Adult Attachment Interview (DMM-AAI): Introduction for low-risk and mild clinical conditions (2025)

Description: The Adult Attachment Interview is a procedure for assessing adults’ self-protective strategy, using the Dynamic-Maturational Model of Attachment and Adaptation (DMM). The DMM is an expansion of the Bowlby-Ainsworth theory of individual differences in attachment (Crittenden, 1995,
2008, 2016). The DMM discourse analysis as applied to the AAI (Crittenden & Landini, 2011). The DMM method associates self-protective attachment strategies with transformations of information that motivate adaptive and maladaptive behavior. Knowing a person’s self-protective attachment strategy can guide treatment decisions in efficient ways while reducing the probability of misapplied, harmful treatment approaches.

Instructor(s): Patricia Crittenden, PhD, with co-trainers and several facilitators, including Chinese, Japanese, Russian & Spanish-speaking facilitators.

Dates: 18 days by Zoom:

• April 26 – May 1 2025
• June 28 – July 3 2025
• Sept 6 – Sept 11 2025

In addition, there are weekly practice assignments between the scheduled sessions with work due on Wednesdays and Sundays.

Time:

• Sydney: 2am* – 6am* (*the next day), plus a facilitator meeting
• China: 11pm – 3am*, plus a facilitator meeting
• CET: 4pm-8pm, plus a facilitator meeting
• UK: 3pm-7pm, plus a facilitator meeting
• EST: 10am-2pm, plus a facilitator meeting
• PST: 7am-11am, plus a facilitator meeting

Location: on-line by Zoom (10am-2pm EST) or in person in Asheville, NC, USA.

Content: this course teaches discourse analysis and classification for the AAI, for non-risk and (mild) out-patient clinical applications of the AAI, using the DMM method.

There are (a) weekly coding work between the sessions and (b) a requirement to submit 3 AAIs carried out by the course participant; this work must be completed to receive a Certificate for Administering the AAI.

Prerequisites:

1. Bachelor’s Degree or its academic equivalent; Master’s and doctoral degrees are recommended.
2. Attachment, Neurodevelopment & Psychopathology (ANP) before completing the AAI course (i.e., ANP may be taken concurrently).

Language: English for the course, but practice and the reliability test can be partly in selected other languages if available.

Benefits to clinicians of taking the AAI course:

• Provide crucial history about danger & its impact on personal adaptation, particularly as it affects psychological treatment
• Change the way you hear language, especially in treatment
• Change the way you use language, especially in treatment
• Establish a shared knowledge base with your client/patient
• Create compassion where there was blame or doubt
• Create a way of working together in treatment
• Jumpstart the treatment or restart a stalled treatment
• Set the speaker’s mind in motion
• Enable the therapist to find the person’s ZPD
• Enable the therapist to avoid blind alleys
• Permit reliable coders to classify the strategies used by individuals;

Note: coding reliability and earning a coding certificate usually require more effort than this 18-day course.

Cost: $2500 before January 31, 2025; $3000 beginning February 1, 2025.

The registration fee covers the course, feedback on participant’s 3 AAIs, practice transcripts between sessions, and the reliability test. Enrolment is not guaranteed until payment is made. Payment must be complete before the course is begun.

All payments are non-refundable. Invoicing and receipts involve extra charges.

Registration: please contact Patricia M. Crittenden, PhD regarding registration (pmcrittenden@gmail.com). There is a limited number of participants.

Cancellation: the course may be cancelled if fewer than six people register. Please note that before purchasing flights.