Attachment Theory

Czech and Slovak educational systems stand at the doorstep of the fundamental reforms, accentuating the development of psychosocial qualities of all stakeholders engaged in education as determinants of a successful educational process. The narrative review focuses on research studies conducted since 2001, based on the paradigm of attachment and motivational theories of self-determination. Paper provides an overview of how the concept of school achievement and the individual key constructs of the teacher-student relationship are operationalized (closeness, conflict, relatedness, autonomy support, structure). It discusses main conclusions of the most significant studies in this area, as well as some inconsistent results and methodological problems. After rigorous impact and content selection, the review includes 17 empirical studies. Finally, specific current research challenges in the field are considered.

The study explores the individual differences in the experience of faith formation using the framework of attachment theory, as it looks at what inspires attachment behaviours toward God. The experience of faith formation is herewith conceptualised in this study as a care-giving experience, watered by reciprocity of proximity with a divine attachment figure. The findings suggest four individual pathways in which the faith of young people was formed. These pathways were seen as remedies for previous insecure attachment experience with unavailable human attachment figures, and as a means of enhancing an already positive attachment with human relational partners. In-depth interviews were conducted with fifteen Christian youths of various racial backgrounds who were active members of different church denominations in Stellenbosch, Western Cape, South Africa. The data collected from the respondents position youth faith formation as an attachment phenomenon.

Disorganized/Disoriented (D) attachment has seen widespread interest from policy makers, practitioners, and clinicians in recent years. However, some of this interest seems to have been based on some false assumptions that (1) attachment measures can be used as definitive assessments of the individual in forensic/child protection settings and that disorganized attachment (2) reliably indicates child maltreatment, (3) is a strong predictor of pathology, and (4) represents a fixed or static “trait” of the child, impervious to development or help. This paper summarizes the evidence showing that these four assumptions are false and misleading. The paper reviews what is known about disorganized infant attachment and clarifies the implications of the classification for clinical and welfare practice with children. In particular, the difference between disorganized attachment and attachment disorder is examined, and a strong case is made for the value of attachment theory for supportive work with families and for the development and evaluation of evidence-based caregiving interventions.

Cornerstones of Attachment Research [ free to download ] re-examines the work of key laboratories that have contributed to the study of attachment. In doing so, the book traces the development in a single scientific paradigm through parallel but separate lines of inquiry. Chapters address the work of Bowlby, Ainsworth, Main and Hesse, Sroufe and Egeland, and Shaver and Mikulincer. Cornerstones of Attachment Research utilises attention to these five research groups as a lens on wider themes and challenges faced by attachment research over the decades. The chapters draw on a complete analysis of published scholarly and popular works by each research group, as well as much unpublished material.

This short essay on the psychical operations of the Life and Death Instincts, as seen in the Object Relations theories of Melanie Klein, was my first glance at Psychoanalytic Instinct Theory, studied and written in the Spring of 2008. Three years later, in the Autumn of 2011, I was in possession of the entire 24 volumes of The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, at my home and able to study them at leisure. A Psychoanalysis research associate on the Psychoanalysis, Literature and Practice Seminar Series at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, suggested I read Freud’s essay the Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Chapter 1 in Volume 18 of the Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud.

To my dismay the Beyond the Pleasure Principle chaper 1 of volume 18 is a very long essay indeed in 7 parts, but I was curious and had a desire to explore Freud’s writings as it felt like an adventure. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Part 5 of the Beyond the Pleasure Principle essay is where Freud lays down the fundamental components of his Instinct Theory. My essay attached here is British psychoanalyst Melanie Klein’s interpretation, development and use of some of the possible psychical mechanisms and processes that can be said to result from Freud’s Instinct Theories. In this Abstract (also attached as an Appendix to my Kleinian, Life and Death Instincts in Object Relations Theory essay), I am tempted to summarize Freud’s actual Instinct Theory itself, as described in Part 5 of Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Vol. 18, p.34-43, as I have never heard it discussed or even mentioned in any Psychoanalytic context and I think it merits attention, especially considering the current Environmental zeitgeist and hegemony that we are all being subjected to.

(Instinct Is Conservative - Journal Article on Freud's Instinct Theory uploaded as a separate word doc.)

In comparison with Klein’s use of Instinct theory, it is plainly evident that she was interested in the functions of instincts as they can be seen operating in everyday life and death experiences and relations, while Freud was much more interested in the very nature of instinct itself. I hope my summary of Freud’s Instinct Theory will show how deep and wide variation in Psychoanalytic theorizing and practice is and how open and attentive Psychoanalytic inquiry and investigation is to an individual theorist’s inherent psychical constitution and conditioned psychodynamics, born of their inner personal/subjective life and death experiences, their external relations with significant others and the external collective conditions that individuals are subjected to. People, individuals/subjects, instinctively find, perceive, understand and even believe what they desire to know and this is one of the reasons why every reader/thinker is biased and projects onto and conditions a text with their own needs, ideas, prejudices, hopes, wishes and delusions. Every past thought and feeling is reawakened and modified by fresh experience through the cycles of time. I certainly can be accused of spinning Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle (Part 5) text to suit my own interests and purposes, just as Melanie Klein took Freud’s ideas where she and her colleagues in the British School of Psychoanalysis (that was not yet formed at that time) were heading. Individuals have their own agenda, but can’t achieve it without others, as the Psychoanalytic theories of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan have made exceptionally clear, in his own way, for his individual purposes and for the purposes of the collective (professional, social, political, etc.) ideologies that he chose to cathect. There can be no Self, whatever you want to call it - individual, person, human being, human organism, etc. - without an Other, because of the function of the I.

The archetypal Death Mother symbolizes women whose behaviour or feelings threaten the lives of their children. Western culture, however, believes that women evolved to love their children instinctively and selflessly, and that women who abandon, neglect, harm or kill their children are unnatural. Thus the Death Mother has no place in our cultural consciousness. This can be problematic, because it means that the Death Mother is buried deep in the shadow and surrounded with shame. 

In this article, I introduce Jungian and psychodynamic perspectives on the Death Mother, archetype and then focus on evolutionary and anthropological perspectives. My aim is to show that when the Death Mother is approached with compassionate curiosity, we can better help the mothers who are living this frightening energy, as well as those who grow up traumatized by her impact. In particular, I propose that that when we bring the Death Mother into consciousness, learn about her evolutionary roots, and humanize her, we start to dismantle the self-perpetuating cycles of shame that constellate around her archetypal energy, thereby opening the doors to meaningful change.

Attachment is the inborn bias of human children to seek the availability of familiar care givers in times of stress. It has been observed from ancient times and in many cultures, and scaffolds further physical, cognitive, and socioemotional development. The security of these relationships is shaped by the continuity and quality of the child-rearing environ ment, and is independent of biological ties to the caregiver. In this chapter, the child's right to a "good-enough"-that is, at least minimally adequate but not necessarily 'best'-family life and the importance of a stable network of attachment relationships is high lighted. Legal issues raised by multi-parent care, including questions around the use of attachment-based assessments for custody decisions, are addressed. Attachment theory is well equipped to inform what caregiving arrangements children need, and legislators, judges, and lawyers may consult it as a source of insight into "good-enough" care arrangements in the interest of the child.

An increasing number of parents engage in extended daily chest-to-chest contact with their full-term healthy infants for several months after birth as an extension of skin-to-skin contact in the early postpartum period. This practice is commonly known as "babywearing" (BW) and employs various carrying devices. The purpose of this review is to acquaint pediatricians and primary care providers with the numerous studies of physical, behavioral and social effects of BW as well as the different types of infant carriers and safe practices. BW studies demonstrate improved attachment and breastfeeding outcomes and infant sleep organization, as well as reduced maternal postpartum depressive symptoms and infant crying. BW is likely to strengthen paternal caregiving engagement, associated with positive child outcomes. The spread squat position for the hips during BW offers an optimal position for hip development and may prevent some forms of developmental hip dysplasia. BW may reduce the risk of positional plagiocephaly, by decreasing the time infants spend in the supine position while also allowing for spontaneous head movements. BW enables some mothers with short maternity leave to bring their infants to the workplace with limited interference in their tasks. Numerous designs of infant carriers are described along with basic safety precautions. Pediatricians may be key influencers for parents in achieving the positive outcomes described in this review.

The affective bond between an infant and its caregiver, the so-called mother-infant tie, was analyzed by various reputable psychologists (e.g., Ainsworth, Clark, Erikson, Anna Freud, Harlow, Klein, Spitz, and Winnicott) but both the basic tenets of the bond and the importance of the trauma of maternal deprivation for personality disorders in adults were introduced by Bowlby. Although Bowlby was a trained psychoanalyst, he
rejected central cornerstones of Freudian theory (esp. drive theory) and used concepts promulgated by renowned ethologists (Tinbergen and Lorenz) to establish his framework of “instinctive behavior” that has been developed further into the concept of “attachment theory” under the influence of Mary Ainsworth. However, since any precise xperimental
facts were lacking when Bowlby formulated his ideas on the concept of instinctive behavior, the whole framework is a descriptive, category-driven approach (like the ones of Freudian drives). In order to connect the mother-infant tie – as propounded by Bowlby – with experimental data, this manuscript undertakes a biochemical analysis of it because this strategy proved somewhat successful in relation to Freudian drives.
The analysis unfolded that the neurochemical oxytocin, released by the action of sensory nerves, is of utmost importance for the operation of the mother-infant tie. Furthermore, multiple evidences have been presented to the fact that there is strong interaction between unconsciously operating Freudian drives and the consciously acting mother-infant tie (that is now classified as a drive). The outlined interaction in conjunction with the classification of attachment urges as drives gave a very detailed insight into how a SEEKING-derived reward can be evoked during operation of the mother-infant tie. In summary, there is no need to marginalize either the mother-infant tie or Freudian drives. but rather there is need to respect both (principally different) impulses in moving toward a more extensive description.

Este artigo apresenta o desenvolvimento do questionário “Experiências em Relações Próximas”, versão Portuguesa do “Experiences in Close Relationships” (Brennan, Clark, & Shaver, 1998), bem como dados relativos à sua precisão e validade. Este questionário ...

Objective  This study examined the attachment patterns of late-adopted children (aged 4–7) and their adoptive mothers during the first 7- to 8-month period after adoption and aimed to evaluate the effect of adoptive mothers' attachment security on the revision of the attachment patterns of their late-adopted children.Design  We assessed attachment patterns in 20 adoptive dyads and 12 genetically related dyads at two different times: T1 (time 1) within 2 months of adoption and T2 (time 2) 6 months after T1.Methods  The children's behavioural attachment patterns were assessed using the Separation-Reunion Procedure and the children's representational (verbal) attachment patterns using the Manchester Child Attachment Story Task. The attachment models of the adoptive mothers were classified using the Adult Attachment Interview.Results  We found that there was a significant enhancement of the late-adopted children's attachment security across the time period considered (P= 0.008). Moreover, all the late-adopted children who showed a change from insecurity to security had adoptive mothers with secure attachment models (P= 0.044). However, the matching between maternal attachment models and late-adopted children's attachment patterns (behaviours and representations) was not significant.Conclusions  Our data suggest that revision of the attachment patterns in the late-adopted children is possible but gradual, and that the adoptive mothers' attachment security makes it more likely to occur.

This article examines seventeen children poems by Sylvia Plath written in the years 1960-63, in relation to the poetics of romantic love. Drawing on motherhood studies (Klein, 1975; O’Reilly, 2010; Rich, 1976; Winnicott, 1956, 1965, 1967), the maternal shift in psychoanalysis (see Bueskens, 2014: 3-6), and attachment theory (Bowlby, 1950, 1969, 1988), it reads love as a continuous human disposition, informed by one’s attachment history, and realized at different stages of one’s life (Hazan & Shaver, 1987). It specifically refers to Daniel Stern’s and Anthony Giddens’s largely overlapping concepts of maternal and romantic love to argue that Plath’s children poems are significantly infused with a poetics of romantic love. This poetics, however, becomes gradually compromised by a poetics of ambivalence, withdrawal, and self-effacement.

This qualitative study focuses on the exploration and description of the training needs of caregivers who work in Child and Youth Care Centres (CYCCs) with children with attachment disorders. Information was gathered through focus groups and key informants. The sample of participants in the focus groups consisted of caregivers who had at least two years working experience in the current CYCC and who had six or more months experience in working with children with an attachment disorder. The key informants were two social workers who had experience of working with children with an attachment disorder as well as experience of working in CYCCs.

Findings indicated that caregivers experience six major interpersonal challenges in working with the child with an attachment disorder as well as seven major organisational challenges. The organisational challenges were initially not part of the objective of the study but were incorporated because the caregivers highlighted it as a challenge experienced by them. Interpersonal challenges experienced by the caregivers include the behaviour of these children, while the organisational challenges include a lack of time as well as a lack of debriefing opportunities for the caregivers. The caregivers have learned certain lessons from looking after these children. One such example is that their non-verbal behaviour plays an important role in how they approach these children. They need to, for example, keep their hands in their pockets while they approach these children and not to wave their hands all over the place. Training which the caregivers found assisted them the best in working with children with an attachment disorder was training which was relevant to their work situation as well as practical.

Based on the objectives of the study and its findings, recommendations are made which include: caregivers to receive training on what the terms attachment and attachment disorder entail. It was evident that caregivers need support from their organisation as well as the necessary training to equip them with skills to work with the child with an attachment disorder.

Le Congrès international des Jeunes, organisé pendant cet été (2012) par les Filles de Marie-Auxiliatrice de la province AEC, a rassemblé plus d'une soixantaine d'animateurs des différents pays de la province (sous-région CEMAC). Puisque le thème principal dudit Congrès allait se développer sur « La Communication, secret du bonheur en famille », du 13 au 19 juillet 2012 à Yaoundé, nous avons cru bon d'organiser à l’avance un petit sondage parmi certains des jeunes inscrits à ce rendez-vous de la Famille salésienne. Les lignes qui suivent présentent brièvement le projet de cette recherche sur le terrain et les résultats auxquels nous sommes parvenus.
Malheureusement, l'envergure de l'échantillon ayant répondu au questionnaire a été si modeste qu'une élaboration rigoureuse s'est avérée superflue, tout autant qu'une publication de ce travail dans une revue. Néanmoins, nous offrons ici l'articulation de la réflexion en espérant qu'une enquête plus significative puisse reprendre cette initiative. D'ailleurs, il le faut bien trois ou quatre ans après, les temps ont beaucoup changé. Les jeunes et leurs outils aussi!
Un grand merci à Sr Vera Cruz (fma), à toutes les FMA et à tous les jeunes qui ont participé à cette mini-recherche et à la discussion de ses résultats pendant le Forum de Yaoundé (Juillet 2012).

Besvarelsen vil svare på oppgaven: "Utvikling: På hvilke måter kan tilknytning påvirke utvikling av emosjonsregulering? Drøft hvordan kunnskap om tilknytning og utvikling av emosjonsregulering kan være relevant for forebygging." Tilbakemelding fra sensor var at besvarelsen trekker fram sentral og relevant litteratur om tilknytning, emosjonsregulering og forebygging, men sensor hadde ønsket flere referanser til origiallitteratur.

Reder and Duncan’s well-known studies of the 1990s on fatal child abuse drew attention to how parental scripts regarding their children could dangerously distort relationships in ways that were sometimes fatal to children. This article reports on a new system for assessing the ‘meaning of the child to the parent’, called the Meaning of the Child Interview (MotC). Parents are interviewed using the established Parent Development Interview, or equivalent, and the transcript of the interview is then analysed according to parental sensitivity and likely risk to the child. The MotC constructs were developed from those used in observed parent–child interaction (specifically, the CARE-Index) and the form of discourse analysis used in the Dynamic Maturational Model – Adult Attachment Interview, allowing a more systemic and inter-subjective understanding of parenting representations than often put forward. This article discusses the theoretical background to the MotC, gives a brief review of similar measures and then introduces the coding system and patterns of caregiving. The validity of the MotC is addressed elsewhere.