Attachment theory applied to addiction and group therapy has important implications for people who strive for independence, autonomy, and self-sufficiency, but all too often at the cost of alienation from self and others. Nowhere is this difficulty played out with more consistency than with substance abusers. Addicts and alcoholics are notoriously counterdepen-dent individuals, living their lives in the extreme ends of the attachment-individuation continuum. Autonomy is purchased at the price of alienation and the absence of mutuality in their relationships. As Nicola Diamond (1996) points out, group therapy not only represents a movement away from one-person psychology, but also contains a fundamental interpersonal conception of human beings as always being situated in relations with others. Group therapy, like attachment theory, is based on the implied notion that the essence of being human is social, not individual.
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