A fruitful area for research might be the similarities and differences between mentoring and attachment relationships. Blustein et al. emphasize the limits that insecure attachment place on secure base exploratory behavior. I applaud Kenny and Rice because here, and in their other writings, they depathologize the role of continuing attachments to parents in late adolescence. I agree that there has been too much previous emphasis on separation as a model of healthy development. However, attachment theory has been used primarily to explain reactions to involuntary separations, which typically lead to anxiety and purported stages of protest, despair, and emotional detachment.
More research is needed to distinguish self-initiated separation from parents from involuntary ones.
Missing from this formulation is a connection between these two types of resources. I was especially intrigued by implications for training and supervision. In my view he has much more fully realized the first goal than the second. Because counseling psychology is a field of descriptive science and the science of change, a full explication of attachment theory should discuss the implications for counseling interventions as well as basic descriptions of client personality dynamics and individual differences. Here I refer to change not just as the progression of healthy development but rather how counseling psychologists may intervene to correct developmental processes that have gone awry.