Attachment research and eating disorder: a measurement perspective - literature review

Abstract

The main aim of the study is to describe the hitherto used measurement methods of attachment and evaluation of attachment, and the attachment style or pattern in ED patients. A critical discussion about different psychological measures used is presented. A critical review on the papers on the subject published in the years 2000-2015 in PubMed, ERIC, Psychology and Behavioral Science, PsycINFO, ScienceDirect, SCOPUS, SocINDEX, was performed focusing on self- reports vs. narrative methods to measure the attachment in ED, both in adult and adolescent samples. An increasing interest in recent years has been in matching the presence of ED with attachment issues, particularly using self-report, both in adults and adolescents groups, just some studies were conducted using Adult Attachment interview and very few were carried out using projective techniques, such as Adult Attachment Projective Picture System, which resulted to be very much informative. Our results suggest that insecure attachment in EDs might be studied more efficiently considering not just the macro category of attachment, but the microana-lysis of attachment narratives (such as defense processes in interviews or projective methods), to add new and more consistent results in explaining the presence of a different kind of insecure attachment in ED patients and in promoting personalized therapeutic interventions.