Quizzes

These short quizzes can give you a very quick idea of your attachment style.

Adult Attachment Interview (AAI)

The Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) (Mary Main et al.) is the gold standard of Attachment Assessments. For those committed to healing their attachment conditioning and foundational psychology, this is a benchmark to establish.

The interview triggers your ‘attachment mechanism’ by asking you questions about childhood attachment situations. The responses are then coded for patterns that place you into one or a combination of attachment styles (secure, dismissing, preoccupied, disorganized, unresolved).

The interview itself takes between 60 and 90 minutes. The scoring is detailed and takes another two to three hours to render. It takes a comprehensive look at childhood experiences in terms of the caregiver’s level of:

  • rejection
  • role-reversal
  • pressure to achieve
  • neglect
  • overall “loving-ness”

Trauma and loss are also assessed. Moreover, your current state of mind relative to attachment is assessed. This is accomplished largely by gauging:

  • degree of idealization of attachment figures (positive claims about caregivers that aren’t backed up by memories later on in the interview)
  • degree helpless anger
  • derogation of caregivers
  • derogation of attachment

The following are determined as well:

  • Meta-cognitive/reflective functioning (when scored for reflective function)
  • Passivity of thought process
  • Coherence of transcript and mind

Final scoring produces a detailed assessment of your attachment style based on these factors. The AAI is valuable as it gives us a pre-treatment determination of attachment conditioning. Then at the end of treatment, it is re-administered. This produces pre/post scores that validate your journey from insecure attachment (dismissing, preoccupied, and disorganized) to secure attachment. This helps with motivation and faith in the practice. The transformation of the internal working model of attachment and therefore core mental health is quantified and tracked.

To that point, when your primary attachment style is known then we modify the attachment repair meditation to correct that type of insecure attachment (dismissing, preoccupied, or disorganized).

So, taking the AAI within the first month of one-on-one treatment is very helpful as it optimized the course of treatment. However, it is not obligatory. For many, it makes sense to put off the AAI until full faith in the therapeutic/corrective process of attachment repair is developed.

Moreover, after the second phase of treatment (working through ‘early maladaptive schemas’) secure attachment conditioning is assumed to be in place. At that point, we re-administer the AAI to verify the attainment of secure attachment. This is very satisfying as it assures all parties of the success of the treatment.

Book an appointment for an AAI

Cedric will give you the interview. Scoring will be sent to a third-party who is an official coder.

Book an AAI