Exploring in Security: Towards an Attachment-Informed Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy

Winner of the 2010 Goethe Award for Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic Scholarship!

This book builds a key clinical bridge between attachment theory and psychoanalysis, deploying Holmes' unique capacity to weld empirical evidence, psychoanalytic theory and consulting room experience into a coherent and convincing whole. Starting from the theory–practice gap in psychoanalytic psychotherapy, the book demonstrates how attachment theory can help practitioners better understand what they intuitively do in the consulting room, how this benefits clients, and informs evidence-based practice.

Divided into two sections, theory and practice, Exploring in Security discusses the concept of mentalising and considers three components of effective therapy – the therapeutic relationship, meaning making and change promotion – from both attachment and psychoanalytic perspectives. The second part of the book applies attachment theory to a number of clinical situations including:

• working with borderline clients
• suicide and deliberate self-harm
• sex and sexuality
• dreams
• ending therapy.

Throughout the book theoretical discussion is vividly illustrated with clinical material, personal experience and examples from literature and film, making this an accessible yet authoritative text for psychotherapy practitioners at all levels, including psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, mental health nurses and counsellors.

This book builds a key clinical bridge between attachment theory and psychoanalysis, deploying Holmes' unique capacity to weld empirical evidence, psychoanalytic theory and consulting room experience into a coherent and convincing whole. Starting from the theory—practice gap in psychoanalytic psychotherapy, the book demonstrates how attachment theory can help practitioners better understand what they intuitively do in the consulting room, how this benefits clients, and informs evidence-based practice.

Divided into two sections, theory and practice, Exploring in Security discusses the concept of mentalising and considers three components of effective therapy — the therapeutic relationship, meaning making and change promotion — from both attachment and psychoanalytic perspectives. The second part of the book applies attachment theory to a number of clinical situations including:

• working with borderline clients


• suicide and deliberate self-harm


• sex and sexuality


• dreams


• ending therapy.

Throughout the book theoretical discussion is vividly illustrated with clinical material, personal experience and examples from literature and film, making this an accessible yet authoritative text for psychotherapy practitioners at all levels, including psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, mental health nurses and counsellors.

Jeremy Holmes is a Psychiatrist and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist and Visiting Professor at the University of Exeter, UK. He has published prolifically in the field of Attachment Theory and psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Now retired from the NHS, he co-runs the postgraduate degree and qualifying course in psychodynamic psychotherapy at Exeter University, and has a small private practice. In 2009 he received the prestigious Bowlby-Ainsworth Award for his contributions to the field of attachment.