Attachment and Negative Absorption States: Implications for Treating Distressed Families

Abstract

Emotion has long provided family therapists with important clues to family relationships, problems, and ways of intervening. Therapists intuitively make ongoing distinctions between emotions that should be downplayed and other emotions that should be amplified or heightened. Most therapists will move quickly to control angry and accusatory exchanges that threaten to distance and alienate family members from one another. In contrast, less obvious, more adaptive emotions, ranging from assertive anger and fear through sadness, are hidden in hostile exchanges. In the current paper, we draw on John Gottman's descriptions of dysfunctional emotion in distressed marriages, as a way of describing the presenting state of families who seek treatment. We then suggest that attachment theory and research provides an explicit guide for therapists, not only in understanding dysfunctional emotion, but more importantly, in pointing toward the hidden emotions that hold the potential for therapeutic change in families. As such, attachment theory provides an important tool for discriminating between functional and dysfunctional emotions, and guides the therapist toward emotionally focused interventions that hold the potential for moving family relationships toward more healthy and adaptive functioning.