Michel Delage is a psychiatrist, a former professor and former chief of psychiatry at the French army’s teaching hospital in Toulon. A family therapist, he is currently working on integrating attachment theory and the systemic model in family therapy. He is the co-author, with Boris Cyrulnik, of La Résilience familiale (2008) and the author of Famille et résilience (2010).

How do attachments develop between the various members of a family? What are the outcomes? How does the birth of a child alter the parents’ attachment? How does attachment evolve when children grow up and in turn form their own couples? What becomes of family ties when parents age?
Every family experiences a variety of phases, resulting in new developments, alterations and adjustments. Nowadays, such changes have accelerated because families are likely to experience a greater variety of arrangements (a young couple with a child; two single-parent families when parents separate; complex configurations when one or both parents enter on new relationships resulting in blended families).
The fixed, unchanging family structure of the past is undergoing radical transformation. Could today’s family be that complex, ever-changing place where our emotional apprenticeship takes place, where we learn about the emotions that tie us to one another, for better, sometimes for worse, and always for life?

• An original, enlightening perspective to help us understand how emotions are lived, shared and regulated in the increasingly volatile space known as the family.
• Researched for only ten years, this relatively new field studies the emotions and attachment in light of family ties.