I recently returned from a two week intensive training in the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) at the University of California, Berkeley, with Dr.’s Mary Main and Erik Hesse- two scholars who have devoted 30 years to expanding and refining this highly accurate assessment measure. Using the framework provided by the AAI, the therapist tracks and codes a person’s language from a lengthy 20 question interview about childhood experiences with parents or other significant attachment figures.
Immersion in this assessment measure for two weeks was eye opening and significantly expanded my understanding of adult attachment and how early relationships create underlying relational patterns in adult life. The sophisticated and nuanced understanding that I gained from the training far exceeded what I had hoped for . I have the sense that this training and the expanded world of understanding will continue to teach and grow within me for the foreseeable future as the material integrates and I weave pieces into my practice with clients.
I’m recognizing the ways that this way of assessment and practice complements beautifully my foundational somatic lens, creating a powerful partnership between linguistics and right hemisphere/somatic information and processing.
I have attached a picture from my time in Berkeley that really expresses my feelings about the training.
