Their relationships also tend to last longer. Solomon and George (Citation2016) and Lyons-Ruth and Jacobvitz (Citation2016) have likewise argued that attention to the different processes and behaviors implicated by disorganized attachment would be valuable for research and clinical work with infants (see also Beeney et al., Citation2016; Hollidge & Hollidge, Citation2016; Padrn, Carlson, & Sroufe, Citation2014; Solomon et al., Citation2017; Waters & Crowell, Citation1999). This supports the idea that childhood experiences have a significant impact on peoples attitudes toward later relationships. Robertson and Bowlby begin writing notes describing what they term panic responses in children on return from hospitalization (PP/BOW/D.3/1). He found that infants had an instinctive drive to seek closeness to their caregiver for comfort and safety, and that infants became distressed when separated from their primary caregiver. For Jahoda, integration of the personality entailed 1) a balance of psychic forces; 2) a unifying (cognitive) outlook; or, 3) a resistance to stress (Bowlby, c. Citation1962, PP/BOW/D.3/78). This work was supported by the Wellcome Trust [Grant Number WT103343MA]. Procedures for identifying infants as disorganized/disoriented during the Ainsworth Strange Situation. The baby looks to particular people for security, comfort, and protection. Each type of attachment style comprises a set of attachment behavioral strategies used to achieve proximity with the caregiver and, with it, a feeling of security. Given Bowlbys theory, it might be that pharmacological support for the functioning of effector equipment increases the coherence of attention, expectation, affect, and behavior, thus reducing the expression of disorganization, at least for forms that can be assessable using representational measures. The concept involves ones confidence in the availability of the attachment figure for use as a secure base from which one can freely explore the world when not in distress and a safe haven from which one can seek support, protection, and comfort in times of distress. In using the concept of patterns, Bowlby was mindful of a key difference from Ainsworths relatively discrete patterns of attachment. ), Attachment in the preschool years: Theory, research, and intervention (pp. 33-51). In a 20-year longitudinal study, Waters et al. The multiple attachments formed by most infants vary in their strength and importance to the infant. These systems can be undermined and, ultimately, be expected to lead to disorganized behavior in the Strange Situation, particularly in infant experiences containing threat conflict, safe haven ambiguity, and/or activation without assuagement. This process of mental segregation in the context of threats to integration might be a source of the chaotic and catastrophic fantasies and representations of self and other discerned by researchers studying the sequelae of infant disorganized attachment in middle childhood (e.g. In other words, there will be continuity between early attachment experiences and later relationships. Soon after the end of the Second World War, Leeper (Citation1948) was already warning the neurological research community that the term was ambiguous and ripe for contributing to misunderstandings if adequate definition was not provided. Intensely attached infants had mothers who responded quickly to their demands and, interacted with their child. 967). George and Main publish Social interactions of young abused children in Child Development. In I. Bretherton & E. Waters (Eds. However, Bowlbys extensive notes were on the other side of the Atlantic and remained unpublished. Their model asserts that the threshold for disorganization varies between children as a function of genetic and socialenvironmental risk factors. They can support their partners despite the partners faults. Thereby psychic systems are segregated from one another as though by an iron curtain (Bowlby, c. Citation1962, PP/BOW/D.3/78). Solomon & George, Citation2016; Solomon, George, & De Jong, Citation1995). It is notable that an avoidant attachment classification in the Strange Situation made a smaller but independent contribution over and above disorganization to dissociative behaviors in late adolescence in the Minnesota Longitudinal Study (Sroufe et al., Citation2005). Bowlby and Robertson complete a version of Protest, Despair and Detachment, which remains unpublished (PP/BOW/D.3/38). Bowlby (Citation1973, Citation1980, c. Citation1962, PP/BOW/D.3/78) thought of non-dissociative defenses as less emergency measures. Bowlby theorized about three potential pathways to disorganization: (1) threat conflict, (2) safe haven ambiguity, and (3) activation without assuagement, as they can result in failure to coordinate and integrate across the attention, expectation, affect, and behavior of the attachment system. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, XLI, 1 25. Hinde, Citation1970). Autonomy and independence can make them feel anxious. They may struggle to feel secure in any relationship if they do not get help for their attachment style. Bartholomew & Horowitz contributed to the field when they distinguished between two different avoidant styles: fearful-avoidant and dismissing-avoidant. Ainsworth and colleagues interpreted infants avoidance behaviors as a defensive mechanism against the mothers own rejecting behaviors, such as being uncomfortable with physical contact or being more easily angered by the infants. Anxious attachment (also called ambivalent) relationships are characterized by a concern that others will not reciprocate ones desire for intimacy. Hesse and Main (Citation2006) argued that it would be a worthwhile endeavor for developmental psychopathology to study different caregiving contexts and compare these to the forms of D behavior exhibited by their infants (p. 335). Finally, chi-square tests revealed that there was no association between gender and attachment style. Avoidance, for instance, has a variety of forms and degrees. The problem was compounded in public communication where Bowlby regularly simplified the ideas he presented, sometimes to the point of serious distortion, in order for the basic points to have a chance to be heard amidst hostile responses and misunderstanding (Riley, Citation1983; Thomson, Citation2013). He argued, When yearning for love and care is shut away, it will continue to be inaccessible. It is as though an enquiry clerk, when asked about trains to Cornwall, gave information endlessly about the night express to Plymouth, with occasional intrusions about a plane to Rome. Attachment is characterized by specific behaviors in children, such as seeking proximity to the attachment figure when upset or threatened (Bowlby, 1969). Bowlby (c. Citation1962, PP/BOW/D.3/78; cf. This results in the 1957 publication of An ethological approach to research on child development in the British Journal of Medical Psychology. Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com. Bowlby publishes Separation, volume 2 of his trilogy. 121160. Yet in recent years, there have been calls for renewed attention to the concept. During her dissertation, she asked her undergraduate coders to make particular note of any odd behavior shown by infants. They display attachment behaviors typical of avoidant children becoming socially withdrawn and untrusting of others. In J. Specifically, it shaped his belief about the link between early infant separations with the mother and later maladjustment, and led Bowlby to formulate his attachment theory. Klein also embraced (although never credited) the theory of Hug Helmuth (1912) who believed that childrens behaviour could provide evidence of the role of instincts in children. Rudolph Schaffer and Peggy Emerson (1964) investigated if attachment develops through a series of stages, by studying 60 babies at monthly intervals for the first 18 months of life (this is known as a longitudinal study). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52 (3), 511524. He did not mention Kleins distinction between the primitive paranoid-schizoid position and the later depressive position, apparently not seeing this distinction as relevant to the kind of thinking he wanted to pursue regarding defense and individual adaptation. In M. T. Greenberg, D. Cicchetti, & E. M. Cummings (Eds. They display a readiness to recall and discuss attachments that suggest much reflection regarding previous relationships. By contrast, a brittle person shows little flexibility and responds to changing and stressful situations either by persevering rigidly in his original response or else by becoming disorganised. This paper, relating speculations in Bowlbys manuscripts and notes, is firmly grounded in the context of discovery. Citation1929), were making distinctions in this area, considering differences between primitive and more mature defenses. This is. Theories Child Psychology and Development, BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester. With encouragement from the Bowlby family, the second author is presently editing a selection of the completed but unpublished works for publication. The procedure lasts roughly twenty minutes in total, with the infant being seperated from and reunited with their mother in the following stages: 1. Ainsworth, M. D. S., Blehar, M. C., Waters, E., & Wall, S. (1978). They are often unsure of their feelings toward their romantic partner, believing that romantic love can rarely last and that it is hard for them to fall in love (Hazan & Shaver, 1987). The Ainsworth classifications of attachment form coherent and comparatively discrete patterns that are predictable. I also tend to agree that the approach behaviours are more stable indices of attachment than are the disorganization responses perhaps because there may be more diverse determiners of disorganization behaviour than there are for approach behaviour to specific persons. Citation1953; Robertson, Citation1958). (1952). Lyons-Ruth has operationalized and found empirical support for a pathway to disorganized attachment in the Strange Situation among infants whose caregivers engage in disrupted safe haven communication. Among the defenses he had observed clinically, Bowlby (c. Citation1962, PP/BOW/D.3/78) was particularly interested in the way that historical events could be kept from conscious attention. They categorized these infants as having a disorganized attachment type. Main, M and Solomon, J (1990). This means a person could be securely attached to their parents but insecurely attached in romantic relationships. Bowlby published a paper in 1960 intended for a psychoanalytic audience based on his observations of these behaviors in his clinical practice with families, which were similar to those of other clinicians working with child patients with histories of trauma (e.g. Infants who were weakly attached had mothers who failed to interact. Parent leaves infant and stranger alone. Attachment theory, developed by Bowlby to explain emotional bonding between infants and caregivers, has implications for understanding romantic relationships. However, where this can be achieved, communication between systems ensures that benefits of physical and attentional rest were transferred in the form of feeling genuinely refreshed. Bowlby (c. Citation1962, PP/BOW/D.3/78) applied his account to the nature of defense, arguing that the process of selective exclusion can also be exploited by the organism, forming various kinds of defense. Hinde publishes Animal Behavior, offering a theory of conflict behavior that will be influential for both Bowlby and Main (see Solomon et al., Citation2017). There is evidence that attachment styles may be transmitted between generations. London: Routledge. The internal working model influences a persons expectation of later relationships thus affects his attitudes towards them. Waters, E., Merrick, S., Treboux, D., Crowell, J., & Albersheim, L. (2000). There is always some level of exclusion in human experience. Links between alarming caregiver behavior at home and disorganized attachment in the Strange Situation are well establishccounting for 13% of variance in disorganization (Madigan et al., Citation2006). As they develop, children in adverse circumstances generally elaborate strategies and defenses adapted to their caregiving environment. Attachment theory explains how the parent-child relationship emerges and influences subsequent development. Individuals with a preoccupied attachment (called anxious when referring to children) hold a negative self-image and a positive image of others, meaning that they have a sense of unworthiness but generally evaluate others positively. 1. He offered effector equipment as a concept to refer to the elements of the meta-behavioral system that orchestrates attention, expectation, affect, and behavior within a specific behavioral system (e.g. (1958). This is not always the case. The second potential pathway to disorganization discussed by Bowlby (c. Citation1950s, PP/BOW/H.10) was safe haven ambiguity. The nature of the childs tie to his mother. Researchers have proposed that working models are interconnected within a complex hierarchical structure (Collins & Read, 1994). ABSTRACT: Little research has examined how attachment styles in childhood are related to current romantic relationship experiences. In Bowlbys (c. Citation1962, PP/BOW/D.3/78) account, a process such as dissociation would not be regarded as mere breakdown (following the ethologists) nor as a well-orchestrated defense (following Bowlbys view of psychoanalytic orthodoxy at the time). The infants temperament may explain their issues (good or bad) with relationships in later life. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, 44 (4), 245-256. However, Bowlby also argued that clinical interventions might be more effective with individuals experiencing disorganization than those utilizing well-established defenses: essentially, non-organized and nonintegrated states may be less entrenched and more accessible to change than stable and settled defenses. In their original formulation, Main and Solomon ( 1990) defined disorganisation in terms of the approach-avoidance conflict endured by the abused child who has to seek comfort and protection from an attachment figure who is either frightening (abusive) or are themselves frightened (for example, through mental illness or domestic violence). The development of social attachments in infancy. Main, Kaplan, and Cassidy (1985) analyzed adults responses to the Adult Attachment Interview and observed three major patterns in the way adults recounted and interpreted childhood attachment experiences and relationships in general. Ainsworth, M. D. S., & Bell, S. M. (1970). People tend to base their parenting style on the internal working model, so the attachment type tends to be passed on through generations of a family. Bowlby (c. Citation1962, PP/BOW/D.3/78) notes that such outbursts are, generally, ill organised and not well-suited to environmental demands, even when they take on an expectable rhythm: That the motor responses adopted in such conditions of stress tend to become fixated and so lead to pathological behaviour is now fairly well known. Bowlby, J. Bowlbys personal notes from discussions with Main in March of 1978 (PP/BOW/H.78) report his curiosity that these conflict behaviors displayed by some infants in the Strange Situation were also being observed in the behavior of abused toddlers towards their caretakers in nursery by Mains graduate student, Carol George (George & Main, Citation1979). & Miller, N.E. However, theorizing about the process of disorganization and attachment has a longer history that has value today, as empirical and clinical applications of attachment theory continue to expand. Bowlbys attachment theory is based on the premise that everyone needs emotional intimacy and this is most commonly provided by the interactions of carer (e.g. The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, VX, 3 39. The behaviors in the Main and Solomon (Citation1990) indices are not all disorganized per se in the Goldstein/Bowlby sense of the term, which described disruption of coherence at a motor level. Parent leaves; infant left completely alone. Those same behaviors were also recognizable in some noninstitutionalized children following brief separation from their caregivers (Robertson, Citation1953, Citation1958). For Bowlby, a problem arose from the fact that the ethological and psychoanalytic literature differed on where to draw the line between the defense and disorganization. Patterns of attachment: A psychological study of the strange situation. Bowlbys unpublished reflections can add to the proposals of Main and Solomon (Citation1990), Sroufe (Citation1996), and Bernier and Meins (Citation2008) regarding pathways to disorganization. 6. Indeed, these pathways have found empirical support by later researchers (e.g. attachment) and determines the extent to which the system is flexibly responsive to the environment (Citation1969, p. 49). However, for Bowlby in his unpublished writings, as later for Main (Citation1979), avoidance does not in itself undermine organization at the level of the attachment system. Bowlby suggests that an organism that experiences fear that disrupts the attachment system, such as in the situations described above, can be anticipated to suffer from traumatic difficulty in cortical incompatibility of sense data (PP/BOW/H.10, notes from a file tagged Theory of Defence Citation19601963). They show little stranger anxiety. Solomon et al., Citation2017), though other possible reasons for the association have not yet received adequate discussion in print. In order to accomplish this, Bowlby replaced Freud's view of attachment as a bond University of Cambridge Abstract In 1990, M. Main and J. Solomon introduced the procedures for coding a new "disorganized" infant attachment classification for the Ainsworth Strange. This point of Bowlbys agrees with Main and Solomon (Citation1990) who argued that repeated experiences of conflict between attachment and fear in relation to the caregiver would be one pathway to disorganization in the Strange Situation. The children were all studied in their own home, and a regular pattern was identified in the development of attachment. They get upset when an individual ceases to interact with them. The presence of different kinds of disorganized behaviors did not necessarily imply to Bowlby that the behaviors shared the same root cause or occurred as a result of the same process (Solomon et al., Citation2017). Attachment theory is centered on the emotional bonds between people and suggests that our earliest attachments can leave a lasting mark on our lives. With the permission from the Bowlby family and encouragement from Main and Solomon, this article offers insight into those works. Thus, the breakdown of avoidance would not look the same as the breakdown of a dissociative response or of preoccupied fixation on the caregiver, which Bowlby and Robertson observed after children returned home from hospitalization. (1950). Furthermore, although specific models of attachment relationships are positively associated with more overarching general working models, the correlations are small to moderate (less than .40), indicating that they comprised distinct beliefs regarding the self and significant others (Cozzarelli, Hoekstra, & Bylsma, 2000). The intensity and the rigidity of the conflict between these two responses, and the extremity and rigidity of the defenses used to manage the conflict, had led to the symptoms shown by these patients. Ainsworth proposed the sensitivity hypothesis, which states that the more responsive the mother is to the infant during their early months, the more secure their attachment will be. The infant may or may not be friendly with the stranger, but always showed more interest in interacting with the mother. 5 Howick Place | London | SW1P 1WG. 1979, Citation1980, Citation1988). Hesse and Main (Citation2006) have argued that it would be a worthwhile endeavor for developmental psychopathology to study different caregiving contexts and compare these to the forms of D behavior exhibited by their infants (p. 335). Their internal working model is based on an avoidant attachment established during infancy. In humans, the behavioral attachment system does not conclude in infancy or even childhood. Drawing from his theory of defensive exclusion, Bowlby (c. Citation1962, PP/BOW/D.3/78) was especially interested in avoidance both as a defense against disorganization and for how it yields to disorganization when overwhelmed. The article concludes by drawing out some implications relevant to future research and clinical practice. . Main, M., & Solomon, J. Reflecting Bowlbys emphasis on the importance of early traumatic experience, childhood trauma has been situated by studies in Interpersonal Neurobiology as a relational impediment to experiential and neurological integration (Schore & Schore, Citation2008; Siegel, Citation2012; Teicher, Citation2007), which is then reflected in a childs attentional processes, expectations, affects, and behavior. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 28(8), pp.1048-1072. Moreover, whenever an avoidant or anxious adult did not pair with a secure partner, he or she was more likely to end up with an avoidant partner; an anxious adult was unlikely to be paired with another Anxious adult. We begin with a brief overview of disorganization and address the difficulties with terminology that have limited the recognition of Bowlbys published reflections. In this way, defensive exclusion can ultimately undermine integration and shift the mind into a segregated state. Researchers found plenty of people having happy relationships despite having insecure attachments. One of the patterns produced by children who are disorganized is chaotic and catastrophic fantasies. If they are in a relationship with someone secure and calm, they may be suspicious of why this is. Please note that this is a very short, very surface level overview of attachment theory. The sample consisted of 227 participants, 153 of which were university students and the remaining 69 were members of the general population. Simpson & W.S. Brennan, K.A., Clark, C.L., & Shaver, P. (1998). For a more visual explanation, have a look at this video: Faced with a number of children that defied categorisation into the existing attachment styles that Ainsworth defined, her colleague Mary Main proposed a new category called disorganised attachment (Main & Solomon, 1990). For instance, selective exclusion could be helpfully used to keep worries away during relaxation or sleep. Baldwin, M.W., & Fehr, B. Timeline of Bowlbys reflections on disorganized attachment processes and behaviors. In other words, there will be continuity between early attachment experiences and later relationships. The mental apparatus retains some conditional integration in deploying defensive exclusion in response to an experience that would otherwise be overwhelming, though at the price of segregating certain kinds of environmental information, paralleled by the segregation of mental systems and their neurological architecture. (1986). For Bowlby, integration blockages would likely have relational, experiential, and neurological aspects, though these need not always be symmetrical or correspond neatly. One of the few published mentions of these two pathways occurred in Separation (Citation1973), where Bowlby discussed the relative though not absolute distinction between them. The nature of love. Main and Solomon (Citation1990) go on to state, signs of apprehension may seem less disorganized or disoriented than many of the other behaviour patterns (p. 136). This conceptualization offers an understanding of how exclusion can shift from being selective to defensive. et al., 2011. Bowlby accumulates extensive unpublished file-draw notes integrating psychoanalytic theories of conflict with ethological observations of conflict in animals. caused when an infant learns that their caregiver or parent is unreliable and does not consistently provide responsive care towards their needs. Bowlbys (Citation1969) concept of effector equipment can be considered as a specification of one of the tasks Freud (Citation1915/2001) assigned to the ego, which today might be identified as an aspect of executive function central to self-regulation and integration (Siegel, Citation2012, Citation2017). The reason is that I conceive overt behaviour to be only one component of a motivational system within the organism, and fantasies, thoughts and affects, conscious and unconscious, to be integral to, and other components of, such systems. As the above has made clear, attachment research is ongoing, continually improving and refining our understanding. Stranger joins parent and infant. As such, the fearful-avoidant may expect that their romantic relationships as adults should also be chaotic. Each of these three traditional patterns of attachment are considered to represent organized strategies for dealing with the stress of separation from the parent in a strange environment (Main, 1990), although attachment to the mother has repeatedly been found to predict less favorable outcomes than does secure attachment in later childhood (see Following this emphasis, some attachment theorists have used segregated systems as the basis for their thinking and design of attachment measures, such as George and Wests (Citation2012) Adult Attachment Projective, which uses segregated systems as the theoretical basis for the adult attachment classification equivalent of disorganization. These concerns tap into larger questions about the connection and potentially parallel development of self-regulation and attachment. He suggests types of repression, including isolating and undoing, as examples of segregating processes. (1969). In B. Cardwell & H. Ricciuti (Eds. Attachments and other affectional bonds across the life cycle. Further, Bowlbys unpublished writings add color and detail to his published work on segregated systems and defensive exclusion. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons CC BY license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Main and Solomon (1986) discovered that a sizable proportion of infants did not fit into secure, anxious, or avoidant, based on their behaviors in the Strange Situation experiment. Generally when we speak of attachment theory these days we are referring not just to the work of one individual, but the culmination of work by a number of theorists and researchers, each building on the work of those who came before them. . It is our hope to make these forgotten reflections accessible to researchers and clinicians through review of Bowlbys unpublished written remarks. Building on Goldstein, Bowlby (Citation1960) added that grief also results in such a state of behavioral disorganization. 7. ), Attachment in the preschool years: Theory, research, and intervention (pp. Finally, we want to thank the Wellcome Trust for supporting a Wellcome Trust Visiting Researcher position for Samantha Reisz at Cambridge University, and for a Medical Humanities Investigator Award: [Grant Number WT103343MA] to Robbie Duschinsky. There also appears to be a continuity between early attachment styles and the quality of later adult romantic relationships. In contrast to the Ainsworth categories, children who showed one kind of behavior suggestive of motivational conflict could very well display others as well. Adult attachment styles derived from past relationship histories are conceptualized in the form of internal working models. For instance, ethologists discussed forms of behavioral avoidance, such as looking away, and how animals use such strategies to handle potential threat and/or conflict (e.g. It can range from the simple reallocation of attention away from distress to more substantial forms that result in limited segregation by diverting attention to something else. The third situation in which Bowlby expected disruption to the attachment system to occur was when a strong motivation was intensely activated for a long time without assuagement, such as the childs desire for their caregiver in the context of institutionalization. I think it will require much more research to ascertain how disorganization responses relate to the more positive components of attachment. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, XXXIX, 1 23. The fearful-avoidant style is seen in individuals who want emotional intimacy but are unable to trust their partners, and this can often result in relationship-threatening behaviours. However, research has shown that there are individual differences in attachment styles. Bowlby publishes Loss, volume 3 of his trilogy. They may prefer to have more sexual partners as a way to get physically close to someone without having to also be emotionally vulnerable to them thus meeting their need for closeness. Therefore the theory might be an oversimplification. seminar by Bowlby delivered at the Tavistock on February; 1958, PP/BOW/H.67) emphasized that holding incompatible models and expectations within parts of the mind that are firmly segregated, and thus unable to communicate with each other, can threaten successful functioning.