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This very interesting book is, effectively, two books and, in retrospect, the title, Exploring in Security, and the subtitle, Towards an Attachment-Informed Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, reflect its dual nature.
The title, Exploring in Security, describes the thinking of current attachment theory: that the foundation of a sense of a separate self and the capacity for curiosity and hence the ability to learn is based on an initial experience of secure attachment between mother/primary carer and baby. Insecure attachment … leads to a defective capacity to be aware of self and others, i.e. the capacity to mentalize. Mentalization is ‘the mental process by which an individual implicitly and explicitly interprets the actions of himself and other as meaningful on the basis of intentional mental states such as personal desires, needs, feelings, beliefs and reasons’ (p. 10). Hence the role of the psychotherapist is to relate to the patient in such a manner as to allow the patient to feel safe, i.e. to have a secure attachment, (or corrective?) experience with the therapist (p. ix).
For those of us whose training did not include attachment theory and who do not know the model of the mind underlying mentalization, this aspect of the book, with its copious clinical examples, is clearly written, interesting and informative.
The subtitle, Towards An Attachment-Informed Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, suggests a secondary theme, a theoretical and linguistic question of definition: what is psychoanalysis? What is psychoanalytic psychotherapy: and how far can you stretch the definition: can it include an attachment model: before it becomes meaningless? This is a question that Freud asked and which has nagged at therapists ever since. We continually ask ourselves and each other: ‘Is what I've just said really analytic’, perhaps suggesting we believe there is a singular ‘real’ and a failure if we do not meet it. I remember, once in my training a seminar leader asked: ‘What are the beliefs