Internal Working Model

John Bowlby’s attachment theory rests on two basic premises: (a) that mental health from the cradle to the grave is optimally promoted when [Page 1195]individuals feel confident that trustworthy attachment figures will provide support and reassurance when needed and (b) that the security- and autonomy-enhancing function of attachment relationships turns not only on the quality of moment-to-moment interactive behaviors between a child and parent or between two adult partners but on internal working models (IWMs) that reflect a specific dyad’s habitual interaction patterns.

Bowlby preferred the somewhat mysterious-sounding term IWM, proposed by Kenneth Craik in the 1940s, to expressions such as image or map, which conjure up a static notion of representation. Working models retain the spatial, temporal, and causal relations of what is represented (what ...