Adult Attachment Interview. En metod att använda i klinisk verksamhet? En studie av anknytningsstil hos personer som diagnosticerats med borderline personlighetstörning.

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this study was to investigate if the AAI-interview was a useful method in a clinical setting. To investigate this we interviewed eight women with diagnosis Borderline personality disorder because this is a complex and resource-intensive group of patients. The study also aims to investigate if people with this personality disorder show a specific attachment style and often classifies as unresolved. All of the participants were outpatients at a psychiatric clinic in Sweden. All of the women had experienced at least one traumatic event before the age of 17. The results of this study showed that four (50%) of the participants were classified as insecure-preoccupied attachment, one participant were classified as secure-autonomous attachment, two (25%) participants were classified as insecure-dismissive attachment. Two (25%) of the participants were classified as Cannot Classify and five (63%) of the participants were classified as unresolved. These results correlate with the results of prior research. It is important to take in to account that this study is on a small sample and is therefore not possible to generalize. The conclusion of this study is that it is important to consider the perspective of attachment theory in clinical setting as well as the usefulness of the AAI instrument and codingsystem. The authors opinion is that the AAI is a good compliment to diagnosing and when assessing and evaluating psychotherapy. The AAI instrument however is time consuming and requires a lot of training and experience.