Theories of Attachment & Detachment

ProblemsHypocritesAttachment TheoryDetachment Theory5 ErrorsQuotations6 Groups of Topics10 Skills & Topics

Theories of Attachment & Detachment


Theories of attachment and detachment help to clarify your ego choices. Awareness and insight can help you to drop your ego now.


“He therefore that despiseth, despiseth not man, but God, who hath also given unto us His holy Spirit.” —I Thessalonians 4:8

“We can actually put the essence of neurosis in a single word: blaming–or damning.” —Albert Ellis and Robert A. Harper, A Guide to Rational Living, Third Edition, p. 127


Theories of Attachment: Is It Attachment or Detachment?

  • Is the problem attachment or detachment?
  • Is the right attachment the answer?
  • What do we have to detach from?

  • Click for quotations about blaming.

We can complain only about ourselves.


  • Read and master the life skill of acceptance using the best combination of CBT, REBT, & Stoicism.
  • Theories of Attachment: This book can help you to learn how to detach.

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Theories of Attachment: Practice or Not?

  • Whether you believe in attachment (self-esteem) or detachment (self-acceptance), you do not practice what you preach when you damn or condemn anyone for doing bad.
  • In either case, whenever you judge someone for doing bad, you first say that bad people are attached to bad.
  • Your plausible causal judgment is that being attached to bad causes bad behavior.

Theories of Attachment: Attaching to Concepts & Images

Speaking generally, we are talking about being attached to bad as being identified with negative self-images, self-concepts, self-constructs, or the like.

  • However, this too is problematic because, for example, criminals do not attach to the negative self-concepts and images that the socially compliant think they do.
  • In fact, criminals attach to positive self-concepts and images of themselves as superior to those in society that they take advantage of.

  • Read and master the life skill of acceptance using the best combination of CBT, REBT, & Stoicism.
  • Theories of Attachment: This book can help you to learn how to detach.

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Theories of Attachment: Missing Human Nature

  • Suppose you believe in the naïve attachment or self-esteem theory, for instance, of Western psychology or humanism. In that case, you believe that the cure for poor unfortunates is teaching them to attach to good instead of bad.
  • Therefore, no matter what evil people have done or the good they have left undone—you should encourage them to think well of themselves—to keep yourself from being a hypocrite and not following your own theory.
  • If you damn, shame, scold, blame, hate, segregate, or keep from forgiving them, then you are practicing the opposite of what you preach (the rule for societal elites).
  • Why? Because your damning supports and encourages the wicked to attach to more bad and not good; and, therefore, to do more bad according to humanist principles.
  • Therefore, you are working against your own principles whenever you are intolerant of child molesters, white supremacists, or terrorists. Use three examples of groups that society gives license to hate and damn.
  • Furthermore, suppose you seriously believe that attachment to bad is the cause of bad. In that case, you are working to have these people commit more crimes by encouraging yourself and others to see them as attached to bad, which, of course, also encourages them to attach to more bad and so do more bad.

  • Read and master the life skill of acceptance using the best combination of CBT, REBT, & Stoicism.
  • Theories of Attachment: This book can help you to learn how to detach.

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Theories of Attachment: Detachment Can Help

  • Suppose you believe in the sophisticated detachment or self-acceptance theory, for instance, of Eastern psychology or Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT). In that case, you believe that the cure for these poor unfortunates is detaching themselves from good and bad objects.
  • Therefore, no matter what evil they have done or the good they have left undone—you should accept them and encourage them to accept themselves just as they are—to keep from being a hypocrite.
  • If you damn, shame, scold, blame, hate, segregate, or keep from forgiving and accepting them, then you are practicing the opposite of what you preach. Why?
  • Because your damning supports and encourages them to attach to more bad or good and not detach from it.
  • Therefore, you are working against your own principles whenever you are intolerant of child molesters, white supremacists, or terrorists. To use three examples of groups society licenses to hate and mock.
  • Furthermore, suppose you seriously believe that attachment to bad is the cause of bad. In that case, you are working to have these people commit more crimes by encouraging yourself and others to see them as attached to bad, which, of course, also encourages them to attach to more bad and so to do worse.

  • Read and master the life skill of acceptance using the best combination of CBT, REBT, & Stoicism.
  • Theories of Attachment: This book can help you to learn how to detach.

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Theories of Attachment: 5 Errors of Damning

“We can actually put the essence of neurosis in a single word: blaming–or damning.” —Albert Ellis and Robert A. Harper, A Guide to Rational Living, Third Edition, p. 127

  • How many errors do you make when you damn and hate others?
  • Let’s start with five errors.

Theories of Attachment: 5 Errors List

  • (1) You lie about who they are because they are certainly not the objects that you damn them to be as they are living beings, not dead doings (self-concepts, self-images).
  • (2) You lie about who they are (their ego), for they certainly choose to identify with different objects than the ones you choose to identify them with.
  • (3) You lie about your motivation to help society because you encourage wrongdoers to become attached to more bad objects and do more bad things.
  • (4) You lie about your principles of causation because you are not acting according to your principles of causation, whether they be attachment or detachment, because you promote more negative attachment.
  • (5) You are claiming superiority in order to damn others, yet, you share the same human nature with others, so you cannot be superior to any human being.

  • Read for the best CBT & REBT self-help system.
  • Theories of Attachment: This book can help you to learn how to detach.

Book cover for Garden

Theories of Attachment: Quotations Various Sources

Listed Alphabetically

“And just as two wrongs don’t make a right, rage against offenders is probably the worst way to try to correct them.” —Albert Ellis and Robert A. Harper, A Guide to Rational Living, Third Edition, p. 130

“Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain, and most fools do.” —Benjamin Franklin

“Being right does not give you the right to damn.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“Condemn the sin, not the sinner.” —Christian saying

“Damning is the worst form of demanding.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“Damning is turning the living into things, into the dead.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“Damning is when the cure is worse than the illness.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“Damning is when the medicine is worse than the poison.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“Despise the crime, not the criminal.” —Japanese saying

“Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.” —Baruch Spinoza

“Even when people act nastily to you, don’t condemn them or retaliate.” —Albert Ellis and Robert A. Harper, A Guide to Rational Living, Third Edition, p. 205

“Fear less, hope more; eat less, chew more; whine less, breathe more; talk less, say more; hate less, love more; and all good things are yours.” —Swedish proverb

“Feeling bad won’t make you good.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“Feeling stupid won’t make you smart.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“Give not over thy mind to heaviness, and afflict not thyself in thine own counsel.” —Ecclesiasticus 30:21

“He that is void of wisdom despiseth his neighbour: but a man of understanding holdeth his peace.” —Proverbs 11:12

“He therefore that despiseth, despiseth not man, but God, who hath also given unto us His holy Spirit.” —I Thessalonians 4:8

“I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.” —Booker Taliaferro Washington, 1856-1915

“If you would stop, really stop, damning yourself, others, and unkind conditions, you would find it almost impossible to upset yourself emotionally–about anything. Yes, anything.” —Albert Ellis and Robert A. Harper, A Guide to Rational Living, Third Edition, p. 127

“Let us not burden our remembrances with a heaviness that is gone.” —William Shakespeare

“One does not hate so long as one continues to rate low, but only when one has come to rate equal or higher.” —Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

“Only God can damn without serving Satan.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“The moment you blame anyone for anything, your relationship and your personal power deteriorate.” —Brian Koslow

“The whiner equates pain with power.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“To condemn is stupid and easy, but to understand is arduous, requiring pliability and intelligence.” —J. Krishnamurti, The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti, Volume IV, p. 143

“We can actually put the essence of neurosis in a single word: blaming–or damning.” —Albert Ellis and Robert A. Harper, A Guide to Rational Living, Third Edition, p. 127

“When a man points a finger at someone else, he should remember that four of his fingers are pointing at himself.” —Louis Nizer

“You are what you hate, not what you ate.” —Kevin Everett FitzMaurice

“You can overcome anything if you don’t bellyache.” —Bernard Baruch

“You can overcome anything if you don’t bellyache.” —Bernard M. Baruch

“You cannot solve a problem by condemning it.” —Wayne Dwyer


  • Read and master the life skill of acceptance using the best combination of CBT, REBT, & Stoicism.
  • Theories of Attachment: This book can help you to learn how to detach.

Theories of Attachment

Theories of Attachment: 6 Groups of Topics Menu


  • Read and master the life skill of acceptance using the best combination of CBT, REBT, & Stoicism.
  • Theories of Attachment: This book can help you to learn how to detach.

Theories of Attachment

Theories of Attachment: 9 Skills & Topics Menu


  • Read and master the life skill of acceptance using the best combination of CBT, REBT, & Stoicism.
  • Theories of Attachment: This book can help you to learn how to detach.

Theories of Attachment