Attachment and Affect Regulation Theory: Clinical Applications

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*See below for available discount and CEU/Supervision options.

Delivery: Synchronous virtual classroom via Zoom

Series Overview

Attachment Theory provides an overarching framework from which to understand our clients’ distress and their attempts to cope with that distress, as well the reparative potential of the therapeutic relationship. Increasingly, attachment theory is being understood as a regulation theory. During this course, we will consider how our early experiences with caregivers shape the ways we regulate our affect. We will discuss implicit memory systems, exploring how early information from our relational environment is processed nonconsciously and shapes the neural structures that we then use to evaluate and incorporate subsequent information.  Characteristics of attachment security and insecurity will be examined, including how attachment patterns underlie personality organization, symptoms of anxiety and depression, anger expression and relationship dynamics. The intergenerational transmission of attachment security and insecurity will be discussed. We will explore how attachment relationships are impacted by the culture and larger society that surrounds them.  An alternate typology of attachment patterns will be introduced that is geared toward understanding and honoring the strategies children and adults develop when confronted with danger.

“The therapist’s role is analogous to that of a mother who provides her child with a secure base from which to explore the world.”--Bowlby

Our knowledge of attachment theory will be applied to our clinical work by taking a view of the therapeutic relationship as an attachment relationship with goals of promoting self-integration, affect regulation, reflectiveness, and the capacity for healthy dependency in our clients. We will emphasize the role of nonverbal, unconscious communication and explicate mentalization, or reflective functioning, understanding it as a mechanism for cultivating attachment security. We will also explore the therapist’s attachment style and how it may impact the treatment process.  

To maintain a cohesive cohort, participants are expected to commit to attendance at all sessions.

Program Objectives

Participants in this program will be able to:

• Discuss the role of attachment in early development, including its central role in affect regulation and the construction of the self.
• Identify the characteristics of: secure attachment, insecure attachment and disorganized attachment.
• Compare and contrast the Main and Crittenden models of attachment strategies.
• Critique attachment theory’s applicability across culture, class, race, ethnicity and gender.
• Discuss the importance of working with the nonverbal in psychotherapy and methods for doing so.
• Describe how to foster therapy relationships that serve as reparative attachment relationships for our dismissing, preoccupied and disorganized clients.
• Discuss anxiety, depression and personality organization using an attachment theory lens and indicate how this understanding influences treatment approaches.
• Discuss how attachment theory is useful in conceptualizing psychosocial and relational struggles throughout the lifespan.
• Identify one’s own attachment patterns and reflect on how these affect one’s work with clients.

Each session begins with a didactic presentation that is followed by small group clinical supervision.  The 7-8 member supervision groups create a safe space to present and explore case material from the perspectives discussed in the course. To maintain a cohesive cohort, participants are expected to commit to attendance at all sessions.

Continuing Education Credits^

Students who do not plan to use the group supervision hours toward LCSW requirements are eligible to receive 15 continuing education credits for the program (2.5/session). Students who apply the group supervision hours toward their LCSW supervision requirements are eligible to receive 9 continuing education credits (1.5/session) and 6 supervision hours (1/session). Continuing education credits earned will be emailed following the completion of the program.

Note: State board regulations stipulate that group supervision be done simultaneously with individual supervision. Since the maximum number of supervision hours per week is two, one of those hours must be individual.

Program Cost | *Discount

Series Cost: $350

Discount Rate: $320 for Current PSCSW Members  |  BMC Alums  |  Field Instructors of current BMC students  |  Agency-funded groups of 3 or more

Faculty

Toni Mandelbaum, PhD, LCSW, is in private practice and works with individuals and couples utilizing an attachment framework. She received her MSW from Columbia University, trained as a family and couples therapist with The Family Institute of Philadelphia, and earned her doctorate at Bryn Mawr College Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research.  In 2003, she became a certified coder for the Adult Attachment Interview.  Toni recently wrote a book (published in 2020), titled Attachment and adult clinical practice:  An integrated perspective on developmental theory, neurobiology, and emotional regulation published by Routledge: Taylor and Francis Group.

Leda Sportolari, MSW, LCSW, is in private practice in Bala Cynwyd (and remotely), working with adolescents, adults, couples and families.  Her clinical approach is guided by her intensive study of the Dynamic Maturational Model of Attachment and Adaptation (DMM) with Patricia Crittenden, PhD. Leda is a past-president and a current board member of the Pennsylvania Society for Clinical Social Work and has been an adjunct faculty member at the Bryn Mawr College Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research, where she taught Attachment Based Therapy and Couples Therapy for a number of years.  She is the co-clinical director and a consultation group leader with the Philadelphia chapter of A Home Within, a national nonprofit organization that offers pro-bono relational therapy to children, youth and adults who are in or have been in foster or kinship care. Leda offers sliding scale clinical supervision to MSWs pursuing LCSW licensure.