ATTACHMENT DISORGANIZATION The Reunion of Attachment Theory and Psychoanalysis

The author investigates the psychoanalytic implications of recent attachment research on the disorganized attachment category in infants and the unresolved for trauma and loss adult attachment classification with which it has been associated. The author first reviews empirical findings on attachment disorganization and then explores the ways in which they are consistent with and illuminated by psychoanalytic concepts. The focus is on linkages between disorganized attachment and Freud’s theory of strain trauma and traumatic anxiety, Klein’s theory of projective identification and the interplay between paranoid– schizoid and depressive anxieties in development, and Blatt’s theory of psychological development as resulting from the interplay of anaclitic and introjective developmental lines. In so doing, this article contributes to the reunion between attachment theory and psychoanalysis.