory. In his third book about the subject, Jeremy Holmes makes a comment early on that ‘these days attachment seems to be on everyone's lips’ (p. xi). Attachment theory is certainly a hot theory, growing fast, with multiple places of development and cultural influence. Holmes considers some of these developments, particularly those in psychological research, and turns them into something psychotherapeutically useful. As he puts it, his ‘perspective is unashamedly clinical’ (p. xi). He enlarges the vocabulary we have available to think and talk about what attachment theory means for our clinical practice. This is a useful thing to do because, although attachment theory is an increasing part of our clinical conversations, its range of implications for our psychotherapeutic practice still remain to be understood.
We might imagine that the importance of attachment theory is by now apparent for psychoanalysts too. However, the first title for this book which Holmes quickly rejected was ‘Why I am not a Psychoanalyst’: rejected because of its antagonism to the integrative aim of this book: to add something curative to the historical schism between intrapsychic psychoanalytic theory (particularly that of Melanie Klein and her followers) and the more environmentally concerned attachment theory pioneered by John Bowlby. Like Fonagy (2001) in his recent book, Holmes sees this as the historically correct time for a ‘rapprochement’ between psychoanalysis and attachment theory. And he may be right. Although perhaps the practice of all of us has never been as unadulterated by other ways of thinking, as the myth of the split would have us believe. Holmes has heard the story of this troubled relationship as a narrative of avoidant attachment. He seeks to ‘break open the narrative’ of our theory and practice to develop it into something that is ‘new and less constricted’ (p. 82).
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