The Impact of Imago Therapy Training on Attachment Styles and Family Functioning among Women

This study has been conducted to investigate the effectiveness of imago therapy on attachment styles and family functioning in married women. To this end, the quasi-experimental design with pretest-posttest and control group was employed. The statistical population was composed of the married women referring to health centers in district 4 of Tehran. The statistical sample included 30 individuals selected voluntarily. Since people in each health center were not willing to attend the meetings in other health centers, the researchers randomly selected one health center and its people as the experimental group and another as the control group. The data collection instruments were the Hazen and Shaver Attachment Styles Questionnaire and the Family Functioning Questionnaire. The experimental group received 10 weekly 90-minute sessions of imago therapy training. For data analysis, multivariate analysis of covariance was used. Based on the findings, imago therapy training does not affect the avoidant and ambivalent attachment styles, but it affects the secure attachment style. Also, this training method significantly affects the subscales of emotional accompaniment, emotional association and general score of family functioning.