#187. Attachment Theory: A Cornerstone for Understanding Our Most Intimate Relationships

Robert Karen is a clinical psychologist in private practice in New York City and author of numerous articles both in academic journals and mainstream media. His first book, Becoming Attached: Unfolding the Mystery of the Infant-Mother Bond and Its Impact on Later Life, published in 1994, provided a thorough and highly readable history of the ideas and thinkers behind attachment theory, which at the time was just starting to gain wider acceptance among both developmental researchers and psychotherapists. Thirty years later, in 2024, Dr. Karen, published an expanded, second edition of the book, with the title, Becoming Attached: First Relationships and How They Shape Our Capacity to Love, which takes full stock of how attachment theory has become mainstream, not only as an explanation for how emotions and interpersonal lives develop throughout the lifespan, but also as a primary foundation for psychological interventions and for social policies that affect young children and their parents. He is also the author of The Forgiving Self: The Road From Resentment to Connection, an award-winning book published in 2001, which explores possibilities for relinquishing the stance of victim-in-need-of-revenge and, in the process, becoming open to the repair of our most intimate relationships.