Attachment Styles

The concept of attachment was introduced into psychiatry and psychology by John Bowlby, a British psychoanalyst whose major books appeared between 1969 and 1980. Like many psychoanalysts, beginning with Sigmund Freud, Bowlby was interested in the early childhood roots of later personality patterns, including psychological disorders. But instead of focusing on imagined instincts, such as eros (sex) and thanatos (aggression), or sex and aggression, as Freud did, Bowlby focused primarily on the natural dependence of infants and children on their primary caregivers for protection, care, comfort, and emotional support. He noticed, as many informal observers have noticed throughout history, that infants become emotionally attached to their caregivers; look to them for comfort and support in times of stress, threat, need, or pain; and display greater curiosity, courage, and sociability when safely in the presence of these attachment figures. The tendency of human infants to become emotionally attached to their caregivers, a phenomenon that can also be observed in nonhuman primates and many other animals, seemed to Bowlby to be the result of an innate attachment behavioral system.

He was greatly aided in his theoretical work by a talented North American research psychologist, Mary Ainsworth, who did her graduate work on the topics of childhood dependency and security. She concentrated especially on the fact that a child's confidence and courageous exploration of the environment depend on the degree of safety and security provided by caregivers (this is called the secure base effect). An important idea in Bowlby and Ainsworth's attachment theory is that effective caregivers provide a safe haven and secure base from which the children in their care can explore the world and acquire life skills.

Because Bowlby and Ainsworth were interested not just in understanding emotional attachments (or attachment bonds) but also in using insights from their research to guide clinical assessments and treatment of troubled children and adults; they were especially interested in differences between secure and insecure attachments. When an attachment figure is consistently available and responsive to a child, the child becomes confident that protection, support, and help with emotion regulation will be forthcoming if needed or requested. Under such conditions, a child benefits from what attachment theorists call felt security. This feeling that rock-solid support is available allows a child to become more outwardly directed, self-confident, and capable over time of dealing with challenges and stresses autonomously. In contrast, if a child repeatedly discovers that attachment figures are unreliable, selfpreoccupied rather than emotionally available, intrusive, punishing, or coolly distant, the child develops an insecure attachment and suffers from a variety of observable difficulties, including pervasive anxiety, unregulated anger, sadness about separation, abandonment, or neglect, and low self-esteem.

One of Ainsworth's major contributions to attachment theory was a laboratory assessment procedure, the “strange situation,” which is used to assign a 12to 18-month-old child to one of three major attachment categories: secure, anxious, or avoidant. Secure infants play comfortably in an unfamiliar strange situation, when in the presence of their previously supportive attachment figure (often mother). They are sociable toward a stranger, and although they become distressed and worried if their attachment figure leaves the room [Page 54]unexpectedly, they quickly recover, show signs of relief and affection, and play effectively with novel toys following reunion. Researchers, beginning with Ainsworth, have obtained massive evidence that this pattern of behavior results from an attachment figure's reliable availability and responsiveness to the child's needs and bids for help.

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