Toward assessing attachment on an emotional security continuum: comment on Fraley and Spieker (2003)

The article by R.C. Fraley and S.J. Spieker (2003) serves to remind the discipline of the possible virtues of assessing attachments on continua, a practice that has a long history in attachment research. In this commentary, the author further develops the potential contributions of this approach to assessment and advocates renewed efforts toward assessment of attachments on a single continuum of emotional security. The author contends that theory is essential as a guide for new directions in attachment assessment and that Bowlby's notions of secure base and emotional security provide the needed conceptual foundation for these further developments (E. Waters & E. M. Cummings, 2000). Moreover, challenges that have been made historically to the scoring of attachment on a security continuum are addressed. New means for continuously scoring attachment are advocated as a supplement to the primary direction of categorically assessing attachment patterns.