Psychoanalysis, Attachment and the Relationship with God

Geoff Goodman (Emory University, Georgia, USA)

ISBN 10: 1041019300 / ISBN 13: 9781041019305

Published by Taylor & Francis, 2025

About this Item

Geoff Goodman is Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences in the Emory University School of Medicine and Associate Professor of Psychology and Spiritual Care in the Emory University Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, Georgia. He holds b.

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: Psychoanalysis, Attachment and the Relationship with God
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Publication Date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1041019300
• ISBN 13: 9781041019305
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

This set includes both Using Psychoanalytic Techniques to Transform the Attachment Relationship to God and Practical Applications of Transforming the Attachment Relationship to God.

Using Psychoanalytic Techniques to Transform the Attachment Relationship to God demonstrates how clinicians can use Attachment-Informed Psychotherapy (AIP) to enhance clients’ understanding of their relationship to God and significant others. Geoff Goodman discusses four distinct attachment relationships to the God of personal spiritual experience and explains the implications for working with clients in psychotherapy. By asking how therapists can work through clients’ attachment relationship to God as a displacement of their attachment relationships to parents, and how therapists can work through clients’ attachment relationships to parents as a displacement of their attachment relationship to God, this book provides unique insight into the therapeutic process. Goodman’s objective is to enable clinicians to transform these attachment relationships, restoring and unity – a crucial treatment goal of AIP.

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.

These books will be a valuable resource for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, marriage and family therapists, and pastoral counsellors in practice and in training.

About the Author

Geoff Goodman is Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences in the Emory University School of Medicine and Associate Professor of Psychology and Spiritual Care in the Emory University Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, Georgia. He holds board certifications in clinical psychology and psychoanalysis by the American Board of Professional Psychology.