Attachment and Sexuality

<p>The papers featured in <em>Attachment and Sexuality </em>create a dense tapestry each forming a separate narrative strand that elucidates different configurations of the relationship between attachment and sexuality. As a whole the volume explores the areas of convergence and divergence opposition and integration between these two systems. It suggests that there is a bi-directional web of influences that weaves the attachment and sexual systems together in increasingly complex ways from infancy to adulthood.</p><p>The volume’s unifying thread is the idea that the attachment system and particularly the degree of felt security or lack thereof in relation to early attachment figures provides a paradigm of relatedness that forms a scaffold for the developmental unfolding of sexuality in all its manifestations. Such manifestations include infantile and adult masturbatory and mutual and normative and perverse. </p><p>Also central to the papers is the idea that the development of secure attachment is predicated in part on the development of the capacity for mentalization or the ability to envision and interpret the behavior of oneself and others in terms of intentional mental states including desires feelings beliefs and motivations. Topics discussed in the book will help to shape the direction and tenor of further dialogues in the arena of attachment and sexuality.</p>