title: Attachment and externalizing disorders: a developmental psychopathology perspective.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Attachment theory offers an intriguing formulation of protection and risk that ties together key aspects of behavior, emotion, and cognition. The authors present links among attachment status, other developmental domains, and the development and maintenance of externalizing disorders to illustrate an approach to integrating attachment theory and relationship research with the study of externalizing symptoms.
  
  
  METHODS
  The authors review the literature on the attachment system's theoretical and empirical associations with domains of emotion regulation, social attributions, socialization and moral development, and intergenerational transmission of behavior, as well as with externalizing behaviors.
  
  
  RESULTS
  There are a number of risk and protective connections between attachment security and other developmental processes that are associated with externalizing disorders.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Knowledge of relational processes, in this case, attachment relationships, can contribute to an understanding of etiology, maintenance, and treatment of externalizing disorders.
authors.affiliation: State University of New York at Stony Brook, NY 11794-8790, USA.
authors.forename: Sarit
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Guttmann-Steinmetz
authors.forename: Judith A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Crowell
mesh_terms: D001007:Anxiety; D019958:Attention Deficit and Disruptive Behavior Disorders / Q000523:psychology; D019955:Conduct Disorder / Q000523:psychology; D004644:Emotions; D006801:Humans; D007389:Internal-External Control; D008960:Models, Psychological; D011599:Psychopathology; D019962:Reactive Attachment Disorder / Q000523:psychology*; D012649:Self Concept