Date of Award

2022

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Psychology

Abstract

Despite the frequency with which clinicians utilize principles of attachment theory in their work with patients, formal assessment of attachment is relatively uncommon in clinical settings (Burke et al., 2016). This is perhaps owing to a lack of familiarity with or accessibility to available attachment measures, many of which were developed primarily for research rather than clinical purposes. One instrument which may represent a useful tool for measuring attachment in clinical settings is the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT; Murray, 1936/1971), a projective measure of personality with widespread familiarity among clinicians. Although the TAT was not developed specifically as a measure of attachment, it is often used to illuminate such attachment-related processes as a patients interpersonal functioning and perception of self and others. The goal of the current study was to examine the TAT as a measure of attachment for use in clinical settings by proposing a novel Q-sort method for scoring TAT narratives into attachment classifications. To that end, we examined participants self-reported attachment styles, both to their parents and to a current romantic partner or best friend, to see if they correlated with or predicted Q-sort attachment categorization from participants TAT narratives. Our hypotheses were partially supported in that self-reported attachment to parents was correlated with same-type self-reported attachment to a romantic partner or best friend. Moreover, self-reported attachment to a romantic partner or best friend was correlated with Q-sort categorization from TAT narratives, but only when using dichotomous variables of secure versus insecure. Results also revealed an interaction between maternal attachment and attachment to a romantic partner or best friend in predicting dichotomous (secure versus insecure) Q-sort categorization. Convergent validity was also demonstrated for the TAT Q-sort based on findings that Q-sort ratings correlated in theoretically meaningful ways with certain subscales developed for use with the TAT that have previously been implicated in attachment research. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for the utility of the TAT as a measure of attachment in clinical settings. Suggestions for future research aimed at further development and refinement of our Q-sort scoring system are also considered.

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