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Much conceptual and empirical literature on attachment theory and research has been published since Bowlby's pioneering work in the field, which spanned four decades starting in the 1940s. Unfortunately for clinicians, however, most of the famous figures in the attachment field include researchers such as Ainsworth, Main, Sroufe, Hesse, Fonagy, and others. It is only in more recent times that the findings from attachment research have been applied to clinical practice, beginning with psychoanalysts such as Lichtenberg, Beebe, and Lachmann, who come from contemporary self psychology, or couple and family therapists such as Solomon and Johnson.
Wallin's book contributes new insights and dimensions to this body of literature, integrating attachment theory, mentalization, relational and intersubjectivity theories, and principles of mindfulness meditation. While Wallin, a psychologist practicing in California, is himself not a trained analyst, he is familiar enough with analytic concepts based on relational theory, Bollas's object relations theory and the concept of the “unthought known,” and self psychology, to integrate them in his book in an accessible, clear manner.
Wallins opens the book with an overview of attachment theory, and continues with Main's adult attachment interview, and her concept of metacognition related to Bowlby's notion of mental representations. Following Ainsworth's experiment of the Strange Situation, where she observed children from the ages of 6–18 months and their behaviors around separation and reunion from their mothers, Main et al. developed the Adult attachment Interview, designed to assess adults' states of mind around attachment,
separation, loss, and trauma. Main found four adult attachment styles roughly corresponding to Ainsworth's attachment styles for children. For example, Ainsworth's secure style in children corresponds to Main's autonomous style in adults, her insecure ambivalent style corresponds to Main's preoccupied style in