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Attachment theory, borne of the mind of an analyst, John Bowlby (1960, 1969, 1973, ), has developed a rich and comprehensive intellectual framework about achieving security and coping with separation and loss. Until recently, this theoretical framework has pursued its developmental pathway fairly independently of psychoanalysis and analytic technique. Following Ainsworth and colleagues (1978), who conceptualized the three strategies of coping with separation anxiety (secure, insecure avoidant, and insecure resistant/ambivalent), developmental psychologists have elaborated attachment's stability, its functioning across the life cycle, transmission through generations, and mental representations in adulthood (Bretherton and Waters, 1985; Goldberg et al., 1996; Matas et al., 1978; Vaughn et al., 1979; Ward and Carlson, 1995; E. Waters, June 5, 1995, personal communication).
In the last few years, psychoanalysts and others have been exploring the usefulness of attachment theory to psychoanalysis (Clyman, 1991; Fonagy, 1996; Goldberg et al., 1996; Main, 1993; Szajnberg et al., 1993). In this article we explore attachment theory's value for assessing the early transference and its implications for the interpretative stance, as well as conceptualizing the match between the analyst's and the analysand's working models of attachment.
We begin with a brief review of attachment categories as these are relevant to the clinical vignettes presented. This is followed by a focal review of early transference in order to identify how attachment may contribute to its understanding.
Ainsworth et al. identified three categories of attachment in a normative study of infants in Baltimore in the 1960s. Securely attached