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Attachment Injury Resolution Model in Emotionally Focused Therapy

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Encyclopedia of Couple and Family Therapy

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Synonyms

EFT AIRM

Introduction

Emotionally focused couple therapy (EFT) is an empirically validated therapy (Wiebe and Johnson 2016) for increasing relationship satisfaction and creating secure bonds in distressed couple relationships. As an attachment-based, systemic, humanistic-experiential therapy, it places emotion in the forefront as the target and agent of change, making it particularly relevant for repairing interpersonal injuries. Johnson et al. (2001) first presented the construct of “attachment injury” to describe a particular type of interpersonal injury and delineated a model for resolving such injuries.

Johnson developed a model of forgiveness and resolution to address relationship traumas such as infidelity and other moments of betrayal or abandonment, defining an attachment injury(AI) as a specific relational incident where one partner violates the expectation that she/he will offer comfort and caring at a particular moment of urgent need. Attachment injuries emerge in...

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References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of North Carolina, Greensboro, NC, USA

    Lorrie Brubacher

Authors
  1. Lorrie Brubacher
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lorrie Brubacher .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. The Family Institute at Northwestern University, Center for Applied Psychological and Family Studies, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

    Jay L. Lebow

  2. The Family Institute at Northwestern University, Center for Applied Psychological and Family Studies, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

    Anthony L. Chambers

  3. The Family Institute at Northwestern University, Center for Applied Psychological and Family Studies, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

    Douglas C. Breunlin

Section Editor information

  1. Colorado State University, Marriage and Family Therapy Program, Human Development and Family Studies, Fort Collins, CO, USA

    Kelley Quirk

  2. The Family Institute at Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

    Adam Fisher

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Brubacher, L. (2019). Attachment Injury Resolution Model in Emotionally Focused Therapy. In: Lebow, J.L., Chambers, A.L., Breunlin, D.C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Couple and Family Therapy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49425-8_903

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