Rethinking the relationship between attachment and personality disorder

Attachment approaches have played a crucial role in furthering our understanding of individuals with personality disorders (PDs) and their treatment. Yet, recent years have witnessed the emergence of a number of findings that urge us to reconsider the role of attachment in PDs. Besides the overlap between conceptualizations of attachment and core features of PD, there is increasing evidence that the link between childrearing environments, including attachment contexts, and later outcomes is less substantial than often assumed. Here, we summarize these findings and propose a novel approach to the role of attachment in PDs by situating attachment within a broader sociocommunicative approach to PDs. This approach involves a reconceptualizing of attachment as an adaptation strategy to a given environment, with attachment contexts being only one, albeit important, context to learn about the social environment. Evidence for these assumptions is reviewed, and clinical implications are discussed.