Abstract

Summary. Attachment theory focuses on representational models and the individual's ability to regulate negative emotional states. Researches on attachment and eating disorders carried out through both narrative means and self reporting show a prevalence of insecure models and of unresolved states of loss or trauma both of patients and their parents, underlying the importance of transgerational transmission for what concerns understanding these pathologies, highlighting the importance of transgenarational transmission mechanism to understand family's maladaptive strategies. Clinically, this allows to understand the functional quality of behaviour and the dynamic one of development and change, drawing an intervention based on attachment stories of family's members, as a complex system.