A Prototype-Based Model of Adult Attachment for Clinicians

Models of adult attachment have proven to be useful for understanding illness behavior, stress responses, susceptibility to disease processes, and psychotherapeutic approaches to difficult patients. Two methods of assessing patterns of attachment, using self-report instruments and using techniques such as the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI), are only weakly related and each has drawbacks for clinical use. We have previously assessed commonalities and differences in the descriptions of attachment patterns that emerge from these schools and synthesized them in empirically based attachment prototypes. In this companion article, we describe a prototype-based model of attachment. This model defines dimensions of attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance as composites of particular aspects of internal working models of self and other, behavior in current close relationships, patterns of expression of affect, and narrative coherence. The model emphasizes the clinical importance of the severity of attachment insecurity, defined as a dimension which incorporates problems in the previously listed domains of attachment as well as deficits in mentalizing, self-agency, and resolution of trauma. The model locates the central tendencies of prototypic (“textbook”) descriptions of four patterns of attachment (secure, dismissing, preoccupied, and fearful/disorganized) while avoiding definitions of the boundaries between categories of attachment. We compare the prototype-based model to the two most prominent current models of attachment, the 4-category, 2-dimension model derived from self-report methods of assessment and categories of “attachment states of mind” derived from the Adult Attachment Interview. Finally, we discuss limitations of the prototype-based model and areas requiring further research.