Practical Applications of Transforming the Attachment Relationship to God: Using Attachment-Informed Psychotherapy

Author(s) : Geoff Goodman

Book Details

Publisher : Routledge
Published : May 2025
Cover : Paperback
Pages : 224
Category :
Forthcoming
Category 2 :
Individual Psychotherapy
Catalogue No : 98057
ISBN 13 : 9781032944098
ISBN 10 : 1032944099

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Practical Applications of Transforming the Attachment Relationship to God discusses four distinct attachment relationships to the God of personal spiritual experience and considers how each of these relationships has implications for working with clients in psychotherapy.

Geoff Goodman uses Attachment-Informed Psychotherapy (AIP) to explore the connection between a relationship to God and a relationship to caregivers during childhood. By analyzing the attachment relationships evident in the lives of four public figures - human rights activist Coretta Scott King, Jewish Holocaust victim Anne Frank, Alcoholics Anonymous co-founder Bill W., and founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud - this book demonstrates how their attachment relationships with their caregivers during childhood helped to determine the quality of their attachment relationship (or non-relationship) to God. Goodman demonstrates how to use AIP to work with these attachment relationships, formulating a psychotherapeutic treatment plan for each one with a goal of restoring wholeness and unity.

Practical Applications of Transforming the Attachment Relationship to God will be a valuable resource for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and marriage and family therapists in practice and in training.

Reviews & Endorsements
Table of Contents
About the Author(s)
Customer Reviews

Reviews and Endorsements

Drawing from psychological attachment theory and pastoral care theology, “Our Refuge and Strength: Using Psychoanalytic Techniques to Transform the Attachment Relationship to God” is the best integration of psychology and spirituality to date. Moreover, the author’s insightful case studies demonstrate the mysterious dynamics of moving from theory to practice. All readers, from seasoned professional therapists to aspiring student chaplains, will treasure Goodman’s book.
John Snarey, Franklin N. Parker Professor Emeritus, Emory University

With his landmark achievement Our Refuge and Strength: Transforming Attachment to the Living God, Dr. Goodman provides key extensions to previous research on the attachment-religion connection. He takes this work to the therapy room as well as to flesh and blood of lived experience – his own and that of important historical figures. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, which is a must-read for anyone interested in the attachment-religion connection.
Pehr Granqvist, The Eneroth Professor of Psychology, Dept. of Psychology, Stockholm University

1. Introduction

Section I - Using Autobiographies to Illustrate Attachment to God: Three Attachment Relationship Patterns
2. Coretta Scott King: Secure Attachment to the Living God
3. Anne Frank: Anxious-Resistant Attachment—Higher Power as Compensation
4. Bill W.: Anxious-Avoidant Attachment—Higher Power as Compensation
5. Sigmund Freud: Anxious-Avoidant Attachment—in Denial About the Possibility of a Higher Power

Section II - A Clinical Application of Attachment-Informed Psychotherapy
6. A Yogi in Attachment-Informed Psychotherapy: A Spiritually Informed Case Conceptualization
7. What I Have Personally Learned from Writing this Book

Author Index
Subject Index

About the Author(s)

Geoff Goodman, PhD, is associate professor of psychology at Long Island University. He is also a licensed clinical and school psychologist with a private practice in Manhattan and New City, New York, and is certified by the American Board of Professional Psychology (ABPP). He is the author of more than a dozen articles on the development of psychopathology in high-risk infants, children, and adults, as well as The Internal World and Attachment (2002).

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