How Attachment Theory Can Contribute to the Understanding of Affective Functioning in Psychoanalysis

THIS PAPER BRIEFLY REVIEWS THE MOST RELEVANT psychoanalytic theories about affect, which still have a questionable status, as Shapiro and Emde (1992) have recently emphasized. Attachment theory, since Bowlby's early papers, stresses the affective bond between infant and caregiver. According to different strategies of attachment (secure, avoidant, ambivalent), emotional experience and regulation are discussed. From infancy to adulthood emotions are intertwined with representations of self and attachment figures (internal working model). In this context, affects are no more considered “drive derivatives,” but they create an “affective communication system” (Tronick, 1989), in which the infant and adults are participants.

With these perspectives a vignette is presented about clinical observations of a young man who suffers from substance dependence and mood disorder. In particular, considering the narrative structure of the patient's communication, the attachment strategies are investigated.

In the concluding remarks it is suggested that mental representations of attachment could be conceived of as a network whose different attachment strategies could be activated by the interaction with others. In the clinical context the interaction between patient and