Attachment theory has revolutionized the field of mental health and the practice of psychotherapy. Its central theme is how people create unconscious, positive and negative expectations, about the ability of our attachment figures to respond sensitively to our states of alarm and affliction, and how we resort to those attachment figures as an emotional refuge and secure basis for navigating the social environment. As Bowlby said, attachment bonds are crucial for mental health from the cradle to the grave.

The strength of the theory is based on detailed observations that have confirmed its basic premises and have added new knowledge of great use for psychotherapy and mental health care. Each of the contributors to this book shows their particular way of using this knowledge in clinical work with individuals, couples, families and groups.

This work brings together contributions from experts from various countries (Argentina, Spain, the United States, Mexico and the United Kingdom) that describe how the attachment theory informs psychoanalytic practice, couple, group, family and multifamily therapies, parent-child therapy, grieving interventions and psychosocial psychiatric rehabilitation. It is not a medley of loose chapters: the coherence of the work is the result of a collaboration between colleagues who have shared teaching activities at an international level.

Mauricio Cortina is a psychiatrist and relational psychoanalyst, of Mexican origin. Founding member of RIA, (Ibero-American Attachment Network). He has published more than 30 articles and chapters on attachment, intersubjectivity and cooperation. He has compiled with Michael Maccoby the book about Erich Fromm A Prophetic Analyst Erich Fromm'Contributions to Psychoanalysis. He works at the Washington School of Psychiatry, where he directs the Center for Attachment and Human Development. He is a professor at the Institute of Contemporary Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis and at the Mexican Institute of Sociopsychoanalysis in Mexico City.

Mario Marrone is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and group psychotherapist. Of Italian-Argentine origin, he studied medicine at the National University of Rosario, trained as a psychoanalyst and group therapist in London and has worked in hospital and private areas in Argentina, Spain, England and Italy. He is a member of the British Psychoanalytic Society. He is a founding member and current president of IAN (International Attachment Network). He has published three books in Spanish (in Psimática Editorial) on topics related to the theory of attachment.

Together they have compiled the book on attachment theory and psychoanalysis Attachment and the Psychoanalytic Processes.