Assessing Attachment

Since first discovering Attachment Theory three weeks ago, I've become like a small boy with a hammer: everything looks like a nail!  I interpret everything around me in terms of my poorly-grasped understanding of Attachment Theory, from my current learning blocks to plot-lines on EastEnders, from my own childhood experiences, to success and failure in the Network Marketing Industry.

It's time to delve a little deeper.

If a secure base is important, and if insecurities of attachment can have bad effects on us as adults, then we need some handle on "how secure" or "how unsecure" we are.  Which suggests assessment.

Now, traditional assessment is going to be the "men (or women) in white coats with clipboards, peering at us", but, as I said elsewhere in this blog, that's not my style: my style is more co-operative and equal.

However, there's no point in re-inventing wheels, and I'm sure there's LOADS of good stuff in "traditional" AT assessment methods, so I'm going to set myself the task of reading about them, learning about them, and then forming them into a co-operative, "equal" form that we could use.  A form that doesn't need white coats, or clipboards or knowledge of statistics to use, or a university degree to understand.

Stage one is get a list of stuff for me to review.  So, unless you're as fascinated by this "deep stuff" as me, now's the time to turn off!

• Sonkin's introduction to Assessing AT (scroll down to find the assessment bit)
  
• SUNY Stony Brook: Measures for research on maternal sensitivity, secure base use, secure base support, and attachment representations.  Essays and comments on issues and difficulties in attachment assessment.
• Attachment and reflective function: Their role in self-organization, PETER FONAGY AND MARY TARGET (1997), Sub-Department of Clinical Health Psychology, University College London, Development and Psychopathology, 9 (1997), 679–700, Copyright (c) 1997 Cambridge University Press, Printed in the United States of America
• Shaver's Computer-adminstered "Attachment Style" self-assesment scale 
• Your Personality | Free online personality tests and quizes 
• Bartholemew's Research Lab
• Experiences in Close Relationships Questionnaire
  
• Overview of Adult Attachment and Research 
• Self-Report Measures of Adult Attachment
  
  

That's it for now ... I'm off to self-administer the Shaver Attachment Style quiz.  (Hmm.  Pre-occupied, eh!)

James