The Routledge Handbook of Attachment: Theory

Paul Holmes, Steve Farnfield, Paul Holmes, Steve Farnfield

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317647140
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychotherapy
• Index: Psychology

The Routledge Handbook of Attachment: Theory provides a broadly based introduction to attachment theory and associated areas, written in an accessible style by experts from around the world. The book covers the basic theories of attachment and discusses the similarities and differences of the two predominant schools of attachment theory.

The book provides an overview of current developments in attachment theory, explaining why it is important not only to understanding infant and early child development but also to adult personality and the care we provide to our children. The Routledge Handbook of Attachment: Theory provides detailed descriptions of the leading schools of attachment theory as well as discussions of this potentially confusing and contentious area, and includes a chapter on the neuropsychological basis of attachment. The book also examines other domains and diagnoses that can be confused with issues of attachment and assesses contexts when different approaches may be more suitable.

Providing a comprehensive yet accessible introduction to the theories of attachment, The Routledge Handbook of Attachment: Theory is an indispensable guide for professionals working with children and families in community and court-based settings, clinical psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers, clinicians in training and students.

Chapter 1

ABC + D of attachment theory

The Strange Situation procedure as the gold standard of attachment assessment

Lenny van Rosmalen, Marinus H. van IJzendoorn and Marian J. Bakermans-Kranenburg

So saying, glorious Hector stretched out his arms to his boy, but back into the bosom of his fair-girdled nurse shrank the child crying, affrighted at the aspect of his dear father, and seized with dread of the bronze and the crest of horse-hair, as he marked it waving dreadfully from the topmost helm. Aloud then laughed his dear father and queenly mother; and forthwith glorious Hector took the helm from his head and laid it all-gleaming upon the ground. But he kissed his dear son, and fondled him in his arms …

(Homer, The Iliad, Book VI)

Introduction

The Strange Situation procedure (SSP) and its standard coding protocol (Ainsworth et al. 1978) have been used in numerous studies on the antecedents and sequelae of infant attachment. In this chapter we present the SSP and its attachment classifications and we discuss some of the work done on the antecedents of differences in attachment security.

Attachment

What is attachment?

Attachment is the emotional bond between a child and his protective caregiver(s). That bond becomes most obvious in times of fear and tension, for instance during illness, separation or other threatening danger. For regulation of these negative emotions a child feels when scared or tense, the young child depends on a wiser or stronger person who makes sure that negative emotions like fear or sadness do not overwhelm the child and block any (exploratory) behaviour. The caregiver acts as a haven of safety, which causes the child to feel supported and allows it to grow. Attachment is seen in some shape or other in all cultures, and appears to be important in parent–offspring relationships of many animal species as well.

The importance of attachment should not be underestimated. The helpless baby depends on protection in order to survive. This protection is normally provided by its biological parents, because they want their offspring to survive. From an evolutionary viewpoint, attachment is important for the parents so they can hand over their genes to the next generation(s). Attachment theory is essentially an evolutionary theory, and John Bowlby (1973, 1988), the British child psychiatrist and founder of the attachment theory, felt strongly indebted to Charles Darwin.

Even though protection would normally be provided by the parents, a child can also get attached to other caregivers who are in regular contact with the child and make it feel secure in times of need. A good example of a network of attachment relationships in which a child can grow up is found in the citation above – the beautiful description of the departure of Hector, given by Homer almost 3,000 years ago in The Iliad. It clearly shows that attachment is not a new phenomenon in human history, and that it is not just about the bond between mother and child.

The way Hector says goodbye to his loving wife Andromache shortly after in the same scene illustrates the importance of attachment for adults. Bowlby (1973, 1988) looked upon attachment as a lifelong attribute of people and their relationships. At no point in our lives can we escape the need for closeness to a protecting and loving partner in times of fear and tension. The fact that separation hurts in adulthood makes it clear that we depend on attachment figures to help us face the challenges of life. Hector has to face the battle with the enraged Ajax who can easily take him on. Hector suspects his end is near and wants to see his wife and son once more to pick up the courage to enter the life-or-death battle.

Attachment relationships are extremely important for development. Children who grow up in an orphanage from birth, having to go without the availability of a specific caregiver as an attachment figure, are especially at risk of suffering from delayed growth and delayed motor, cognitive and social-emotional development (Van IJzendoorn 2008). Children who grow up in children’s homes often have disturbed neurophysiological emotion regulation, which becomes apparent from the dysregulation of the production of the stress hormone cortisol (Gunnar & Vasquez 2001). Normally a child becomes attached to one or more caregivers, even if these caregivers neglect or maltreat the child. Obviously, the quality of the attachment relationship suffers in such cases, but even under these circumstances feelings of attachment persist (Cyr et al. 2010). Attachment is seen as a milestone in the development of a child and a condition for a balanced development of a person (Bowlby 1953). Early experience with attachment relationships is assumed to be a decisive factor for the way children are later able to create bonds with other people, their future partners or their own children, and how they see themselves in relation to the outside world (Bowlby 1988).

The development of attachment

The tendency to become attached is inborn in every human child. It is the result of a millennia-long evolution in which it was favourable for survival and reproduction of humans to get attached to a stronger, protective person during the first year of life. Children are, in fact, born ‘prematurely’ because they cannot move themselves from one place to another, they cannot feed themselves or keep themselves warm, and depend totally on their social environment for survival. The idea that babies become attached to their mother purely because she provides them with food and fulfils their basic needs cannot stand if we look at ethology. Young geese that have just crawled out of their eggs follow the first moving figure they see, even if that is not their mother but, for instance, the ethologist studying them. Konrad Lorenz has given lively descriptions of this phenomenon (Lorenz 1952).

Human babies, however, do not have an instinct that causes them to become attached to the first living being they encounter. They get attached to the person who takes care of them the most during the first few months of life. In most cases that is the mother, but it could just as well be someone else. Through directing its attachment behaviour (crying, laughing, following) at a specific person, the child makes this individual feel responsible for him or her at times of imminent danger – a very efficient system to ensure survival in environments of evolutionary adaptedness (Bowlby 1969) that, for millennia, were far from safe.

Four phases of developing attachment

Bowlby (1982) has described four hypothetical phases through which attachment would develop during the first few years of life. The first phase, orientation towards people without differentiating between them, starts with the preference of the baby for the human smell, the sound of the human voice, and the rough outlines of the human face. This phase starts shortly after birth and lasts for the first few months of life. During the second phase, orientation towards specific people in the child’s environment makes the baby focus on people it sees regularly and with whom he or she becomes familiar. This phase can be observed in the second half of the first year. The baby develops a preference for one or a few specific people to whom the child becomes attached during the third phase, the phase of specific attachment (from age 10 months to 3 years). It will want to be around these attachment figures when frightened or stressed. During the fourth phase, the phase of goal-oriented attachment which starts around the third birthday, the child can take the perspective of the attachment figure and take his or her expectations into account with the development of plans, for instance when playing with unfamiliar children in an unfamiliar environment, during the first day of school. Even though the child will want the attachment figure to be around, it will also be prepared to wait until the caregiver is available again. Attachment, in this phase, has developed from a relatively solid behavioural pattern aimed at physical proximity, to a mental representation of a protecting and comforting caregiver who is available to the child when the child needs him or her. The phases are still hypothetical in the sense that the age ranges are educated guesses without a firm empirical foundation of longitudinal research.

No critical period for attachment

It has been said that age 0–6 years is the critical period for becoming attached. There are two reasons why this assumption cannot be right. First of all, it is near impossible for a child not to become attached. Children practically always become attached and have great ability to recover. Even autistic children are attached to their parents, in spite of their social handicaps (Van IJzendoorn et al. 2007). Also, children who are being maltreated or neglected are attached, even though this is usually an insecure or disorganised attachment (Cyr et al. 2010). The exception to the rule might be children who grow up in crowded orphanages without regular caregivers – a situation that is deviant from an evolutionary point of view.

Second, a cutoff point at age six is not based on empirical research. Bowlby suggested on theoretical grounds that until age five, attachment is open to influences from the environment – good or bad – but that even after that, it is possible for corrective attachment experiences to help the child back on track to a secure attachment. Empirical research into the development of adopted children has proven Bowlby right. Age at adoption is important for development – adoption before the child’s first birthday usually results in better development, including attachment quality, than adoption when the child is older. Similarly, children who are placed with foster parents at a later age are more difficult to bring up than children who are placed with foster parents a few months after birth. But this does not mean there is a critical period for human children to get attached, a time frame in which certain skills have to be learned, lest they disappear altogether.

There are sensitive periods in which it is easier to learn these skills and after which it will be more difficult to learn or unlearn them, but children possess the ability to make an amazing recovery once they find themselves in a safe and stimulating environment. This becomes evident from research with children who are being adopted from orphanages. The developmental leaps these children take in a relatively short period of time are enormous: from dwarfism to average length, head circumference and weight, and from mental retardation to a level of cognitive functioning that is 15 to 20 IQ points higher than at the time of arrival at the adoptive family. Something similar is possible in the area of attachment. It is true that, sadly, some children are scarred for life, but for the majority of adopted children the cognitive and physical differences between them and biological children are small and the adopted children manage to catch up at surprising speed (Van IJzendoorn & Juffer 2006).

Attachment over the life course

Even though we have established that there is no critical period in which the attachment representation is supposed to take shape, most children, in interaction with their caregivers, develop a mental representation of attachment during the first five years of life. Bowlby (1973) calls this an ‘internal working model’ of attachment. However, this mental representation of attachment is not solid and unchangeable at age five. It is not an absolute and definitive model but a working model that continually keeps processing information from the environment and keeps adjusting itself to the changing circumstances.

The attachment representation that arises during the first few years of life does appear to leave its traces in adulthood. Three longitudinal studies show strong relationships between the quality of attachment in the first year of life and attachment representations during adolescence and early adulthood. Main and Hesse (Hesse 1999), Waters (Waters et al. 2000) and Hamilton (Beckwith et al. 1999) found continuity in quality of attachment in 70–77 per cent of cases of children in diverse populations. A secure attachment relationship with a parent at age one predicted a secure attachment representation in adolescence, 16 to 18 years later. These are robust data. It is particularly interesting to look more closely at the cases that did change. Waters and Hamilton showed that radical change of situation (for instance, divorce of the parents, or serious illness) could predict changes in attachment representation. Knowing that, it is plausible that intervention or therapy can also produce such effects.

There are studies, however, that show less or no continuity. The most important of these is the Minnesota longitudinal study conducted by Sroufe and colleagues (2005) which could not find any notable continuity of attachment across the first 18 years of life in a high-risk group of children (poor, and with abused or sometimes abusing parents). However, this is less surprising when one realises that this group of deprived children and families had to try to survive in very unstable social circumstances. This could be a group with a majority of children experiencing (radical) change of situation, which in turn may change attachment representation.

Measuring attachment

Even though virtually all children become attached, the quality of their attachment relationship differs. This quality of attachment can be observed in stressful situations where the caregiver is not immediately available to comfort the child. The SSP was designed by Mary Ainsworth (Ainsworth et al. 1978) and is a standardised simulation of a stressful situation. It has been in use for decades and is the best-known instrument for measuring infant attachment.

The origins of the Strange Situation procedure

The SSP was not invented overnight. The roots of its development date back to the first half of the twentieth century. Mary Ainsworth wrote her dissertation in 1939 under the guidance of William Blatz, often referred to as the Doctor Spock of Canada (Wright 1996). It is very possible that this is where her interest in what we now call attachment stems from. Blatz lectured on his security theory for years and wrote briefly about it in his books, but only clearly put his complete theory in writing in his last book, Human Security, which was published posthumously (Blatz 1966). According to Blatz, a child starts off having to depend on his parents. If the child feels certain the parent is going to be there for him, no matter what, the dependence is ‘secure’ and the child feels comfortable to go and explore. The parent acts as a ‘secure base’. The exploration will result in development towards a state of ‘independent security’, although Blatz admits in his later writings that independent security can probably never be reached completely, and that a form of ‘mature secure dependency’ on friends and/or a partner is possibly the highest achievable goal. In the meantime, some people will remain ‘immaturely dependent’ or rely on defensive mechanisms in order to deal with feelings of insecurity.

Ainsworth’s dissertation was based on Blatz’s security theory. She designed an instrument to measure security in (young) adults comprising an extensive questionnaire and an in-depth interview which she kept expanding and improving upon until 1958 (Ainsworth & Ainsworth 1958).

When Ainsworth followed her husband to London in 1950 she started working with Bowlby at the Tavistock Clinic, researching the effects on young children of being separated from their mother. Ainsworth assisted James Robertson with analysing the detailed notes he made while ...