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John Bowlby (1969/1982) sought to integrate the cognitive sciences with psychoanalysis and ethology (the study of animal behaviour). In doing so, he also proposed the Internal Working Models (IWMs) concept to account for ‘predisposed developing predictive learning mechanisms’ that guide attachment behaviour across the lifespan (Bolwby, 1980). IWMs were neither pure instincts—i.e., fixed action patterns—nor simple behaviourist learned responses to care. Rather, Bowlby anticipated the changes in developmental sciences that have embraced more complex notions interactivity. IWMs are simultaneously continuous and changeable. But how exactly? Disappointingly, these notions of the IWM have hardly advanced in any systematic manner over the 50 plus years since the first 1969 Volume One of Attachment and Loss.

Despite the lack of overt theoretical progress, a broad suite of multilevel biopsychosocial findings—genetic, epigenetic, brain/central neural system perspectives, peripheral autonomic and somatic systems, cognitive priming—represents a near tidal wave of non-dualistic findings for further consideration. Indeed, Bosmans and colleagues (2020) have suggested that perhaps like the cognitive sciences from the 1960s who commenced looking inside the mind, Attachment Theory might be ready for an ‘unravelling of the black box of attachment development’. This webinar will provide a survey of developments of Bowlby’s original conceptions with an aim to look at how IWMs might be considered in change in therapy with our clients. In addition to the above-mentioned biopsychosocial research, consideration will be given to IWMs as both our unique individual specific representations and the more general emotional/relational capacities that guide our daily living. Included here will be Lau-Zhu and colleagues 2023 recent meta-analysis of Autobiographical Episodic Memory (AEM) attachment and emotion regulation/expression. Brief mention will be made of possible relations between IWMs and Maladaptive Schemas. Case examples and group input will guide the practical consideration of what may change and how in an attachment informed therapy.