Attachment Theory

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marilyn Watson
Keyword(s):  
Longitudinal Study ◽  
Attachment Theory ◽  
Interpersonal Relationships ◽  
Insecure Attachment ◽  
Parent Attachment ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Attachment Relationships ◽  
John Bowlby ◽  
History Of ◽  
Mary Ainsworth

The origins of attachment theory and the work of John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth are described. Four types of child–parent attachment relationships—secure, insecure/anxious, insecure/ambivalent, and insecure/disorganized—are outlined along with the ways each type might manifest itself in the classroom. A longitudinal study, conducted by Alan Sroufe and his colleagues, of the development and effects on learning and interpersonal relationships of different child–parent attachment relationships is described. Teachers too have a history of attachment relationships that can affect how they relate to their students. The chapter describes adult attachment and how one’s attachment history might, positively or negatively, affect one’s ability to build positive, nurturing relationships with students. Specific examples of ways teachers can offset the negative effects of a student’s or their own history of insecure attachment are described.

Attachment Theory and Brief Psychotherapy: Applying Current Research to Clinical Interventions

1989 ◽  
Vol 34 (5) ◽  
pp. 369-375 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malcolm West ◽  
Adreenne Sheldon ◽  
Linda Redtfer
Keyword(s):  
Attachment Theory ◽  
Interpersonal Relationships ◽  
Clinical Intervention ◽  
Insecure Attachment ◽  
Brief Psychotherapy ◽  
Attachment Figure ◽  
Attachment Relationships ◽  
Attachment Research ◽  
Representational Model ◽  
The Individual

Recent advances in attachment research provide a framework for defining the content and process of brief psychotherapy with adults. Attachment theory emphasizes a number of issues crucial to therapeutic work. Specifically, attachment relationships are enduring components of a individual's pattern of interpersonal behaviours. Functionally, attachment relationships address security needs. Insecure attachment arises from a representational model based on feared loss of the attachment figure, which predisposes the individual to have little confidence in the attachment figure's availability, responsiveness, and permanence. Behavioural responses to insecure attachment can lead to specific patterns of interpersonal relationships which, in turn, strengthen the representational model. Thus, a relatively stable, self-reinforcing system evolves and results in a consistent inability to experience security within attachment relationships. In this article, the authors describe the current framework for understanding adult attachment relationships and present clinical vignettes illustrating the saliency of attachment theory to common clinical presentations. The goal of the clinical intervention is defined as increasing the “permeability” of the individual's working model of attachment through affective and cognitive re-assessment of attachment experiences and expectations. Finally, the utility of this approach in evaluating the outcome and effectiveness of psychotherapy is highlighted.

scholarly journals Da Psicologia do Attachment à visão neurocientífica proposta por Lee A. Kirkpatrick sobre a religiosidade humana

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 18
Author(s):  
Edênio Valle
Keyword(s):  
Attachment Theory ◽  
John Bowlby ◽  
Konrad Lorenz ◽  
Mary Ainsworth

Lee A. Kirkpatrick é um dos nomes de maior destaque na Psicologia da Religião na atualidade. Sua importância como pesquisador e teórico se consolidou graças aos seus trabalhos empíricos sobre a Teoria do Apego (Attachment Theory), originalmente proposta por John Bowlby e Mary Ainsworth. Como esses dois pesquisadores, também Kirkpatrick sofreu a influência da Etologia neoevolucionista de Konrad Lorenz e dos acesos debates que se travaram na Psicanálise britânica do pós-guerra a respeito das relações do bebê com sua a mãe na fase em que a sua sobrevivência física e psicológica depende totalmente de quem dele cuida. O mérito principal de Kirkpatrick ao entrar nessa discussão foi o de aplicar com rigor a Teoria do Apego à religiosidade e a outros semelhantes estados anímicos experimentados não só pelo neonato. Em seus trabalhos há dois momentos distintos e complementares. No primeiro deles, o objeto de sua atenção se concentrou mais na relação de apego propriamente dita. Mais tarde, paralelamente ao grande avanço das Bio e Neurociências e da Psicologia Evolucionária, ele passou a dar ênfase aos processos e mecanismos neurofisiológicos e psicológicos que subjazem às reações psicocomportamentais da criança. Essa progressiva e coerente mudança de enfoque fez de Kirkpatrick um renomado pesquisador da Psicologia da Religião. O artigo apresenta ao leitor/a os dois estágios percorridos por ele em seu itinerário como estudioso da área da Psicologia da Religião.

Love is a wondrous state:1 origins and early debates

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Sue White ◽  
Matthew Gibson ◽  
David Wastell ◽  
Patricia Walsh
Keyword(s):  
Object Relations ◽  
Attachment Theory ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Developmental Psychology ◽  
Object Relations Theory ◽  
Clinical Observations ◽  
John Bowlby ◽  
Primary Object ◽  
Mary Ainsworth ◽  
State 1

This chapter traces the origins of attachment theory and reviews its component parts, including the seminal empirical research on animals and humans. Attachment theory, popularised during the 1940s and 1950s, is a synthesis of object relations theory and ethological developmental psychology. It suggests a symbiotic dance of nature and nurture, achieved through the ministering of the mother. It shares with object relations theory an emphasis on the infant's relationship with the ‘primary object’, but these ideas are combined with those from cognitive psychology, cybernetics (control systems theory), ethology, and evolutionary biology. The theory is thus an elegant, but pragmatic mishmash, arising from attempts to make sense of empirical, clinical observations of real children experiencing distressing separations, together with aspirations to make the world a better place for everybody by understanding the medium of love. Attachment theory as used in child welfare is generally attributed to the work of John Bowlby, James Robertson, and Mary Ainsworth. The chapter then considers the controversies that attachment theory has faced, particularly in the latter half of the 20th century.

The Sydney Family Development Project: A Longitudinal Study of Children's Emotional Development in the First Three Years of Life

1992 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 12-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judy A. Ungerer ◽  
Brent Waters ◽  
Bryanne Barnett ◽  
Robyn Dolby ◽  
Rachelle Bouffard ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Longitudinal Study ◽  
Interpersonal Relationships ◽  
Emotional Development ◽  
Coping Styles ◽  
Development Project ◽  
Insecure Attachment ◽  
Family Development ◽  
Personal Distress ◽  
Infant Attachment ◽  
Attachment Quality

ABSTRACTA longitudinal study of early emotional development is in progress in Sydney, and preliminary results from the first three years of the study are reported. Antenatal assessment of parental personality, interpersonal relationships, and parental expectations identified different habitual ways of managing negative affect. Thus far, postnatal assessment of a subsample of the infants has differentiated emotion regulation at 4 months and empathy and mother-infant attachment quality at 12 months. Coping styles to manage emotionallly distressing or challenging situations showed individual differerences. Some 4-month-old infants used an immature strategy to cope with the stress of a non-responsive mother in the Still-Face Procedure, withdrawing and engaging in arousal-containing behaviours. At 12 months of age, these infants also tended to respond with immature personal distress reactions to a videotape of a distressed peer and to demonstrate insecure attachment. Assessment of coping behaviour at 30 months in a semistructured play situation aims to determine whether earlier continuity of withdrawal and emotionall containment versus engagement and emotional coping is maintained.

Attachment Theory: A Biological Basis for Psychotherapy?

1993 ◽  
Vol 163 (4) ◽  
pp. 430-438 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Holmes
Keyword(s):  
Attachment Theory ◽  
Developmental Psychology ◽  
Insecure Attachment ◽  
Secure Base ◽  
Biological Basis ◽  
John Bowlby ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Shared Narrative ◽  
Biological Foundation

John Bowlby bemoaned the separation between the biological and psychological approaches in psychiatry, and hoped that attachment theory, which brings together psychoanalysis and the science of ethology, would help bridge the rift between them. Recent findings in developmental psychology have delineated features of parent–infant interaction, especially responsiveness, attunement, and modulation of affect, which lead to either secure or insecure attachment. Similar principles can be applied to the relationship between psychotherapist and patient - the provision of a secure base, the emergence of a shared narrative (‘autobiographical competence’), the processing of affect, coping with loss - these are common to most effective psychotherapies and provide the basis for a new interpersonal paradigm within psychotherapy. Attachment theory suggests they rest on a sound ethological and hence biological foundation.

The evolution of Harry Harlow: from the nature to the nurture of love

2010 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marga Vicedo
Keyword(s):  
Peer Relationships ◽  
Early History ◽  
Evolutionary Significance ◽  
John Bowlby ◽  
History Of ◽  
Mary Ainsworth ◽  
Evolutionary Psychiatry ◽  
Over Time

Harlow deserves a place in the early history of evolutionary psychiatry but not, as he is commonly presented, because of his belief in the instinctual nature of the mother-infant dyad. Harlow’s work on the significance of peer relationships led him to appreciate the evolutionary significance of separate affectional systems. Over time, Harlow distanced himself from the ideas of John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth as well as from Konrad Lorenz’s views about imprinting and instincts. Harlow’s work did not lend support to Bowlby’s belief in an innate need for mother love and his thesis that the mother was the child’s psychic organizer. Nor did Harlow agree with Lorenz’s view of instincts as biological, unmodifiable innate needs, unaffected by learning.

Attachment Research, Developmental Implications, and Clinical Interventions with Children, Adults, and Couples

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shoshana Ringel
Keyword(s):  
Attachment Theory ◽  
Intergenerational Transmission ◽  
Adult Attachment ◽  
Adult Attachment Interview ◽  
Clinical Interventions ◽  
Attachment Patterns ◽  
Infant Research ◽  
John Bowlby ◽  
Attachment Research ◽  
Mary Ainsworth

This review summarizes contributions to attachment theory and research by John Bowlby, Mary Ainsworth, Mary Main, and many other researchers. It addresses contributions from the Adult Attachment Interview to the understanding of loss and trauma as well as the intergenerational transmission of attachment patterns from parent to child. The review describes current findings from infant research, and the implications of attachment theory to clinical interventions with children, families, adults, and couples.

Gifts from Mary Ainsworth and John Bowlby

2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 436-442 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia M Crittenden
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Attachment Theory ◽  
Current Work ◽  
John Bowlby ◽  
Mary Ainsworth ◽  
Emergent Theory

Attachment theory has developed over many decades - and continues to develop. Its roots lie in several seminal publications of John Bowlby (the basis of attachment theory) and Mary D. S. Ainsworth (the notion of individual differences in attachment). This paper identifies the prescient contributions of these early publications and two processes (a long-term dialogue and reflection on discrepancy) that underlay emergent theory. Because I was a student of Ainsworth when both attachment theory and individual differences in attachment organization were becoming better known, I offer some of my recollections of that period, suggesting how that period may have affected current work in attachment.

scholarly journals The influence of repeated mild lockdown on mental and physical health during the COVID-19 pandemic: a large-scale longitudinal study in Japan

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tetsuya Yamamoto ◽  
Chigusa Uchiumi ◽  
Naho Suzuki ◽  
Nagisa Sugaya ◽  
Eric Murillo-Rodriguez ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Longitudinal Study ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Physical Symptoms ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Aged People ◽  
Socially Disadvantaged ◽  
History Of ◽  
Susceptible Populations ◽  
Demographic Attributes

The mental and physical effects of repeated lockdowns are unknown. We conducted a longitudinal study of the influence of repeated mild lockdowns during two emergency declarations in Japan, in May 2020 and February 2021. The analyses included 7,893 people who participated in all online surveys. During repeated mild lockdowns, mental and physical symptoms decreased overall, while loneliness increased and social networks decreased. Subgroup analyses revealed that depression and suicidal ideation did not decrease only in the younger age group (aged 18-29) and that younger and middle-aged people (aged 18-49), women, people with a history of treatment for mental illness, and people who were socially disadvantaged in terms of income had higher levels of mental and physical symptoms at all survey times. Additionally, comprehensive extraction of the interaction structure between depression, demographic attributes, and psychosocial variables indicated that loneliness and social networks were most closely associated with depression. These results indicate that repeated lockdowns have cumulative negative effects on interpersonal interaction and loneliness and that susceptible populations, such as young people and those with high levels of loneliness, require special consideration during repetitive lockdown situations.

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