Relationship Between Attachment Patterns and Personality Pathology in Adolescents
Open accessAbstract
Objective To explore the relationship between attachment status and personality pathology in a large clinical sample of adolescents. Method Two hundred ninety-four randomly selected psychiatrists and psychologists were each asked to provide data on a patient (aged 14-18 years) in treatment for maladaptive personality patterns. Clinicians completed several measures including a clinician-report attachment questionnaire, several measures of personality pathology, and a clinician-report version of the Child Behavior Checklist. Results In both dimensional and categorical analyses, secure attachment was negatively correlated with personality pathology and positively correlated with healthy functioning, whereas disorganized/unresolved attachment was strongly associated with multiple forms of personality pathology. Anxious/ambivalent attachment tended to be associated with measures of withdrawal, internalization, and introversion. Avoidant attachment style was not associated with any single form of personality pathology. Conclusion The marked association between unresolved attachment and more severe psychopathology in adolescents, the lack of construct validity of avoidant personality disorder in adolescents, and the broader relations among attachment, personality, and psychopathology are discussed.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Studies of adult attachment patterns of BPD patients repeatedly highlight a combination of preoccupied and unresolved attachment associated with BPD.
“Indeed, studies of adult attachment patterns of BPD patients repeatedly highlight a combination of preoccupied and unresolved attachment associated with BPD (Agrawal, Gunderson, Holmes, & Lyons-Ruth, 2004; Fonagy et al., 1996; Nakash-Eisikovits, Dutra, & Westen, 2002).”
From A developmental, mentalization-based approach to the understanding and treatment of borderline personality disorder (2009) · cites this paper as Nakash-Eisikovits, Dutra, & Westen, 2002
The Association Between Attachment Status and Axis II Pathology section links both anxious/ambivalent and disorganized/unresolved attachment to borderline personality disorder. But this paper studies adolescents, not adult BPD patients, and reports the two associations separately rather than a combined attachment pattern. Its discussion of an adult association concerns preoccupied attachment only. (LLM, conf=0.88)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Cites
Romantic love conceptualized as an attachment process.
Hazan, C., & Shaver, P. (1987) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/0022-3514.52.3.511 · Cited by 6,247 · see citing works
Security in Infancy, Childhood, and Adulthood: A Move to the Level of Representation
Main, M., Kaplan, N., & Cassidy, J. (1985) · Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development · doi:10.2307/3333827 · Cited by 4,567 · see citing works
Object relations, dependency, and attachment: a theoretical review of the infant-mother relationship
Ainsworth, M. D. S. (1969) · Child Development · doi:10.2307/1127008 · Cited by 1,461 · see citing works
Predicting psychopathology in six-year-olds from early social relations
Lewis, M., Feiring, C., McGuffog, C., & Jaskir, J. (1984) · Child Development · doi:10.2307/1129839 · Cited by 401 · see citing works
Brennan, K. A., & Shaver, P. R. (1998) · Journal of Personality · doi:10.1111/1467-6494.00034 · Cited by 353 · see citing works
Johnson, J. G., Cohen, P., Skodol, A. E., Oldham, J. M., Kasen, S., & Brook, J. S. (1999) · Archives of General Psychiatry · doi:10.1001/archpsyc.56.9.805 · Cited by 219 · see citing works
The borderline diagnosis in adolescents: Symptoms and developmental history
(1990) · American Journal of Psychiatry · doi:10.1176/ajp.147.4.470 · Cited by 187 · see citing works
Self-citationA systematic approach to the delineation of personality disorders
(1987) · American Journal of Psychiatry · doi:10.1176/ajp.144.6.772 · Cited by 92 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Research works printed but not linked: 7
- Allen JP, Moore C, Kuperminc G, Bell K (1998), Attachment and adolescent psychological functioning. Child Dev 69:1406-1419 American Psychiatric Association (1994), Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition (DSM-IV). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association
- Cleckly H (1941), The Mask of Sanity. St Louis: Mosby
- de Ruiter C, van IJzendoorn MH (1992), Agoraphobia and anxious-ambivalent attachment: an integrative review. J Anxiety Disord 6:365-381
- Main M, Hesse E (1990), Parents' unresolved traumatic experiences are related to infant disorganized attachment status: is frightened or frightening parental behavior the linking mechanism? In: Attachment in the Preschool Years: Theory, Research, and Intervention, Greenberg MT, Cicchetti M, Cummings EM, eds. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp 161-184
- O'Kearney R (1996), Attachment disruption in anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa: a review of theory and empirical research. Int J Eat Disord 20:115-127
- Rice KG (1990), Attachment in adolescence: a narrative and meta-analytic review. J Youth Adolesc 19:511-538
- Westen D, Chang CM (2000), Personality pathology in adolescence: a review. Adolesc Psychiatry 25:61-100
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Fonagy, P., & Luyten, P. (2009) · Development and Psychopathology · doi:10.1017/s0954579409990198 · Cited by 1,146 · see citing works
Clinical assessment of attachment patterns and personality disorder in adolescents and adults.
Westen, D., Nakash, O., Thomas, C., & Bradley, R. (2006) · Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology · doi:10.1037/0022-006x.74.6.1065 · Cited by 155 · see citing works
Self-citationDisorganized attachment and personality functioning in adults: A latent class analysis.
Beeney, J. E., Wright, A. G. C., Stepp, S. D., Hallquist, M. N., Lazarus, S. A., Beeney, J. R. S., Scott, L. N., & Pilkonis, P. A. (2017) · Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment · doi:10.1037/per0000184 · Cited by 91 · see citing works
Wright, M. F. (2015) · Journal of Youth and Adolescence · doi:10.1007/s10964-014-0147-2 · Cited by 81 · see citing works
- Authors
- NAKASH-EISIKOVITS, O., DUTRA, L., & WESTEN, D.
- Affiliations
- Boston University (US)
- Venue
- Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2002-09
- Volume
- 41
- Issue
- 9
- Pages
- 1111-1123
- ISSN
- 0890-8567 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2145882791
- Cited by
- 190
- References
- 8
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 11 · 2020: 8 · 2019: 9 · 2018: 10 · 2017: 9 · 2016: 7 · 2015: 11 · 2014: 17 · 2013: 12 · 2012: 5
- FWCI
- 8.86
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- NIMH (grants MH59685 and MH60892)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Personality Disorders and Psychopathology
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Psychoanalysis and Psychopathology Research
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Attachment and Relationship Dynamics
- Keywords
- attachment patterns, personality pathology, adolescents, disorganized attachment, unresolved attachment, attachment avoidance, avoidant personality disorder, secure attachment, anxious-ambivalent attachment, internalizing problems, psychopathology, Child Behavior Checklist
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Data Collection, Female, Humans, Male, Object Attachment, Personality Disorders, United States, Cluster Analysis
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
