Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love

A psychiatrist and neuroscientist trained at Columbia University, Dr. Amir Levine was interested in biology and psychology from a young age, and earned multiple awards and recognitions during his academic career. Levine’s residency in adult, child, and adolescent psychiatry inspired him to research attachment theory and its application to adult relationships. His passion for attachment theory led him to connect with longtime friend and collaborator Rachel Heller. Levine was confident in Heller’s ability to transform his academic knowledge and experience into practical, interactive resources. Currently, Levine works in private practice and trains therapists in attachment theory.  

A graduate from Columbia University’s Social-Organizational Psychology program, Rachel Heller has a background in psychology and education. Throughout her childhood, she traveled and lived in various countries. She credits these experiences with harboring an appreciation for diverse perspectives, which she drew on when working on the resources featured in Attached. The daughter of a historian and political scientist, Heller has worked in education as part of the Educational Psychology Service in Israel where she helped clients improve their relationships. Levine provides academic research, which Heller integrates into resources intended to interact with readers and guide them on their journey toward change.

Together, Levine and Heller supply the text with personal anecdotes of friends and acquaintances. They seek not to criticize individuals with anxious or avoidant attachment styles, but to encourage and inform. Levine and Heller attempt to comfort readers through their research on the biological aspects of attachment and inspire them through their friends’ stories of secure attachment. They aim to add an emotional, engaging layer to the text through the inclusion of personal stories.

Levine and Heller express the hope that Attached will guide readers through the turmoil of searching for romantic intimacy. They counter popular dating myths rooted in self-sufficiency to produce a researched text on the tenets of attachment theory and its impact on human relationships. By choosing not to include their own stories of attachment, Levine and Heller aim to maintain a professional stance throughout the text. They use the second- and third-person point of view to establish professional distance.

Levine and Heller’s backgrounds in psychology and education manifest in their inclusion of exercises that invite the reader to interact. To ensure their readers’ understanding of the science of attachment theory, they incorporate multiple modes of explanation, including visual representations of their information.

Attached takes readers through the journey of discovering their own attachment style. Levine and Heller emphasize the importance of understanding one’s own attachment style and offer resources to accomplish this task. The tasks assigned to readers relates to the greater ideas and themes featured throughout the guide, and encourage change through understanding.