Biology and the drive for human improvement

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Wastell ◽  
Sue White
Keyword(s):  
Attachment Theory ◽  
Developmental Psychology ◽  
Victorian Era ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Historical Origins

This chapter reviews the historical origins of the project of human improvement, from the Enlightenment onward, coming to the fore especially during the Victorian era. It traces the ascendancy of developmental psychology and ‘infant determinism’ which has always been a key part of the project of human improvement. Attachment theory has played an important part in this this; we draw attention to the contradictions and inconsistencies in this influential body of thought.

Developmental Perspectives on Parenting

2021 ◽  
pp. 25-49
Author(s):  
Rochelle F. Hentges ◽  
Meredith J. Martin
Keyword(s):  
Child Development ◽  
Life Span ◽  
Attachment Theory ◽  
Reproductive Strategies ◽  
Life History Theory ◽  
Developmental Psychology ◽  
Psychological Needs ◽  
Middle Level ◽  
Secure Base ◽  
Parenting Influences

This chapter discusses two leading middle-level theories within evolutionary psychology, which attempt to explain both how and why parenting influences child development across the life span. First, it presents an overview of one of the most influential evolutionary theories in developmental psychology: John Bowlby’s attachment theory. Attachment theory revolutionized the way people understand the nature of the parent–child bond, framing the parent as not just a provider of physical needs but also as a secure base for emotional and psychological needs. These early-life bonds between the caregiver and infant are further proposed to form the basis for relationship attachments across the life span. Next, the chapter addresses how competing strategies toward resource allocation can influence individual differences in parental investment and sensitivity. According to life history theory, differences in the caregiving environment, in turn, promote the formation of distinct reproductive strategies, resulting in behavioral, social, and physiological differences across child development.

Babies and bathwaters: attachment, neuroscience, evolution and the left

Soundings ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 73 (73) ◽  
pp. 111-128
Author(s):  
Graham Music
Keyword(s):  
Attachment Theory ◽  
Developmental Psychology ◽  
Huge Amount ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Interpersonal Neurobiology ◽  
Selfish Genes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Orders ◽  
Crucial Part ◽  
The Brain

This article challenges thinkers and activists on the left who are over-suspicious of ideas heralding from disciplines such as interpersonal neurobiology, attachment theory, developmental psychology, and perhaps especially, evolutionary theory. Although scepticism is frequently warranted, especially as such discourses are often co-opted for neoliberal or far right ends, there is much in all of them that melds well with critiques of hegemonic social orders, providing potential fuel for those working for social change. Much work, for example that of Amy Cuddy, can be interpreted both conservatively and progressively. Work from within an attachment theory paradigm can play a crucial part in the battle of ideas: it has a huge amount to teach about how to create a more humane and egalitarian world, and in countering neoliberal beliefs that humans are innately primarily aggressive, competitive or selfish, or have selfish genes. The days are now over when the biological, psychological and the social need to be pitted against each other. Rather, they now have to be seen as mutually constituted. The brain is a social organ, embedded, embodied, enactive and extended, in large part a reflection of the social conditions in which it grows.

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.

Expressed emotions, early caregiver–child interaction, and disorders

2009 ◽  
Vol 32 (5) ◽  
pp. 406-406
Author(s):  
Andreas Wiefel ◽  
Renate Schepker
Keyword(s):  
Attachment Theory ◽  
Developmental Psychology ◽  
Clinical Perspective ◽  
Child Interaction ◽  
Dynamic Interpretation ◽  
Expressed Emotions ◽  
Relational Framework

AbstractIn addition to the socio-relational framework of expressive behaviors (SRFB), we recommend integrating theoretical and empirical findings based on attachment theory. We advocate a dynamic interpretation of early caregiver–child interaction. The consequences of models from developmental psychology for the occurrence of psychopathology are demonstrated from a clinical perspective.

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.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Edward Harcourt
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Attachment Theory ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Developmental Psychology ◽  
The Other ◽  
Aristotle's Ethics ◽  
The One

The chapters in this volume have mostly been selected from papers given at a workshop and three conferences which brought together on the one hand a group of philosophers, most of whom were interested in one way or another in what has come to be known as ‘virtue ethics’—moral psychology in the wake of Aristotle—and, on the other, some developmental psychologists working, albeit in different ways, in an attachment paradigm. I organized these meetings partly because my own reading of attachment theory persuaded me there were a number of exciting points of contact between developmental psychology done this way and the kinds of questions Aristotle’s ethics raises, and which interest me; partly because almost no philosophers back then seemed even to have heard of attachment theory. This Introduction presents, inevitably through the eyes of a philosopher, what I take to be attachment theory’s main claims, and then tries to identify why philosophical moral psychologists should take it much more seriously than they have done to date—as I hope this volume itself will help them to do....

Teaching Futures Studies From Disciplinary And Student Perspectives

2021 ◽  
pp. 194675672110303
Author(s):  
William E. Klay ◽  
Portia D. Campos
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Risk Management ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Environmental Scanning ◽  
Management Approach ◽  
Futures Studies ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Agent Of Change ◽  
Historical Origins

Concepts from the Enlightenment and the historical origins of modern social sciences are used to discuss how futures studies deserves recognition as a social science in its own right and as a needed component of the curricula of other disciplines as well, especially in public administration. In focus groups, undergraduate students who had just completed a course in futures studies identified what they would emphasize if they become teachers of our field. They would emphasize critical thinking, individual relevance and empowerment, interrelatedness, technology as a two-sided agent of change, a risk management approach to understanding crises and opportunities, past efforts to anticipate possible futures, developing scenarios using the Societal, Technological, Economic, Environmental, and Political framework, environmental scanning and backcasting, and especially the importance of Enlightenment values in framing preferred futures. As teachers, they would use technology extensively but were sharply divided on whether futures studies should be taught in an online only format.

Munro Fox and the public promotion of biology in the mid-twentieth century

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. J. Morley
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
General Public ◽  
Scientific Communication ◽  
Research Career ◽  
New Developments ◽  
Victorian Era ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Radio Broadcasting ◽  
Magazine Articles

In Britain, a tradition of scientists actively communicating new developments in their fields with the general public has existed since the Victorian era. During the early twentieth century there were major developments in the nature of scientific communication with the rise of the mass media represented by popular magazines, newspapers and books, alongside the creation of a national radio broadcasting network. Many professional scientists took advantage of these changes to develop non-specialist careers through writing articles, books or radio talks for the enlightenment of the general public or the education of school children. However, most of this bibliographical material is ephemeral and may be ignored when considering the careers of the most distinguished scientists. One such scientist whose non-specialist activities have been generally undervalued is Munro Fox FRS (1889–1967). He was an eminent zoologist who, alongside a successful research career, had a well-developed non-specialist output promoting biological subjects that included many magazine articles and books as well as a substantial number of radio talks, particularly within the British Broadcasting Corporation's (BBC) Broadcasts to Schools programme.

Mental Representation in The Thought of Sidney Blatt: Developmental Processes

2017 ◽  
Vol 65 (3) ◽  
pp. 509-523 ◽  
Author(s):  
John S. Auerbach ◽  
Diana Diamond
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Psychology ◽  
Attachment Theory ◽  
Mental Representation ◽  
Developmental Psychology ◽  
Conscious Awareness ◽  
Object Representations ◽  
Mental Processes ◽  
Developmental Processes ◽  
Relational Experiences ◽  
Interaction Research

Mental representation was a central construct in Sidney Blatt’s contributions to psychology and psychoanalysis. This brief review demonstrates that Blatt’s understanding of representation was always informed by basic psychoanalytic concepts like the centrality of early caregiver-infant relationships and of unconscious mental processes. Although Blatt’s earlier writings were informed by psychoanalytic ego psychology and Piagetian cognitive developmental psychology, they focused nonetheless on how an individual uses bodily and relational experiences to construct an object world; they also consistently presented object representations as having significant unconscious dimensions. From the mid-1980s onward, Blatt’s contributions, in dialogue with his many students, moved in an even more experiential/relational direction and manifested the influence of attachment theory, parent-infant interaction research, and intersubjectivity theory. They also incorporated contemporary cognitive psychology, with its emphasis on implicit or procedural, rather than explicit, dimensions as a means of accounting for aspects of object representations that are not in conscious awareness. Throughout his career, however, Blatt regarded mental representation as the construct that mediates between the child’s earliest bodily and relational experiences and the mature adult’s symbolic, most emotionally profound capacities.

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