Attachment and externalizing disorders: a developmental psychopathology perspective.
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.
Guttmann-Steinmetz
Sarit
S
State University of New York at Stony Brook, NY 11794-8790, USA.
Crowell
Judith A
JA
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