[bdeaner]

REACTIVE ATTACHMENT DISORDER

With all due respect, I have a doctorate in clinical psychology and reactive attachment disorder is not really an official diagnostic category in the DSM-IV-R. It's really a theory about what causes a variety of disorders, but not a DSM diagnosis in itself.

With that said, there is some validity to the construct of attachment disorders, I believe, and they tend to be linked to personality disorders, i.e. borderline personality disorder. However, having a particular attachment style does not, by a long shot, predict with certainty whether a person will develop any diagnostic condition, let alone any particular diagnosis. It actually accounts for a relatively small amount of the variance when predicting the development of psychopathology.

Interestingly, research is showing that the higher a person's religiosity (the strength of their religious beliefs and frequency of their practice) the more likely the person is to have a SECURE attachment style. Low religiosity is linked to INSECURE attachment styles, generally. Images of a LOVING God are especially linked to secure styles of attachment.

[Quix]

AGREED.

As you are aware, however,

There is a continuum between ‘normal’ . . . to significant pathology—with many points in between.

And, RELIGIOSITY is divided into

INTRINSIC vs EXTRINSIC RELIGIOSITY—i.e. the last I read on the topic.

INTRINSIC is the healthiest of all categories.

EXTRINSIC the unhealthiest of the religious categories with only

INDISCRIMMINANT ANTI-RELIGIOSITY being worse.

Would you agree that Attachment Disorder is a very serious social and individual problem with what . . . more than 95% of the prison population afflicted with it?

I remain skeptical of the research that seems to indicate a relatively small proportion of the general population afflicted with it. If my students are any clue, the proportion is larger than the statistics seem to indicate. What’s your perspective on that?