ATTACHMENT

1
ATTACHMENT

• Deep, enduring connection formed in first year of
  life
• Influences every part of human condition
• Something parents/children create together
• Instinctually based

2
FUNCTION OF ATTACHMENT

• Learn basic trust and reciprocity
• Explore environment
• Self-regulation
• Identity
• Prosocial moral framework
• Defense against stress/trauma

3
ATTACHMENT RELATIONSHIP

• Touch
• Eye contact
• Smile and positive affect
• Need fulfillment

4
ATTACHMENT PROMOTES

• Self-esteem
• Independence/autonomy
• Resilience
• Ability to manage impulses/feelings
• Long-term friendships
• Relationships with authority figures
• Prosocial coping skills
• Trust, intimacy, and affection
• Positive, hopeful belief system about self/others
• Empathy, compassion and conscience
• Behavioral and academic success in school
• Secure attachment with own children

5
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

• Hospital policies
• John Bowlby
• affectionless children
• early emotional deprivation
• WHO in 1951
• influence of ethologists

6
BOWLBYS CONCLUSIONS

• Infants possess instinctual behaviors that serve
  to keep mother close
• Smile-social releaser for infant and mother
• Anxiety, fear, illness, fatigue increases
  attachment behaviors
• Maternal deprivation and separation traumatic
  because thwart biological need
• Loss causes pathological mourning

7
OTHER RESEARCHERS

• David Levy-primary affect hunger
• Loretta Bender
• Henry Bawkin- institutional failure to thrive
• Harold Skeels
• Rene Spitz
• James Robertson-reaction to loss/separation
• protest, despair, detachment
• Harry Harlow-contact comfort

8
MARY AINSWORTH

• 1954 Uganda study- secure base
• Phases of attachment
• Undiscriminating
• Differential responsiveness
• Separation anxiety
• Active initiation
• Stranger anxiety

9
AINSWORTH

• Strange Situation
• Patterns of Attachment
• Secure
• Insecure Ambivalent/resistant
• Avoidant
• Parental Characteristics
• acceptance, cooperation, sensitivity,
• availability

10
DEVELOPMENTAL STUDIES

• Mary Main-disorganized/disoriented
• Patricia Crittenden-ambivalent/avoidant
• Bowlby- internal working model
• Alan Sroufe- longitudinal studies

11
CULTURAL VARIATIONS

• One-third in middle-class families insecurely
  attached
• Higher in multiproblem families
• In all cultures studied, most infants show secure
  attachment patterns (68)
• Ganda babies
• German families
• Israel