A Short Introduction to Attachment and Attachment Disorder turns ten years old this year!

It was significantly revised for the second edition (2016), but it remains a favorite for many.

At the time it was ‘written’ (2008 – though it evolved from lecture notes first prepared in 1999), it was representative of much that I had learnt across seventeen years practise as an applied researcher and Psychologist practising in child and adolescent mental health and child protection.

In the book, I challenged thinking of the time concerning the use of ADHD medication among children with a trauma history and I addressed the central importance of making and maintaining deep and lasting connections.

Organised around the concepts of Attachment, Arousal and Accessibility (to needs provision), the book was a pre-cursor to what would become known as the Triple-A Model of Therapeutic Care.

By including a reformulation of the operant conditioning paradigm, the book and I broke with common representations in the area of attachment and trauma and ‘spoke’ about the importance of what children learn about adults in a caregiving role (Accessibility, to needs provision). Without seeking to to do so, ‘we’ emulated the cross-disciplinary approach John Bowlby took when he first conceived of ‘Attachment Theory’.

Happy birthday first edition!