We are indebted to the pioneering work of the late James Masterson MD who was Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at the Cornell University Medical School before he died in 2011. He was the founder of the American Society for Adolescent Psychiatry and the author of over sixteen books on the treatment of personality disorder.  Along with his co-pioneer Ralph Klein MD, their work revealed how individuals who suffer from a “disorder of self” struggle to experience a sense of self that feels real and whole. Their behaviours and symptoms arise from an attempt to regulate an unconscious developmental depression – an “abandonment depression”.  This nonconscious depression may arise from the developmental pathway of a young person who experienced insecure/disorganised attachment in the early years of growth.

We are also indebted to the pioneering work of Kent Hoffman, Bert Powell, Glen Cooper and Robert Marvin whose Circle of Security (2014) was influenced by their early training with Masterson last century.  They integrated seminal insights from the work of Masterson and Klein with the work of other major theorists in attachment theory into a model which illuminates how difficulties in attachment arise in early development and how these may influence the emergence of “core sensitivities”  (separation, esteem and safety) with respect to attachment in a wide range of people.