Inheriting Mary Ainsworth and the Strange Situation: Questions of Legacy, Authority, and Methodology for Contemporary Developmental Attachment Researchers

Mary Ainsworth’s legacy continues to shape the social and developmental sciences well after her death. The Ainsworth Strange Situation Procedure has, for decades, not only provided the underpinning methodology of attachment research, but also the frame of reference for theory. This has produced conditions where, as in psychoanalysis, debates about the future of the paradigm also entail a struggle to claim and negotiate the legacy of a founding figure. To date, historians have only looked at attachment research up to the 1980s. Interviews with 15 leading contemporary attachment researchers revealed Ainsworth’s importance to later research, but also laid bare the challenges of claiming her inheritance in responding to the current challenges facing this area of research.

Tengslakenning John Bowlbys

Í greininni er fjallað um tengslakenningu John Bowlbys. Meðal annars er rætt um hvernig kenningin sker sig frá viðfangstengslakenningunni, samstarf Bowlbys og Mary Ainsworth, þróun tengslakenningarinnar og hvernig hún nýtist í meðferð bæði barna og fullorðinna.

Attachment Theory from Ethology to the Strange Situation

In psychology, the term “attachment” has been made popular by British psychiatrist and psychoanalyst John Bowlby’s theory about the adaptive value of the mother–infant bond. Bowlby was not the first to use the term “attachment” or to study the significance of close emotional relationships for infants and young children. Anna Freud and other psychoanalysts had used the term to refer to the mother–child relationship. Bowlby’s views, however, departed from psychoanalysis because he appealed to the science of ethology, the biological study of behavior, for support. According to Bowlby, the mother–infant attachment has a biological basis. The operationalization of the ethological theory of attachment through the work of American- Canadian child psychologist Mary Ainsworth played a key role in the rise of the ethological theory of attachment to paradigmatic status toward the end of the 20th century. Ainsworth carried out observational studies of the attachment between mothers and infants. She also designed an experiment, the strange situation procedure (SSP), to measure and categorize attachment relationships between infants and mothers. Ainsworth and her students argued that their experimental work in the SSP supported Bowlby’s views about the instinctual nature of the child’s attachment to the mother and the importance of a secure attachment in infancy for a person’s adequate emotional development. Attachment theory has become one of psychology’s most influential theories about early child development and its impact on an individual’s subsequent emotional life and adult relationships. Supporters claim its universal validity and its prescriptive character. For them, attachment theory establishes the norm of what is considered healthy emotional and psychological childhood development, and it sets the standards for good parenting. In the Western world, attachment theory has an impact in various realms, including childcare, adoption policies, education, and therapy. Many schools of early childhood education identify children at risk for poor learning in the classroom as a result of attachment problems at home. Pediatricians often rely on attachment theory to encourage specific practices in parent–child interactions. Therapeutic approaches for children, families, and couples are sometimes based on attachment theory, as are decisions about adoption, parental rights, and child custody. Furthermore, some intervention programs in family and educational practices implemented by international NGOs rely on attachment theory. The ethological theory of attachment, however, has also been contested since its inception. Several psychologists critiqued the empirical studies about maternal deprivation on which it was erected. Other scholars challenged the notion that biological science supports its claims. Finally, numerous cross-cultural psychologists and anthropologists challenged the universality of several of its central tenets. They call for recognizing the cultural assumptions embedded in attachment theory, in the instruments and constructs used to measure it, and in the expectations it promotes about good parenting.

Love is a wondrous state:1 origins and early debates

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.

Attachment Theory

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.

Gifts from Mary Ainsworth and John Bowlby

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.

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

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.