Attachment-based therapy (children)
Attachment-based therapy applies to interventions or approaches based on attachment theory, originated by John Bowlby. These range from individual therapeutic approaches to public health programs to interventions specifically designed for foster carers. Although attachment theory has become a major scientific theory of socioemotional development with one of the broadest, deepest research lines in modern psychology, attachment theory has, until recently, been less clinically applied than theories with far less empirical support. This may be partly due to lack of attention paid to clinical application by Bowlby himself and partly due to broader meanings of the word 'attachment' used amongst practitioners. It may also be partly due to the mistaken association of attachment theory with the pseudo-scientific interventions misleadingly known as attachment therapy. The approaches set out below are examples of recent clinical applications of attachment theory by mainstream attachment theorists and clinicians and are aimed at infants or children who have developed or are at risk of developing less desirable, insecure attachment styles or an attachment disorder.
Attachment therapy
Attachment therapy is a controversial category of alternative child mental health interventions intended to treat attachment disorders. The term generally includes accompanying parenting techniques. Other names or particular techniques include "the Evergreen model", "holding time", "rage-reduction", "compression therapy", "rebirthing", "corrective attachment therapy" and Coercive Restraint Therapy. It is found primarily in the United States, and much of it is centered in about a dozen clinics in Evergreen, Colorado, where Foster Cline, one of the founders, established his clinic in the 1970s. This article describes this particular set of interventions although in clinical literature the term "attachment therapy" is sometimes used loosely to mean any intervention based on attachment theory, particularly outside the US. Attachment therapy as described in this article should not be confused with other schools of therapy which are more empirically based and which aim to address problems stemming from disrupted attachment to caregivers.