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This article summarizes the development and validation of the Adult Attachment Projective System (AAP), a measure we developed from the Bowlby-Ainsworth developmental tradition to assess adult attachment status. The AAP has demonstrated excellent concurrent validity with the Adult Attachment Interview (George, Kaplan, & Main, 1984/1985/1996; Main & Goldwyn, 1985-1994; Main, Goldwyn, & Hesse, 2003), interjudge reliability, and test-retest reliability, with no effects of verbal intelligence or social desirability. The AAP coding and classification system and application in clinical and community samples are summarized. Finally, we introduce the 3 other articles that are part of this Special Section and discuss the use of the AAP in therapeutic assessment and treatment.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether children classified as controlling in attachment differ from children classified into the traditional Ainsworth attachment categories in their symbolic representations of attachment and level of behavior problems. Sixty-nine middle-class kindergarten children and their mothers participated in a laboratory separation and reunion. Children enacted doll-play stories about attachment-related themes. A four-group representation classification scheme was developed from the doll-play transcripts of 27 children. Mothers (n = 44) completed Achenbach's Child Behavior Checklist and teachers (n = 40) completed a 30-item inventory of classroom behavior. Results showed significant agreement between the representational system and Main and Cassidy's classification system (1988) for children's reunionbehavior. The doll-play of controlling children was characterized by themes of catastrophe and helplessness or by complete inhibition of play and suggested disorganization of representational processes. Controlling children also were described by mothers and teachers as significantly more aggressive than other children. The results validate the distinction between the controlling and traditional classification groups and suggest that controlling children are at risk for behavioral maladaptation at home and at school.

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In this paper, we describe the development of and our preliminary work to empirically validate the Adult Attachment Projective (AAP), a new adult attachment classification system that is based on the analysis of individuals' responses to a set of seven attachment-related drawings. The AAP classification system uses evaluations of three dimensions (Discourse, Content and Defensive Processing) to designate four major adult classification groups: Secure, Dismissing, Preoccupied, and Unresolved. Preliminary validation of the AAP is based on 75 participants drawn from three separate samples. The results indicate strong interjudge reliability and convergent agreement between the AAP and Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) classifications. The AAP, thus, appears to be a promising developmental measure for assessing the representation of attachment in adults. Contributions of the AAP to attachment theory and research are discussed. The similarities and differences between AAP stories and other child and adult representational measures are also discussed.

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Neuroimaging studies of depression have demonstrated treatment-specific changes involving the limbic system and regulatory regions in the prefrontal cortex. While these studies have examined the effect of short-term, interpersonal or cognitive-behavioural psychotherapy, the effect of long-term, psychodynamic intervention has never been assessed. Here, we investigated recurrently depressed (DSM-IV) unmedicated outpatients (N = 16) and control participants matched for sex, age, and education (N = 17) before and after 15 months of psychodynamic psychotherapy. Participants were scanned at two time points, during which presentations of attachment-related scenes with neutral descriptions alternated with descriptions containing personal core sentences previously extracted from an attachment interview. Outcome measure was the interaction of the signal difference between personal and neutral presentations with group and time, and its association with symptom improvement during therapy. Signal associated with processing personalized attachment material varied in patients from baseline to endpoint, but not in healthy controls. Patients showed a higher activation in the left anterior hippocampus/amygdala, subgenual cingulate, and medial prefrontal cortex before treatment and a reduction in these areas after 15 months. This reduction was associated with improvement in depressiveness specifically, and in the medial prefrontal cortex with symptom improvement more generally. This is the first study documenting neurobiological changes in circuits implicated in emotional reactivity and control after long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy.

Responses to distress in agemates were examined in observations of 10 abused toddlers and 10 matched controls from families experiencing stress. Both groups of children were from disadvantaged families. The children ranged in age from 1 to 3 years and were observed in day care settings. Nonabused, disadvantaged toddlers responded to the distress of agemates with simple interest or with concern, empathy, or sadness. Their patterns of response were consistent with findings from other studies of middle-class, nonabused children. Not one abused toddler showed concern in response to the distress of an agemate. Instead, the abused toddlers often reacted to an agemate's distress with disturbing behavior patterns not seen in the control toddlers, such as with physical attacks, fear, or anger. Three of the abused toddlers alternately attacked and attempted to comfort peers found in distress. Similar aversive and angry responses to distress in others have been described by investigators working with abusing parents.