Attachment processes develop across the life cycle and also express themselves in group and organizational situations where they can be conceived as a ‘politics of affect’ through which identities are constructed. I use the concept of ‘reciprocating selves’ to draw attention to these attachment-seeking and relational processes. I argue that trauma can ossify the reciprocal movement and responsiveness necessary to human relating, the back and forth between people through which differences are negotiated and resilience created. I draw on Volkan's concept of ‘time collapse’ to characterize situations in which the embodied experience of affect overwhelms. This can render the past unrevisable and undifferentiated in the present. An idea of reciprocating selves helps us to understand how formative attachment experience continues to develop through the life of groups and organizations and the difficulties which occur if this process becomes frozen or where an ersatz reciprocation in the form of a narcissistic defence may result.