Using Psychoanalytic Techniques to Transform the Attachment Relationship to God: Our Refuge and Strength

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 wholeness and unity―a crucial treatment goal of AIP.

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

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, USA. He holds board certifications in clinical psychology and psychoanalysis from the American Board of Professional Psychology.