Two expert speakers:

The January workshop run by Nicola Jones (psychotherapist in private practice with couples, individuals and families) and Beatriz Folch (psychologist in private practice and teacher of psychology) is aimed at psychotherapists and counsellors.

The AAI gives access to valuable information about individual’s early years of development, usually essential to help clients and patients make sense of themselves and their perceptions of others. Importantly it ascertains individual’s attachment styles which reflect individual differences in the deeply internalised strategies for regulating emotion and degree of flexibility of perspective-taking when an individual is in distress. Such information is often difficult or impossible to recall. Along with the Strange Situation Procedure, it supports the inter-generational transmission of patterns of attachment and of trauma.

As such the AAI develops John Bowlby’s 5 therapeutic tasks (A Secure Base, 1988) helping to establish the therapeutic alliance and provides for the therapist, an agenda of questions directly relevant to the patient’s attachment experience i.e. their experience of receiving care: Bowlby’s concept of ‘informed inquiry.’ Further, it reveals past traumas and losses and uncovers defences and, of great value, gives insights into an individual’s reflective functioning.

This workshop will be largely experiential, providing you with practical skills that will enable you to gain the insights noted above. In addition, there will be presentations explaining the links between the clinical application of the AAI and theory, drawing on the work of Mary Main and others, who developed the AAI, the Strange Situation and making links with the work of Colwyn Trevarthen and Alan Sroufe. Research shows that bridging the gap between research and clinical practice produces better therapeutic outcomes and this theme will underlie these trainings in the forthcoming series of IAN’s physical (vs virtual) workshops.

To register, please email admin@ian-attachment.org.uk with your details (places are limited to 30 people).