Creating the Capacity for Attachment

Treating Addictions and the Alienated Self

By (author) Karen B. Walant

Not available to order

Publication date:

01 August 1998

Length of book:

320 pages

Publisher

Jason Aronson, Inc.

ISBN-13: 9781461628033

Detached, alienated people, many of them functioning with a pathologically developed false self, barely navigate life's challenges. Our cultural emphasis on autonomy and separateness has led to a retreat from valuing interpersonal, communal dependence and has greatly contributed to a rise in the number of people whose suffering is often expressed in addictions and personality disorders. Using actual patient material including diaries and letters, Karen Walant's Creating the Capacity for Attachment shows how "immersive moments" in therapy—moments of complete understanding between patient and therapist—are powerful enough to dislodge the alienated, detached self from its hiding place and enable the individual to begin incorporating his or her inner core into his or her external, social self.
In this scholarly, sensitive book, Karen Walant systematically examines psychodynamic paradigms for understanding development and applies her analysis to the needs and problems of substance-dependent individuals. She provocatively underscores the failure of classical psychoanalysis to attune to what shapes infantile behavior and its profound effects on adult adaptations. In its place she offers rich material from childhood observations and adult clinical encounters to present a refreshing psychoanalytic model that better explains the distress and characteristic defenses that lead to maladaptive solutions. The insight that she provides guides the reader in more successfully understanding, accessing, and modifying addictive vulnerability.