attachment theory essay introduction

Attachment Theory and Emotion Experience in Life Essay

Introduction, the attachment theory and life experiences, works cited.

This paper reports on the attachment theory and how life experience affects one’s emotional attachment to others. Attachment theory advanced by John Bowlby in the early 1950s, seeks to explain how early life relations affects an individual’s emotional bonding in future Hutchison (89).

The theory gives an understanding of the different personalities as relates to emotional relationships. The theory was first focused on the relationship between children and their parents, but was later expanded to look at the whole lifespan. The theory looks at ones attachment as being influenced by both psychological conditions and the social environment.

According to the proponents of the attachment theory, children develop a bond with their caregivers, which grow into an emotional bond. Further research on the theory indicates that life experiences in childhood direct the course of one’s personality as well as the social and emotional development throughout his or her life.

Besides the explanation advanced by the theory regarding the connection between a baby and its mother or a care giver, the theory also seeks to explain the attachment between adults Hutchison (43). Among adults, an emotional attachment is felt more especially during bereavement or separation of spouses. Babies are born without the ability to move or feed themselves.

They depend on care givers to for these needs; they however have pre-programmed set of behavior that comes into action due to the environmental stimuli. Environmental stimuli may trigger a sense of fear or distress in the baby making it cry for help from the mother or the care giver. The protection or comfort offered to the baby makes it develop a stronger emotional bond with the mother and others who are closer to it.

Children grow to relate comfort from distress to the people who are close to them during their early stages of development. The nature of the environment a child grows in, together with the “psychological framework builds up a child’s internal working model” Hutchison (52).

The internal working model comprises of the development of expectations that an individual perceives in social interactions. The theory explains the effect of challenging parenting such as; neglect or abuse. Parents and caregivers should endeavor to develop an environment that makes children feel secure and comfortable.

The type of relationship parents establish with their children at their early stages of development determines the type of emotional attachment a child develops with them. A child who grows up in a loving and sensitive environment develops secure relationships in with others.

Such a child grows to recognize others as being caring, loving and reliable. They also develop high self esteem and learn to deal with negative feelings. Research indicates that people who grow up in secure attachment relationships are able to demonstrate good social aptitude throughout their life.

On the contrary, children brought up in unsecure environment develop an avoidant attachment. An unsecure environment to children is often characterized by fear, anxiety and rejection. This type of environment makes a child make children to downplay their emotional feelings.

There is a group of children who grow up with care givers that are not consistent in responding to their emotional needs. Their care givers are sometimes sensitive, and sometimes insensitive to their feelings. Such children develop “an attachment seeking habit as they try to conquer the insensitivity of their caregivers” Hutchison (34).

This sort of behavior by children is referred to as ambivalent attachment, where the children seek to compensate for the inconsistent responsiveness by the caregiver. Such a child tries to manage other people’s attention through behavior sets such as; seduction, bullying rage and necessity.

Hutchison, Elizabeth . Dimensions of human behavior: The changing life course. 4th Ed . Thousand oaks, CA: Sage publications, 2011. Print

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What is Attachment Theory? Bowlby’s 4 Stages Explained

No matter what the “it” refers to, Sigmund Freud would have probably said yes to that question.

However, we now know a lot more about psychology, parenting, and human relationships than Freud did.

It’s clear now that not every issue can be traced back to one’s mother. After all, there is another person involved in the raising (or at least the creation) of a child.

In addition, there are many other important people in a child’s life who influence him or her. There are siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles, godparents, close family friends, nannies, daycare workers, teachers, peers, and others who interact with a child on a regular basis.

The question posed above is tongue-in-cheek, but it touches upon an important discussion in psychology—what influences children to turn out the way they do? What affects their ability to form meaningful, satisfying relationships with those around them?

What factors contribute to their experiences of anxiety, avoidance, and fulfillment when it comes to relationships?

Although psychologists can pretty conclusively say that it’s not entirely the mother’s fault or even the fault of both parents, we know that a child’s early experiences with their parents have a profound impact on their relationship skills as adults.

Much of the knowledge we have on this subject today comes from a concept developed in the 1950s called attachment theory . This theory will be the focus of this article: We’ll explore what it is, how it describes and explains behavior, and what its applications are in the real world.

Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Positive Relationships Exercises for free . These detailed, science-based exercises will help you or your clients build healthy, life-enriching relationships.

This Article Contains:

What is attachment theory a definition, research and studies, erik erikson, attachment theory in babies, infants, and early childhood development, attachment theory in adults: close relationships, parenting, love, and divorce, attachment theory in grief and trauma, the attachment theory test, using attachment theory in the classroom (worksheet and pdf), attachment theory in social work, criticisms of attachment theory, recommended books, articles, and essays, a take-home message.

The psychological theory of attachment was first described by John Bowlby, a psychoanalyst who researched the effects of separation between infants and their parents (Fraley, 2010).

Bowlby hypothesized that the extreme behaviors infants engage in to avoid separation from a parent or when reconnecting with a physically separated parent—like crying, screaming, and clinging—were evolutionary mechanisms. Bowlby thought these behaviors had possibly been reinforced through natural selection and enhanced the child’s chances of survival.

These attachment behaviors are instinctive responses to the perceived threat of losing the survival advantages that accompany being cared for and attended to by the primary caregiver(s). Since the infants who engaged in these behaviors were more likely to survive, the instincts were naturally selected and reinforced over generations.

These behaviors make up what Bowlby termed an “attachment behavioral system,” the system that guides us in our patterns and habits of forming and maintaining relationships (Fraley, 2010).

Research on Bowlby’s theory of attachment showed that infants placed in an unfamiliar situation and separated from their parents will generally react in one of these ways upon reunion with the parents:

• Secure attachment: These infants showed distress upon separation but sought comfort and were easily comforted when the parents returned;
• Anxious-resistant attachment: A smaller portion of infants experienced greater levels of distress and, upon reuniting with the parents, seemed both to seek comfort and to attempt to “punish” the parents for leaving.
• Avoidant attachment: Infants in the third category showed no stress or minimal stress upon separation from the parents and either ignored the parents upon reuniting or actively avoided the parents (Fraley, 2010).
• In later years, researchers added a fourth attachment style to this list: the disorganized-disoriented attachment style, which refers to children who have no predictable pattern of attachment behaviors (Kennedy & Kennedy, 2004).

It makes intuitive sense that a child’s attachment style is largely a function of the caregiving the child receives in his or her early years. Those who received support and love from their caregivers are likely to be secure, while those who experienced inconsistency or negligence from their caregivers are likely to feel more anxiety surrounding their relationship with their parents.

However, attachment theory takes it one step further, applying what we know about attachment in children to relationships we engage in as adults. These relationships (particularly intimate and/or romantic relationships) are also directly related to our attachment styles as children and the care we received from our primary caregivers (Firestone, 2013).

The development of this theory gives us an interesting look into the study of child development.

Bowlby and Ainsworth: The History and Psychology of Attachment Theory

Bowlby’s interest in child development traces back to his first experiences out of college, in which he volunteered at a school for maladjusted children. According to Bowlby, two children sparked his curiosity and drive that laid the foundations of attachment theory.

There was an isolated and distant teenager who had no stable mother figure in his life and had recently been expelled from his school for stealing, and an anxious 7- or 8-year-old boy who followed Bowlby wherever he went, earning himself a reputation as Bowlby’s “shadow” (Bretherton, 1992).

Through his work with children, Bowlby developed a strong belief in the impact of family experiences on children’s emotional and behavioral wellbeing .

Early on in his career, Bowlby proposed that psychoanalysts working with children should take a holistic perspective, considering children’s living environments, families, and other experiences in addition to any behaviors exhibited by the children themselves.

This idea grew into a strategy of helping children by helping their parents, a generally effective strategy given the importance of the child’s relationships with their parents (or other caregivers).

At roughly the same time Bowlby was creating the foundations for his theory on attachment, Mary Ainsworth was finishing her graduate degree and studying security theory, which proposed that children need to develop a secure dependence on their parents before venturing out into unfamiliar situations.

In 1950, the two crossed paths when Ainsworth took a position in Bowlby’s research unit at the Tavistock Clinic in London. Her initial responsibilities included analyzing records of children’s behavior, which inspired her to conduct her own studies on children in their natural settings.

Through several papers, numerous research studies, and theories that were discarded, altered, or combined, Bowlby and Ainsworth developed and provided evidence for attachment theory.

Theirs was a more rigorous explanation and description of attachment behavior than any others on the topic at the time, including those that had grown out of Freud’s work and those that were developed in direct opposition to Freud’s ideas (Bretherton, 1992).

There were several groundbreaking studies that contributed to the development of attachment theory or provided evidence for its validity, including the study described earlier in which infants were separated from their primary caregivers and their behavior was observed to fall into a “style” of attachment.

Further findings on emotional attachment came from a surprising place: rhesus monkeys.

The Harlow Experiments

His work showed that motherly love was emotional rather than physiological, that the capacity for attachment is heavily dependent upon experiences in early childhood, and that this capacity was unlikely to change much after it was “set” (Herman, 2012).

Harlow discovered these interesting findings by conducting two groundbreaking experiments.

In the first experiment, Harlow separated infant monkeys from their mothers a few hours after birth. Each monkey was instead raised by two inanimate surrogate “mothers.” Both provided the infant monkeys with the milk they needed to survive, but one was made out of wire mesh while the other was wire mesh covered with soft terry cloth.

The monkeys who were given the freedom to choose which mother to associate with almost always chose to take milk from the terry cloth “mother.” This finding showed that infant attachment is not simply a matter of where they get their milk—other factors are at play.

For his second experiment, Harlow modified his original setup. The monkeys were given either the bare wire mesh surrogate mother or the terry cloth mother, both of which provided the milk the monkeys needed to grow.

Both groups of monkeys survived and thrived physically, but they displayed extremely different behavioral tendencies. Those with a terry cloth mother returned to the surrogate when presented with strange, loud objects, while those with a wire mesh mother would throw themselves to the floor, clutch themselves, rock back and forth, or even “scream in terror.”

This provided a clear indication that emotional attachment in infancy, gained through cuddling, affected the monkey’s later responses to stress and emotion regulation (Herman, 2012).

These two experiments laid the foundations for further work on attachment in children and the impacts of attachment experiences in later life.

Erikson’s work was based on Freud’s original personality theories and drew from his idea of the ego. However, Erikson placed more importance on context from culture and society than on Freud’s focus on the conflict between the id and the superego.

In addition, his stages of development are based on how children socialize and how it affects their sense of self rather than on sexual development.

The eight stages of psychosocial development according to Erikson are:

• Infancy—Trust vs. Mistrust : In this stage, infants require a great deal of attention and comfort from their parents, leading them to develop their first sense of trust (or, in some cases, mistrust);
• Early Childhood—Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt : Toddlers and very young children are beginning to assert their independence and develop their unique personality, making tantrums and defiance common;
• Preschool Years—Initiative vs. Guilt : Children at this stage begin learning about social roles and norms. Their imagination will take off at this point, and the defiance and tantrums of the previous stage will likely continue. The way trusted adults interact with the child will encourage him or her to act independently or to develop a sense of guilt about any inappropriate actions;
• School Age—Industry (Competence) vs. Inferiority : At this stage, the child is building important relationships with peers and is likely beginning to feel the pressure of academic performance. Mental health issues may begin at this stage, including depression, anxiety, ADHD, and other problems.
• Adolescence—Identity vs. Role Confusion : The adolescent is reaching new heights of independence and is beginning to experiment and put together his or her identity. Problems with communication and sudden emotional and physical changes are common at this stage (Wells, Sueskind, & Alcamo, 2017).
• Young Adulthood—Intimacy vs. Isolation : At this stage (ages 18-40, approximately), the individual will begin sharing with others more, including people outside o the family. If the individual is successful in this stage of development, he or she will build satisfying relationships that have a sense of commitment, safety, and care; if not, they may fear commitment and experience isolation, loneliness, and depression (McLeod, 2017).
• Middle Adulthood—Generativity vs. Stagnation : In the penultimate stage (ages 40-65, approximately), the individual is likely established in his or her career, relationship, and family. If the individual is not established and contributing to society, he or she may feel stagnant and unproductive.
• Late Adulthood—Ego Integrity vs. Despair : Finally, late adulthood (ages 65 and above) usually brings reduced productivity, which can either be embraced as a reward for one’s contributions or be met with guilt or dissatisfaction. Successfully navigating this stage will protect the individual from feeling depressed or hopeless, and help the individual cultivate wisdom (McLeod, 2017).

Although it does not map completely onto attachment theory, Erikson’s findings are clearly related to the attachment styles and behaviors Bowlby, Ainsworth, and Harlow identified.

John Bowlby – Attachment Theory – Diana Simon Psihoterapeut

According to Bowlby and Ainsworth, attachments with the primary caregiver develop during the first 18 months or so of the child’s life, starting with instinctual behaviors like crying and clinging (Kennedy & Kennedy, 2004). These behaviors are quickly directed at one or a few caregivers in particular, and by 7 or 8 months old, children usually start protesting against the caregiver(s) leaving and grieve for their absence.

Once children reach the toddler stage, they begin forming an internal working model of their attachment relationships. This internal working model provides the framework for the child’s beliefs about their own self-worth and how much they can depend on others to meet their needs.

In Bowlby and Ainsworth’s view, the attachment styles that children form based on their early interactions with caregivers form a continuum of emotion regulation, with anxious-avoidant attachment at one end and anxious-resistant at the other.

Secure attachment falls at the midpoint of this spectrum, between overly organized strategies for controlling and minimizing emotions and the uncontrolled, disorganized, and ineffectively managed emotions.

The most recently added classification, disorganized-disoriented, may display strategies and behaviors from all across the spectrum, but generally, they are not effective in controlling their emotions and may have outbursts of anger or aggression (Kennedy & Kennedy, 2004).

Research has shown that there are many behaviors in addition to emotion regulation that relates to a child’s attachment style. Among other findings, there is evidence of the following connections:

• Secure Attachment: These children are generally more likely to see others as supportive and helpful and themselves as competent and worthy of respect. They relate positively to others and display resilience, engage in complex play and are more successful in the classroom and in interactions with other children. They are better at taking the perspectives of others and have more trust in others;
• Anxious-Avoidant Attachment : Children with an anxious-avoidant attachment style are generally less effective in managing stressful situations. They are likely to withdraw and resist seeking help, which inhibits them from forming satisfying relationships with others . They show more aggression and antisocial behavior, like lying and bullying, and they tend to distance themselves from others to reduce emotional stress;
• Anxious-Resistant Attachment : These children are on the opposite end of the spectrum from anxious-avoidant children. They likely lack self-confidence and stick close to their primary caregivers. They may display exaggerated emotional reactions and keep their distance from their peers, leading to social isolation.
• Disorganized Attachment : Children with a disorganized attachment style usually fail to develop an organized strategy for coping with separation distress, and tend to display aggression, disruptive behaviors, and social isolation. They are more likely to see others as threats than sources of support, and thus may switch between social withdrawal and defensively aggressive behavior (Kennedy & Kennedy, 2004).

It is easy to see from these descriptions of behaviors and emotion regulation how attachment style in childhood can lead to relationship problems in adulthood.

Attachment styles are primarily discussed in the context of our childhood and upbringing.

In the early stages of development, children develop different attachment patterns to their parents or caregiver. These attachment styles can be predictive of how children grow up. For example, anxious or avoidant attachment styles are often powerful predictors for psychopathology or maladjustment development in the later stages of life (Benoit, 2004).

On the contrary, children with secure attachment styles to their parents are also more likely to have secure attachments to their romantic partners. This being said, attachment styles from childhood play a significant role in all the relationships you will encounter.

From this image, you may notice that the secure attachment style is the only one with a “positive” connotation, whereas the other attachment styles seem to have more unfavorable consequences.

If you recognize yourself as displaying one of the more maladaptive attachment styles, don’t fret because this is 1. very common and 2. not set in stone. For example, if you identify with the fearful-avoidant attachment style, you may see that trust seems to be the biggest issue.

The purpose of this image is not to make you feel ashamed about having a particular attachment style, but the opposite. By accepting and embracing your weaknesses, you allow yourself to grow.

Indeed, it is clear how these attachment styles in childhood lead to attachment types in adulthood. Below is an explanation of the four attachment types in adult relationships.

Examples: The Types, Styles, and Stages (Secure, Avoidant, Ambivalent, and Disorganized)

The adult attachment styles follow the same general pattern described above (Firestone, 2013):

Secure Attachment

These adults are more likely to be satisfied with their relationships, feeling secure and connected to their partners without feeling the need to be together all the time. Their relationships are likely to feature honesty , support, independence, and deep emotional connections.

Dismissive-Avoidant (or Anxious-Avoidant) Attachment

One of the two types of adult avoidant attachments, people with this attachment style generally keep their distance from others. They may feel that they don’t need human connection to survive or thrive, and insist on maintaining their independence and isolation from others.

These individuals are often able to “shut down” emotionally when a potentially hurtful scenario arises, such as a serious argument with their partner or a threat to the continuance of their relationship.

Anxious-Preoccupied (or Anxious-Resistant) Attachment

Those who form less secure bonds with their partners may feel desperate for love or affection and feel that their partner must “complete” them or fix their problems.

While they long for safety and security in their romantic relationships, they may also be acting in ways that push their partner away rather than invite them in. The behavioral manifestations of their fears can include being clingy, demanding, jealous, or easily upset by small issues.

Fearful-Avoidant (or Disorganized) Attachment:

The second type of adult avoidant attachment manifests as ambivalence rather than isolation. People with this attachment style generally try to avoid their feelings because it is easy to get overwhelmed by them. They may suffer from unpredictable or abrupt mood swings and fear getting hurt by a romantic partner.

These individuals are simultaneously drawn to a partner or potential partner and fearful of getting to close. Unsurprisingly, this style makes it difficult to form and maintain meaningful, healthy relationships with others.

Each of these styles should be thought of as a continuum of attachment behaviors, rather than a specific “type” of person. Someone with a generally secure attachment style may on occasion display behaviors more suited to the other types, or someone with a dismissive-avoidant style may form a secure bond with a particular person.

Therefore, these “types” should be considered a way to describe and understand an individual’s behavior rather than an exact description of someone’s personality.

Based on a person’s attachment style, the way he or she approaches intimate relationships, marriage, and parenting can vary widely.

The number of ways in which this theory can be applied or used to explain behavior is compounded and expanded by the fact that relationships require two (or more) people; any attachment behaviors that an individual displays will impact and be influenced by the attachment behaviors of other people.

Given the huge variety of individuals, behaviors, and relationships, it is not surprising that there is so much conflict and confusion.

It is also not surprising, although no less unfortunate, that many relationships end up in divorce or dissolution, an event that may continue an unhealthy cycle of attachment in the children of these unions.

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Speaking of unfortunate situations, attachment theory also has applications in the understanding of the  grief and trauma associated with loss.

Although you may be most familiar with Kübler-Ross’s Five Stages of Grief, they were preceded by Bowlby’s Four Stages. During Bowlby’s work on attachment, he and his colleague Colin Murray Parkes noticed four stages of grief:

• Shock and Numbness: In this initial phase, the bereaved may feel that the loss is not real, or that it is simply impossible to accept. He or she may experience physical distress and will be unable to understand and communicate his or her emotions.
• Yearning and Searching: In this phase, the bereaved is very aware of the void in his or her life and may try to fill that void with something or someone else. He or she still identifies strongly and may be preoccupied with the deceased.
• Despair and Disorganization: The bereaved now accepts that things have changed and cannot go back to the way they were before. He or she may also experience despair, hopelessness, and anger, as well as questioning and an intense focus on making sense of the situation. He or she might withdraw from others in this phase.
• Reorganization and Recovery: In the final phase, the bereaved person’s faith in life may start to come back. He or she will start to rebuild and establish new goals, new patterns, and new habits in life. The bereaved will begin to trust again, and grief will recede to the back of his or her mind instead of staying front and center (Williams & Haley, 2017).

Of course, one’s attachment style will influence how grief is experienced as well. For example, someone who is secure may move through the stages fairly quickly or skip some altogether, while someone who is anxious or avoidant may get stuck on one of the stages.

We all experience grief differently, but viewing these experiences through the lens of attachment theory can bring new perspective and insight into our unique grieving processes and why some of us get “stuck” after a loss.

If you’re interested in learning about your attachment style, there are many tests, scales, and questionnaires out available for you to take.

Feeny, Noller, and Hanrahan developed the Original Attachment Three-Category Measure in 1987 to test respondents’ adult attachment style. It contains only three items and is very simple, but it can still give you a good idea of which category you fall into: avoidant, anxious/ambivalent, or secure. You can complete the measure yourself or read more about it on page 3 of  this PDF .

Bartholomew and Horowitz’s Relationships Questionnaire added to The Three-Category Measure by expanding it to include the dismissive-avoidant category. You can find it on the same PDF as the Three-Category Measure, starting on page 3.

Fraley, Waller, and Brennan’s Experiences in Close Relationships Questionnaire-Revised (ECR-R) is a 32-item questionnaire that gives results measured by two subscales related to attachment: avoidance and anxiety (Fraley, Waller, & Brennan, 2000). Items are rated on a scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). You can find this questionnaire on the final three pages of the PDF mentioned above.

In addition to these scales, there are several less rigorous attachment style tests that can help you learn about your own style of connecting with others. These aren’t instruments often used in empirical research, but they can be helpful tools for learning more about yourself and your attachment style.

Diane Poole Heller developed an Attachment Styles Test, which contains 45 items rated on a three-point scale from “Rarely/Never” to “Usually/Often.” You can find it here , although after completing it you must enter an email to receive your results.

The Relationship Attachment Style Test is a 50-item test hosted on Psychology Today’s website. It covers the four attachment types noted earlier (Secure, Anxious-Ambivalent, Dismissive-Avoidant, Fearful-Avoidant) as well as Dependent and Codependent attachment styles .

If you are interested in taking this test, you can find it at this link . However, be aware that while you receive a free “snapshot report” at the end, you will need to pay to see your full results.

One of the ways in which the principles and concepts of attachment theory have been effectively applied to teaching is the practice of emotion coaching.

Emotion coaching is about helping children to become aware of their emotions and to manage their own feelings particularly during instances of ‘misbehavior.’ It enables practitioners to create an ethos of positive learning behavior and to have the confidence to de-escalate situations when behavior is challenging” (National College for Teaching and Leadership, 2014).

Emotion coaching is more about supporting children in learning about and regulating their own emotions and behavior than it is about “coaching” in the traditional sense. In emotion coaching, teachers are not required—or even encouraged—to promote proper behavior through rewards or punishments.

Instead, emotion coaching involves:

• Teaching students about the world of “in the moment” emotion;
• Showing students strategies for dealing with emotional ups and downs;
• Empathizing with and accepting negative or unpleasant emotions as normal, but not accepting negative behavior;
• Using moments of challenging behavior as opportunities for teaching;
• Building trusting and respectful relationships with the students (National College for Teaching and Leadership, 2014).

According to attachment theory expert Dr. John Gottman, there are five steps to emotion coaching, and they can be practiced by parents, teachers, or any significant adult in a child’s life:

• Tune in: Notice or become aware of your own and the child’s emotions. Make sure you are calm enough to practice emotion coaching, otherwise, you might want to give both of you a quick breather;
• Connect: Use this situation as an opportunity for you to practice and for the child to learn. State objectively (This is important!) what emotions you think the child is experiencing to help them connect their emotions to their behavior;
• Accept and Listen: Practice empathy. Put yourself in the child’s shoes, think about a situation when you felt a similar emotion, and try to remember what it felt like;
• Reflect: Once everyone is calm, go back over what the child said or did, mentioning only what you saw, heard, or understand of the situation. Reflect on what happened and why it happened;
• End with Problem Solving/Choices/Setting Limits: Whenever possible, try to end the situation by guiding or involving the child in problem-solving (Somerset Children & Young People, n.d.).

To learn more about emotion coaching and improve your skills as a parent or teacher, try the following activity.

What Would an Emotion Coach Do?

This short, two-page activity from the Somerset Emotion Coaching Project can help you enhance your understanding of what emotion coaching is—and what it is not.

There are five scenarios presented along with six potential responses. Your task is to read the scenario and decide which response(s) is/are the appropriate emotion coaching response(s).

The first scenario is: “Angry pupil over not wanting to attend a compulsory revision session.”

Your options include:

• Get cross with the pupil for the bad behavior;
• Tell the pupil they will have to complete an extra session due to the bad behavior;
• Help the pupil to think about what they can do about the problem;
• Tell the pupil not to make a big deal about staying after school;
• Validate the pupil’s expression of anger and frustration;
• Soothe the pupil.

This is an excellent activity to do in groups, as you can discuss each option with others and hear different perspectives from your own. In addition to identifying the emotion coaching response(s), you can also discuss which options are dismissive, avoidant, etc.

You can see the rest of the scenarios and try your hand at this activity by clicking here (an automatic download will start when you click on the link).

Emotion Coaching Scripts

Another great resource from the Somerset Emotion Coaching Project, this activity gives you a chance to practice brainstorming emotion coaching-appropriate responses.

As an added bonus, you can use the scripts you develop to guide you the next time you encounter a situation like those described.

There are six scenarios which you are instructed to create a script for:

• A pupil arrives late to class. She refuses to communicate with you and says “Don’t even start, just leave me alone”;
• A young person refuses to sit by her usual friends at a youth center and says that they have been saying unkind comments about her size;
• A boy regularly fails to complete work independently and will often sit passively and contribute little. He rarely presents with disruptive behavior but simply completes very little work. He appears isolated from his peers;
• A nursery child is crying at drop-off time and is clinging to her parent who has to go to work;
• An aggressive, confrontational parent is annoyed because she’s been asked to come in and talk about her son’s behavior. She approaches you and starts the conversation by saying, “You’re always having a go at us”;
• During recess, a group of young boys was fighting and one of them was hurt (not seriously). You approach them and they all look at you with worried expressions.

For each scenario, the instructions encourage you to:

• Recognize the emotion the child is displaying;
• Validate that emotion;
• Label the emotion the child is feeling;
• Empathize with the child;
• Set limits, if appropriate, and problem-solve.

Completing this worksheet provides you with an excellent opportunity to think, plan, and prepare for effective emotion coaching. You can download this activity for your own use here (an automatic download will start when you click on the link).

If you’re interested in learning more about applying attachment theory to teaching, check out Louis Cozolino’s book Attachment-Based Teaching: Creating a Tribal Classroom . He puts forth a simple but potentially game-changing idea: Relationships are the key to better performance rather than rigidly structured curricula.

In addition, our article Attachment Styles in Therapy: Worksheets & Handouts provides useful worksheets pertaining attachment styles.

Emotion coaching can also be used by social workers, to some extent. However, the application of attachment theory to social work is more significant in the three key messages that it espouses:

• It is vital for social workers to offer children and families a safe haven and secure base. This does not mean families should be forever comfortable and come to depend on the social worker, but families should know a social worker can provide a safe place when they are struggling as well as support for moving forward and outward;
• Social workers must be aware of children’s (and their families’) inner experiences and practice mentalization , or “bringing the inside out.” One of the most important factors in finding healing and improving family relations is to ensure that parents have an idea of what is going on in their children’s heads, including how they feel and think about their parents;
• Among the most effective tools in a social worker’s toolbox is the practice of recording parents as they interact with their child and using the videos to coach the parent. Valuable insights can be found in watching oneself parenting, and the social worker can provide in the moment coaching, offering praise for the parents’ strengths alongside suggestions for improvement (Shemmings, 2015).

Of course, there are many ways to apply attachment theory to working with children, especially those who are in the midst of family crises. However, if these three points are attended to, you’ll have the most important bases covered.

For social workers who work with adults, there are some different strategies and key points to keep in mind, specifically:

• Remember that attachment theory applies throughout the entire range of life, and many behaviors and processes are shaped by early attachment, including staying safe, seeking comfort, regulating proximity to the attachment figure, and seeking predictability;
• Keep in mind that attachment patterns are not based on a few key moments, but on thousands of moments throughout early life, and how an attachment figure responds (or does not respond) sets a template for the child’s attachment style in the future. This template affects how the child recognizes and responds to their own emotions and how they interact with attachment figures;
• This early template becomes deeply embedded in the brain and therefore has a significant impact on our ability to regulate our emotions and connect and relate to others in adulthood. This can lead an adult who was abused in childhood to fail to recognize that they are being abused in their intimate relationship, or even cause them to find comfort and stability in the predictability of their situation;
• Remember that attachment behaviors are adaptive to the context in which they were formed. Habits and behaviors that are adaptive in childhood, in an evolutionary sense at least, may become maladaptive and harmful in adulthood;
• Finally, social workers should never think that they are “treating” a set of behaviors and must recognize that the individual’s strategies were formed for a reason and likely helped him or her survive a difficult situation in childhood. The role of a social worker is to help clients avoid overapplying those strategies and to guide them in adding effective, new strategies to their toolboxes (Hardy, 2016).

As with any popular theory in psychology, there are several criticisms that have been raised against it.

Chief among them are the following criticisms:

• Overemphasis on Nurture: This criticism stems from psychologist J. R. Harris, who believes that parents do not have as much of an influence over their child’s personality or character as most people believe. She notes that much of one’s personality is determined by genetics rather than environment (Harris, 1998; Lee, 2003).
• The stressful situation criticism of attachment theory’s limitations notes that the model was based on a child’s reactions in momentary, stressful situations (being separated from one’s parent), and does not provide any insight into how children and parents interact in non-stressful situations;
• Further, the early model did not take into consideration the fact that children can have different kinds of attachments to different people; the attachment with the mother may not represent the attachments formed with others;
• Finally, the mother was viewed as the automatic primary attachment figure in the early model, when the father, stepparent, sibling, grandparent, aunt, or uncle may be the person that the child connects most strongly with (Field, 1996; Lee, 2003).

Although some of these criticisms have faded over time as the theory is injected with new evidence and updated concepts, it is useful to look at any theory with a critical eye.

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A few of the most popular books on attachment theory can be found below:

• Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller ( Amazon );
• Attachment in Psychotherapy by David J. Wallin ( Amazon );
• Handbook of Attachment: Theory, Research, and Clinical Applications (3rd Edition) by Jude Cassidy and Phillip R. Shaver ( Amazon );
• Theories of Attachment: An Introduction to Bowlby, Ainsworth, Gerber, Brazelton, Kennell, & Klaus by Carol Garhart Mooney ( Amazon );
• Insecure in Love: How Anxious Attachment Can Make You Feel Jealous, Needy, and Worried and What You Can Do About It by Leslie Becker-Phelps ( Amazon );
• Wired for Love: How Understanding Your Partner’s Brain and Attachment Style Can Help You Defuse Conflict and Build a Secure Relationship by Dr. Stan Tatkin ( Amazon ).

There are also several great websites that host insightful essays and informative articles about attachment theory and its applications, including:

• www.communitycare.co.uk : The Community Care website calls itself “The heart of your social care career” and offers many interesting pieces on social work, attachment theory, and working with children and families who are struggling.
• “Attachment Theory” by Saul McLeod:  This article provides an excellent, brief introduction to attachment theory, as well as information on the Harlow experiments, the stages of attachment, and Lorenz’s imprinting theory.
• “A Brief Overview of Adult Attachment Theory and Research” by R. Chris Fraley:  This piece from attachment theory expert R. Chris Fraley also gives readers a thorough and academic introduction to familiarize them with the theory.
• “Attachment Styles at Work: Measurement, Collegial Relationships, and Burnout” by Michael P. Leiter, Arla Day, and Lisa Price:  This article , published in the journal Burnout Research in 2015, dives into the applications of attachment theory in the workplace, a subject we didn’t explore in this piece. The authors share some interesting insights about how one’s attachment style affects their relationships and performance in the workplace.

This piece tackled attachment theory, a theory developed by John Bowlby in the 1950s and expanded upon by Mary Ainsworth and countless other researchers in later years. The theory helps explain how our childhood relationships with our caregivers can have a profound impact on our relationships with others as adults.

Although attachment theory may not be able to explain every peculiarity of personality, it lays the foundations for a solid understanding of yourself and those around you when it comes to connecting and interacting with others.

What do you think about attachment theory? Do you think there are attachment styles not covered by the four categories? Are there any other criticisms of attachment theory you think are valid and worthy of discussion? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comment section.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Positive Relationships Exercises for free .

• Benoit, D. (2004). Infant-parent attachment: Definition, types, antecedents, measurement and outcome. Paediatrics & Child Health, 9(8) , 541-545.
• Bretherton, I. (1992). The origins of Attachment Theory: John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth. Developmental Psychology, 28, 759-775.
• Cherry, K. (2018). The story of Bowlby, Ainsworth, and Attachment Theory: The importance of early emotional bonds. Retrieved from https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-attachment-theory-2795337
• Field, T. (1996). Attachment and separation in young children. Annual Review of Psychology, 47 , 541-561.
• Firestone, L. (2013). How your attachment style impacts your relationship.  Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/compassion-matters/201307/how-your-attachment-style-impacts-your-relationship
• Fraley, R. C. (2010). A brief overview of adult attachment theory and research. Retrieved from https://internal.psychology.illinois.edu/~rcfraley/attachment.htm
• Hardy, R. (2016). Tips on applying attachment theory in social work with adults. Retrieved from http://www.communitycare.co.uk/2016/12/06/attachment-theory-social-work-adults/
• Harris, J. R. (1998). The nurture assumption: Why our children turn out the way they do. Free Press.
• Herman, E. (2012). Harry F. Harlow, monkey love experiments. Retrieved from http://pages.uoregon.edu/adoption/studies/HarlowMLE.htm
• Kennedy, J. H., & Kennedy, C. E. (2004). Attachment theory: Implications for school psychology. Psychology in the Schools, 41 , 247-259.
• Lee, E. J. (2003). The attachment system throughout the life course: Review and criticisms of attachment theory . Retrieved from http://www.personalityresearch.org/papers/lee.html
• McLeod, S. (2017). Erik Erikson. Retrieved from https://www.simplypsychology.org/Erik-Erikson.html
• National College for Teaching and Leadership (2014). An introduction to attachment and the implications for learning and behaviour [PDF Slide Presentation] . Retrieved from https://www.bathspa.ac.uk/media/bathspaacuk/education-/research/digital-literacy/education-resource-introduction-to-attatchment.pdf
• Shemmings, D. (2015). How social workers can use attachment theory in direct work. Retrieved from http://www.communitycare.co.uk/2015/09/02/using-attachment-theory-research-help-families-just-assess/
• Somerset Children & Young People Health & Wellbeing. (n.d.). Emotion coaching and self-regulation. Retrieved from http://www.cypsomersethealth.org/?ks=1&page=mhtk_secp_5
• Wells, J., Sueskind, B., & Alcamo, K. (2017). Child and adolescent issues. Retrieved from https://www.goodtherapy.org/learn-about-therapy/issues/child-and-adolescent-issues
• Williams, L., & Haley, E. (2017). Before the five stages were the FOUR stages of grief. Retrieved from https://whatsyourgrief.com/bowlby-four-stages-of-grief/

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muchas gracias por la información

The linked surveys are problematic, when they refer to intimate or close relationships, particularly for persons who’ve only had one close adult relationship. Or none.

Article is defective (‘to’ instead of ‘too’ aside). Cannot – for the life of me – find the four stages of attachment declared at the outset; only four styles. For what’s it’s worth I experienced paternal absence and maternal rejection – prostitute mother and pimp father – which is to say, no parenting or attachment at all – leading to a hotch-potch of all three non-secure ‘styles’.

how does attachment influences personality development in adulthood.

Good question! We answer this question by linking the different attachment styles to adult behaviors traits in this article: https://positivepsychology.com/attachment-style-worksheets/ (see the subsection ‘Attachment Theory in Psychology: 4 Types & Characteristics’)

Hope this helps!

– Nicole | Community Manager

How do I reference this article

You can reference this article in APA 7th as follows: Ackerman, C. A. (2018, April 27). What is Attachment Theory? Bowlby’s 4 stages explained. PositivePsychology.com. https://positivepsychology.com/attachment-theory/

I think that a big limitation when discussing Attachment Theory, that I haven’t seen addressed, is the effect of trauma on a older child past the early defining stage, or an adult. Bullying, accidents and injury, severe illness, family upheaval, or other significant life events can significantly affect a person’s psychological state, and thus alter a Securely Attached style to one of the other types.

Thank you for an informative article! Do you happen to know of any non-profit organizations that focus on stopping the cycle of maladaptive attachment in families? I’m a student with some ideas for a program that I’d like to pitch to some organizations that serve at risk individuals.

Glad you found the article helpful — that sounds like an interesting idea! Your question’s a little tricky. It’s hard to know how explicitly existing services draw on Bowlby’s principles. However, I suspect that the messages of the framework are likely embedded in various parent support groups and educational opportunities. If you’re interested in the U.S. specifically, maybe check out some of the services listed here and inquire about any curriculums.

Thank you, Nicole!

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What Is Attachment Theory?

The Importance of Early Emotional Bonds

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

• Attachment Theory
• Stages of Attachment

Attachment Styles

Attachment theory focuses on relationships and bonds (particularly long-term) between people, including those between a parent and child and between romantic partners. It is a psychological explanation for the emotional bonds and relationships between people.

This theory suggests that people are born with a need to forge bonds with caregivers as children. These early bonds may continue to have an influence on attachments throughout life.

History of the Attachment Theory

British psychologist John Bowlby was the first attachment theorist. He described attachment as a "lasting psychological connectedness between human beings." Bowlby was interested in understanding the anxiety and distress that children experience when separated from their primary caregivers.

Thinkers like Freud suggested that infants become attached to the source of pleasure. Infants, who are in the oral stage of development, become attached to their mothers because she fulfills their oral needs.

Some of the earliest behavioral theories suggested that attachment was simply a learned behavior. These theories proposed that attachment was merely the result of the feeding relationship between the child and the caregiver. Because the caregiver feeds the child and provides nourishment, the child becomes attached.

Bowlby observed that feedings did not diminish separation anxiety. Instead, he found that attachment was characterized by clear behavioral and motivation patterns. When children are frightened, they seek proximity from their primary caregiver in order to receive both comfort and care.

Understanding Attachment

Attachment is an emotional bond with another person. Bowlby believed that the earliest bonds formed by children with their caregivers have a tremendous impact that continues throughout life. He suggested that attachment also serves to keep the infant close to the mother, thus improving the child's chances of survival.

Bowlby viewed attachment as a product of evolutionary processes. While the behavioral theories of attachment suggested that attachment was a learned process, Bowlby and others proposed that children are born with an innate drive to form attachments with caregivers.

Throughout history, children who maintained proximity to an attachment figure were more likely to receive comfort and protection, and therefore more likely to survive to adulthood. Through the process of natural selection, a motivational system designed to regulate attachment emerged.

The central theme of attachment theory is that primary caregivers who are available and responsive to an infant's needs allow the child to develop a sense of security. The infant learns that the caregiver is dependable, which creates a secure base for the child to then explore the world.

So what determines successful attachment? Behaviorists suggest that it was food that led to forming this attachment behavior, but Bowlby and others demonstrated that nurturance and responsiveness were the primary determinants of attachment.

Ainsworth's "Strange Situation"

In her research in the 1970s, psychologist Mary Ainsworth expanded greatly upon Bowlby's original work. Her groundbreaking "strange situation" study  revealed the profound effects of attachment on behavior. In the study, researchers observed children between the ages of 12 and 18 months as they responded to a situation in which they were briefly left alone and then reunited with their mothers.

Based on the responses the researchers observed, Ainsworth described three major styles of attachment: secure attachment, ambivalent-insecure attachment, and avoidant-insecure attachment. Later, researchers Main and Solomon (1986) added a fourth attachment style called disorganized-insecure attachment based on their own research.

A number of studies since that time have supported Ainsworth's attachment styles and have indicated that attachment styles also have an impact on behaviors later in life.

Maternal Deprivation Studies

Harry Harlow's infamous studies on maternal deprivation and social isolation during the 1950s and 1960s also explored early bonds. In a series of experiments, Harlow demonstrated how such bonds emerge and the powerful impact they have on behavior and functioning.  

In one version of his experiment, newborn rhesus monkeys were separated from their birth mothers and reared by surrogate mothers. The infant monkeys were placed in cages with two wire-monkey mothers. One of the wire monkeys held a bottle from which the infant monkey could obtain nourishment, while the other wire monkey was covered with a soft terry cloth.

While the infant monkeys would go to the wire mother to obtain food, they spent most of their days with the soft cloth mother. When frightened, the baby monkeys would turn to their cloth-covered mother for comfort and security.

Harlow's work also demonstrated that early attachments were the result of receiving comfort and care from a caregiver rather than simply the result of being fed.

The Stages of Attachment

Researchers Rudolph Schaffer and Peggy Emerson analyzed the number of attachment relationships that infants form in a longitudinal study with 60 infants. The infants were observed every four weeks during the first year of life, and then once again at 18 months.

Based on their observations, Schaffer and Emerson outlined four distinct phases of attachment, including:

Pre-Attachment Stage

From birth to 3 months, infants do not show any particular attachment to a specific caregiver. The infant's signals, such as crying and fussing, naturally attract the attention of the caregiver and the baby's positive responses encourage the caregiver to remain close.

Indiscriminate Attachment

Between 6 weeks of age to 7 months, infants begin to show preferences for primary and secondary caregivers. Infants develop trust that the caregiver will respond to their needs. While they still accept care from others, infants start distinguishing between familiar and unfamiliar people, responding more positively to the primary caregiver.

Discriminate Attachment

At this point, from about 7 to 11 months of age, infants show a strong attachment and preference for one specific individual. They will protest when separated from the primary attachment figure (separation anxiety), and begin to display anxiety around strangers (stranger anxiety).

Multiple Attachments

After approximately 9 months of age, children begin to form strong emotional bonds with other caregivers beyond the primary attachment figure. This often includes a second parent, older siblings, and grandparents.

Factors That Influence Attachment

While this process may seem straightforward, there are some factors that can influence how and when attachments develop, including:

• Opportunity for attachment : Children who do not have a primary care figure, such as those raised in orphanages, may fail to develop the sense of trust needed to form an attachment.
• Quality caregiving : When caregivers respond quickly and consistently, children learn that they can depend on the people who are responsible for their care, which is the essential foundation for attachment. This is a vital factor.

There are four patterns of attachment, including:

• Ambivalent attachment : These children become very distressed when a parent leaves. Ambivalent attachment style is considered uncommon, affecting an estimated 7% to 15% of U.S. children. As a result of poor parental availability, these children cannot depend on their primary caregiver to be there when they need them.
• Avoidant attachment :   Children with an avoidant attachment tend to avoid parents or caregivers, showing no preference between a caregiver and a complete stranger. This attachment style might be a result of abusive or neglectful caregivers. Children who are punished for relying on a caregiver will learn to avoid seeking help in the future.
• Disorganized attachment : These children display a confusing mix of behavior, seeming disoriented, dazed, or confused. They may avoid or resist the parent. Lack of a clear attachment pattern is likely linked to inconsistent caregiver behavior. In such cases, parents may serve as both a source of comfort and fear, leading to disorganized behavior.
• Secure attachment : Children who can depend on their caregivers show distress when separated and joy when reunited. Although the child may be upset, they feel assured that the caregiver will return. When frightened, securely attached children are comfortable seeking reassurance from caregivers. This is the most common attachment style.

The Lasting Impact of Early Attachment

Children who are securely attached as infants tend to develop stronger self-esteem and better self-reliance as they grow older. These children also tend to be more independent, perform better in school, have successful social relationships, and experience less depression and anxiety.

Research suggests that failure to form secure attachments early in life can have a negative impact on behavior in later childhood and throughout life.

Children diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), conduct disorder (CD), or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) frequently display attachment problems, possibly due to early abuse, neglect, or trauma. Children adopted after the age of 6 months may have a higher risk of attachment problems.

Attachment Disorders

In some cases, children may also develop attachment disorders. There are two attachment disorders that may occur: reactive attachment disorder (RAD) and disinhibited social engagement disorder (DSED).

• Reactive attachment disorder occurs when children do not form healthy bonds with caregivers. This is often the result of early childhood neglect or abuse and results in problems with emotional management and patterns of withdrawal from caregivers.
• Disinhibited social engagement disorder affects a child's ability to form bonds with others and often results from trauma, abandonment, abuse, or neglect. It is characterized by a lack of inhibition around strangers, often leading to excessively familiar behaviors around people they don't know and a lack of social boundaries.

Adult Attachments

Although attachment styles displayed in adulthood are not necessarily the same as those seen in infancy, early attachments can have a serious impact on later relationships. Adults who were securely attached in childhood tend to have good self-esteem, strong romantic relationships, and the ability to self-disclose to others.

A Word From Verywell

Our understanding of attachment theory is heavily influenced by the early work of researchers such as John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth. Today, researchers recognize that the early relationships children have with their caregivers play a critical role in healthy development. 

Such bonds can also have an influence on romantic relationships in adulthood. Understanding your attachment style may help you look for ways to become more secure in your relationships.

Bowlby J. Attachment and Loss . Basic Books.

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Draper P, Belsky J. Personality development in the evolutionary perspective . J Pers. 1990;58(1):141-61. doi:10.1111/j.1467-6494.1990.tb00911.x

Ainsworth MD, Bell SM. Attachment, exploration, and separation: Illustrated by the behavior of one-year-olds in a strange situation . Child Dev . 1970;41(1):49-67. doi:10.2307/1127388

Main M, Solomon J. Discovery of a new, insecure-disorganized/disoriented attachment pattern. In: Brazelton TB, Yogman M, eds., Affective Development in Infancy. Ablex.

Harlow HF. The nature of love . American Psychologist. 1958;13(12):673-685. doi:10.1037/h0047884

Schaffer HR, Emerson PE. The development of social attachments in infancy . Monogr Soc Res Child Dev. 1964;29:1-77. doi:10.2307/1165727

Lyons-Ruth K. Attachment relationships among children with aggressive behavior problems: The role of disorganized early attachment patterns . J Consult Clin Psychol. 1996;64(1):64-73. doi:https:10.1037/0022-006X.64.1.64

Young ES, Simpson JA, Griskevicius V, Huelsnitz CO, Fleck C.  Childhood attachment and adult personality: A life history perspective . Self and Identity . 2019;18:1:22-38. doi:10.1080/15298868.2017.1353540

Ainsworth MDS, Blehar MC, Waters E, Wall S.  Patterns of Attachment: A Psychological Study of the Strange Situation . Erlbaum.

Ainsworth MDS. Attachments and other affectional bonds across the life cycle. In: Attachment Across the Life Cycle . Parkes CM, Stevenson-Hinde J, Marris P, eds. Routledge.

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By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Attachment Theory In Psychology

Saul Mcleod, PhD

Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester

Saul Mcleod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

Learn about our Editorial Process

Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc

Associate Editor for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education

Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.

On This Page:

Attachment theory is a lifespan model of human development emphasizing the central role of caregivers (attachment figures) who provide a sense of safety and security.

Attachment theory hypothesizes that early caregiver relationships establish social–emotional developmental foundations, but change remains possible across the lifespan due to interpersonal relationships during childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.

Attachment can be defined as a deep and enduring emotional bond between two people in which each seeks closeness and feels more secure when in the presence of the attachment figure. 

The initial and perhaps most crucial emotional bond forms between infants and their primary caregivers.

Distinct behaviors characterize attachment in children and adults, such as seeking closeness with the attachment figure when distressed or threatened (Bowlby, 1969).

John Bowlby

Attachment theory in psychology finds its roots in the pioneering work of John Bowlby (1958). During the 1930s, Bowlby was a psychiatrist at a Child Guidance Clinic in London, treating numerous emotionally troubled children.

His experiences there underscored the significance of a child’s relationship with their mother in shaping their social, emotional, and cognitive development.

It molded his understanding of the connection between early separations from the mother and subsequent maladjustment, leading him to develop his attachment theory.

The attachment bond isn’t coincidental. Its primary purpose is to ensure the survival of the vulnerable infant, requiring the constant presence of a caregiver (Bowlby, 1973, 1980).

Viewed from this lens, attachment emerges as an evolutionary concept. The behavior of seeking proximity is universally observed across cultures (Van Ijzendoorn & Sagi-Schwartz, 2008).

Bowlby (1988) contended that the drive for proximity arises from an interconnected set of behavioral systems that collectively shape behavior. These include the attachment, caregiving, and exploratory behavioral systems.

Attachment Behavioral System

The attachment behavioral system concerns the tendency of an individual to seek security during times of stress (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2003), which can be internal (i.e., hunger, fatigue, illness) or from external features of the environment, such as threatening stimuli (Bowlby, 1988). 

The more extreme the stress, the more intense the attachment system activation.  The attachment system is most readily activated during the first five years of life, a period characterized by high levels of vulnerability and dependence. 

Once the attachment system is activated, the infant is motivated to seek proximity to significant others (attachment figures) to protect themselves from physical or emotional harm (Bowlby, 1969). 

If this goal is achieved, the infant develops feelings of safety and security, and their attachment system becomes deactivated.  The infant will call upon a range of attachment behaviors with the goal of attaining proximity to the attachment figure. 

Bowlby (1988) suggests the attachment behavioral system remains important throughout life and will also motivate adults to seek proximity in times of stress during adulthood.

Caregiving System

The attachment figure is viewed as a ‘safe haven’, and their role is to correspondingly alter their level of responsiveness to deactivate the infant’s attachment system by promoting feelings of security. 

George and Solomon (1996) call this reciprocal response of the attachment figure to the infant’s attachment system the ‘caregiving’ system. 

Bowlby (1969) posits that the caregiving system exists to provide protection and support to others in need of assistance, through providing sensitive and responsive care. 

The caregiving system is activated when an individual expresses a need for support or their attachment system is activated, and is deactivated when the care recipient appears to be in a secure state (Shaver & Mikulincer, 2006). 

Once activated, the caregiver may utilize a variety of behavioral strategies intended to improve the other person’s well-being, re-establishing their felt security, and facilitating their coping efforts. 

Caregiving strategies include validating a person’s worries, providing physical closeness and affection, and communicating that a person is loved and valued (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007). 

In addition to attachment behaviors, the caregiving system can support exploratory behaviors (Feeney, 2004). 

The Importance of Early Emotional Bonds

• Attachment behavior in adults toward the child includes responding sensitively and appropriately to the child’s needs.  Such behavior appears universal across cultures.
• Attachments are most likely to form with those who responded accurately to the baby’s signals, not the person they spent more time with. Schaffer and Emerson called this sensitive responsiveness.
• Reciprocity is the mutual, two-way interaction between an infant and caregiver, where both respond to each other’s signals, such as when a baby’s smile evokes a smile in return. This form of interactional synchrony is vital for a child’s development, establishing their foundational trust and shaping future relationships and learning.

Exploratory Behavioral System

When infants feel safe and secure, and their attachment system is deactivated, their energy can be devoted to what Bowlby (1969) refers to as the exploratory behavioral system. 

The exploratory behavioral system refers to behaviors that drive the organism to interact with the environment in a bid to inspect it, manipulate it, and master it (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007). 

According to Bowlby (1969), the exploratory system is activated by novelty and is terminated when a person exhibits a sense of competence and familiarity with their environment.   From this perspective, attachment figures can also be seen as a ‘secure base’ which infants use to explore their social world (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978). 

The more assured the infant is in the availability of their attachment figure in times of stress, the more likely they will interact with others and their environment.  Thus attachment, far from interfering with exploration, is viewed as nurturing exploration. 

Caregivers who provide a secure base allow infants to become autonomous, inquisitive, and experimental.  Children who lack a secure base find their attachment system keeps overriding their attempts to be autonomous and to competently interact with their social environment. 

This, in turn, can impair and harm a child’s social, emotional, and cognitive development (Bowlby, 1980).  Of course, not all attachment figures become a secure base, and this function is based on the responsiveness of their caregiver towards the infant (Ainsworth & Wittig, 1969). 

Ainsworth et al. proposed the interconnecting between attachment and exploratory systems are adaptive as they ensure a balance between protection and exploration of the social and physical environment.

Ainsworth’s Strange Situation

Mary Ainsworth and her colleagues discovered three major patterns that infants attach to their primary caregivers (“mother figures”) from their Strange Situation Procedure (Ainsworth et al., 1978).

The study recruited four different samples of infants at around one year of age, and engaged them in the Strange Situation procedure, roughly described below:

An infant was put into an unfamiliar environment with his or her mother and was free to explore the environment; a stranger entered the room and gradually approached the infant; the mother then left the room, returning after the infant spent some time alone with the stranger.

Ainsworth and colleagues observed how comfortable each infant was physically farther away from the mother in an unfamiliar environment, how each infant interacted with the stranger, and how each infant greeted the mother upon her return.

Based on the observations, they sorted the infants into three groups: secure, anxious, and avoidant.

Attachment Styles

Attachment styles refer to the particular way in which an individual relates to other people. The style of attachment is formed at the very beginning of life, and once established, it is a style that stays with you and plays out today in how you relate in intimate relationships and in how you parent your children.

The concept involves one’s 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.

Secure Attachment

Bowlby (1988) described secure attachment as the capacity to connect well and securely in relationships with others while also having the capacity for autonomous action as situationally appropriate.

Secure attachment is characterized by trust, an adaptive response to being abandoned, and the belief that one is worthy of love.

An infant with a secure attachment is characterized as actively seeking and maintaining proximity with the mother, especially during the reunion episode. The infant may or may not be friendly with the stranger, but always shows more interest in interacting with the mother.

Additionally, during the same situation, the infant tended to be slightly distressed during separation from the mother, but the infant rarely cried.

Ainsworth and colleagues interpreted infants who were securely attached to their mothers, showed less anxiousness and more positive attitudes toward the relationship, and were likely because they believed in their mothers’ responsiveness towards their needs.

Anxious (Ambivalent) Attachment

Anxious attachment (also called ambivalent ) relationships are characterized by a concern that others will not reciprocate one’s desire for intimacy. This is

caused when an infant learns that their caregiver or parent is unreliable and does not consistently provide responsive care towards their needs.

An anxiously attached infant is characterized as being somewhat ambivalent (and resistant) to the mother. The infant often demonstrated signs of resisting interactions with the mother, especially during the strange situation reunion episode.

However, once contact with the mother was gained, the infant also showed strong intentions to maintain such contact. Overall, ambivalent infants often displayed maladaptive behaviors throughout the Strange Situation.

Ainsworth and colleagues found ambivalent infants to be anxious and unconfident about their mothers’ responsiveness, and their mothers were observed to lack “the fine sense of timing” in responding to the infants’ needs.

As adults, those with an anxious preoccupied attachment style are overly concerned with the uncertainty of a relationship. They hold a negative working model of self and a positive working model of others.

Avoidant Attachment

Children with avoidant attachment styles tend to avoid interaction with the caregiver, and show no distress during separation. This may be because the parent has ignored attempts to be intimate, and the child may internalize the belief that they cannot depend on this or any other relationship.

An infant with an avoidant attachment was characterized as displaying little to no tendency to seek proximity with the mother.

The infant often showed no distress during separation from the mother, interacted with the stranger similarly to how he or she would interact with the mother, and showed slight signs of avoidance (turning away, avoiding eye contact, etc.) when reunited with the mother.

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.

Disorganized (Fearful) Attachment

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. They categorized these infants as having a disorganized attachment type .

Disorganized attachment is classified by children who display sequences of behaviors that lack readily observable goals or intentions, including obviously contradictory behaviors or stilling/freezing of movements.

Main and Solomon found that the parents of disorganized infants often had unresolved attachment-related traumas, which caused the parents to display either frightened or frightening behaviors, resulting in the disorganized infants being confused or forcing them to rely on someone they were afraid of at the same time.

Stages of Attachment

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).

The children were all studied in their own homes, and a regular pattern was identified in the development of attachment.

The babies were visited monthly for approximately one year, their interactions with their carers were observed, and carers were interviewed.

A diary was kept by the mother to examine the evidence for the development of attachment. Three measures were recorded:

• Stranger Anxiety – response to arrival of a stranger. • Separation Anxiety – distress level when separated from carer, degree of comfort needed on return. • Social Referencing – degree that child looks at carer to check how they should respond to something new (secure base).

They discovered that baby’s attachments develop in the following sequence:

Asocial (0 – 6 weeks)

Very young infants are asocial in that many kinds of stimuli, both social and non-social, produce a favorable reaction, such as a smile.

Indiscriminate Attachments (6 weeks to 7 months)

Infants indiscriminately enjoy human company; most babies respond equally to any caregiver. They get upset when an individual ceases to interact with them.

From 3 months, infants smile more at familiar faces and can be easily comfortable by a regular caregiver.

Specific Attachment (7 – 9 months)

Special preference for a single attachment figure.  The baby looks to particular people for security, comfort, and protection.  It shows fear of strangers (stranger fear) and unhappiness when separated from a special person ( separation anxiety ).

Some babies show stranger fear and separation anxiety much more frequently and intensely than others; nevertheless, they are seen as evidence that the baby has formed an attachment.  This usually develops at one year of age.

Multiple Attachment (10 months and onwards)

Many of the babies from the Schaffer and Emerson study had multiple attachments by 10 months old, including attachments to mothers, fathers, grandparents, siblings, and neighbors.

The baby becomes increasingly independent and forms several attachments. By 18 months, the majority of infants have formed multiple attachments.

The multiple attachments formed by most infants vary in their strength and importance to the infant. Attachments are often structured in a hierarchy, whereby an infant may have formed three attachments, but one may be stronger than the other two, and one may be the weakest.

The results of the study indicated that attachments were most likely to form with those who responded accurately to the baby’s signals, not the person they spent more time with.  Schaffer and Emerson called this sensitive responsiveness.

Intensely attached infants had mothers who responded quickly to their demands and, interacted with their child. Infants who were weakly attached had mothers who failed to interact.

The Lasting Impact of Early Attachment

According to Bowlby’s theory (1988), when we form our primary attachment, we also make a mental representation of what a relationship is (internal working model), which we then use for all other relationships in the future i.e., friendships, working, and romantic relationships.

The different attachment styles may be viewed as internal working models of “relationships” that evolved from event experiences (Main, Kaplan, & Cassidy, 1985).

This would suggest that early interactions with caregivers could not only shape how an infant understood and behaved in relationships (as exemplified by infant attachment styles), but that such impact could be carried forward into adult attachment .

According to Bowlby (1969) later relationships are likely to be a continuation of early attachment styles (secure and insecure) because the behavior of the infant’s primary attachment figure promotes an internal working model of relationships which leads the infant to expect the same in later relationships.

In other words, there will be continuity between early attachment experiences and later relationships. This is known as the continuity hypothesis.

In humans, attachment does not conclude in infancy, or even childhood, but instead is active throughout the lifespan, with individuals gaining comfort from both physical and mental representations of significant others (Bowlby, 1969).

It is through an individual’s internal working model that childhood patterns of attachment are carried forward across the life cycle into adolescence and adulthood.

The notion of security is still important; however, the growing emergence of autonomy is also significant as the attachment system in adults is less likely to be activated due to them being able to tolerate higher levels of distress compared to children.

During adulthood, new attachment bonds are formed which may become a significant source of support during periods of distress, or during periods of goal achievement and exploration.

Researchers have proposed that working models are interconnected within a complex hierarchical structure (Bowlby, 1980; Bretherton, 1985, 1990; Collins & Read, 1994; Main, Kaplan, & Cassidy, 1985).

For example, the highest level model comprises beliefs and expectations across all types of relationship, and lower level models hold general rules about specific relations, such as romantic or parental, underpinned by models specific to events within a relationship with a single person.

The existence of multiple mental models is supported by evidence which demonstrates considerable within-person variability in the expectations and beliefs that people hold about the self and others (Baldwin & Fehr, 1995).

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).

Likely, general mental models indicate a typical appraisal of the self and others across relationships, and relationship-specific beliefs about the self and one’s partner would plausibly represent only a part of these generalized beliefs.

Key Takeaways

• Attachment is defined as a “lasting psychological connectedness between human beings” (Bowlby, 1969, p. 194), and may be considered interchangeable with concepts such as “affectional bond” and “emotional bond.”
• Attachment is characterized by specific behaviors in children, such as seeking proximity to the attachment figure when upset or threatened (Bowlby, 1969).
• Attachment theory explains how the parent-child relationship emerges and influences subsequent development.
• A person’s first attachment is often established with the primary caregiver during infancy. However, it must be noted that attachment is not unique to infant-caregiver relationships but may also be present in other social relationships.
• Attachments of various kinds are formed through the repeated act of “attachment behaviors” or “attachment transactions,” a continuing process of seeking and maintaining a certain level of proximity to another specified individual (Bowlby, 1969).
• Because caregivers vary in sensitivity and responsiveness, not all infants attach to caregivers in the same way.

Ainsworth, M. D. S., & Bell, S. M. (1970). Attachment, exploration, and separation: Illustrated by the behavior of one-year-olds in a strange situation. Child Development, 41 , 49-67.

Ainsworth, M. D. S. (1973). The development of infant-mother attachment. In B. Cardwell & H. Ricciuti (Eds.), Review of child development research (Vol. 3, pp. 1-94) Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Ainsworth, M. D. S., Blehar, M. C., Waters, E., & Wall, S. (1978). Patterns of attachment: A psychological study of the strange situation . Lawrence Erlbaum.

Ainsworth, M. D. S. (1991). Attachments and other affectional bonds across the life cycle. In C . M. Parkes, J. Stevenson-Hinde, & P. Marris (Eds.), Attachment across the life cycle (pp. 33-51). London: Routledge.

Ainsworth. M. D. S., & Wittig, B. A. (1969) Attachment and exploratory behaviour of one-year-olds in a strange situation. In: B. M. Foss (Ed.) Determinants of infant behaviour , IV. London: Methuen, p. 111-136.

Bowlby, J. (1958). The nature of the childs tie to his mother. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 39 , 350-371.

Bowlby J. (1969). Attachment. Attachment and loss:   Vol. 1. Loss. New York: Basic Books.

Bowlby, J., and Robertson, J. (1952). A two-year-old goes to the hospital. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, 46, 425–427.

Bowlby, J. (1973). Attachment and loss, Vol. 2: Separation . New York: Basic Books.

Bowlby, J. (1980). Attachment and loss, Vol. 3: Loss, sadness and depression . New York: Basic Books.

Bowlby, J. (1988). A secure base: Parent–child attachment and healthy human development . New York: Basic Books.

Dollard, J. & Miller, N.E. (1950). Personality and psychotherapy . New York: McGraw-Hill.

Feeney, B. C. (2004). A secure base: responsive support of goal strivings and exploration in adult intimate relationships.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87 (5), 631.

George, C., & Solomon, J. (1996). Representational models of relationships: Links between caregiving and attachment.  Infant Mental Health Journal, 17 (3), 198-216.

Harlow, H. F. & Zimmermann, R. R. (1958). The development of affective responsiveness in infant monkeys. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 102, 501 -509.

Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2003). The attachment behavioral system in adulthood: Activation, psychodynamics, and interpersonal processes. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 35 , 53-152.

Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2007).  Attachment in adulthood: Structure, dynamics,  and change . New York: Guilford Press.

Prior, V., & Glaser, D. (2006). Understanding attachment and attachment disorders: Theory, evidence and practice. Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Schaffer, H. R., & Emerson, P. E. (1964). The development of social attachments in infancy. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 1-77.

Shaver, P. R., & Mikulincer, M. (2006). Attachment theory, individual psychodynamics, and relationship functioning.  The Cambridge handbook of personal relationships , 251-271.

Van Ijzendoorn, M. H., & Sagi-Schwartz, A. (2008). Cross-cultural patterns of attachment: Universal and contextual dimensions. In J. Cassidy & P. Shaver (Eds) Handbook of Attachment: Theory, Research and Clinical Applications (pp. 880-905). New York: Guildford Press.

What is attachment theory in relationships?

Attachment theory is a psychological theory developed by British psychologist John Bowlby that explains how humans form emotional bonds with others, particularly in the context of close relationships.

The theory suggests that infants and young children have an innate drive to seek proximity to their primary caregivers for safety and security, and that the quality of these early attachments can have long-term effects on social and emotional development.

What are the 4 attachments in a relationship?

Attachment theory suggests that there are four types of attachments people can develop based on their early experiences with caregivers. These four types are secure, anxious-preoccupied, avoidant-dismissive, and disorganized.

People with secure attachments are comfortable with intimacy and have positive views of themselves and others. Those with anxious-preoccupied attachments worry about being rejected and may become overly clingy in relationships.

People with avoidant-dismissive attachments may avoid close relationships and prioritize independence. Those with disorganized attachments may have difficulty regulating their emotions and behavior in close relationships due to past trauma or abuse.

Attachment styles can change over time , but understanding one’s attachment style can provide insight into how one approaches relationships and areas for personal growth.

What do psychologists mean by attachment?

Attachment in psychology refers to the emotional bond between individuals, typically seen in relationships between parents and children. It’s a crucial part of social and emotional development and impacts future relationships. Attachment can be secure or insecure (avoidant, ambivalent, or disorganized).

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Contributions of Attachment Theory and Research: A Framework for Future Research, Translation, and Policy

Jude cassidy.

University of Maryland

Jason D. Jones

Phillip r. shaver.

University of California, Davis

Attachment theory has been generating creative and impactful research for almost half a century. In this article we focus on the documented antecedents and consequences of individual differences in infant attachment patterns, suggesting topics for further theoretical clarification, research, clinical interventions, and policy applications. We pay particular attention to the concept of cognitive “working models” and to neural and physiological mechanisms through which early attachment experiences contribute to later functioning. We consider adult caregiving behavior that predicts infant attachment patterns, and the still-mysterious “transmission gap” between parental AAI classifications and infant Strange Situation classifications. We also review connections between attachment and (a) child psychopathology, (b) neurobiology, (c) health and immune function, (d) empathy, compassion, and altruism, (e) school readiness, and (f) culture. We conclude with clinical-translational and public policy applications of attachment research that could reduce the occurrence and maintenance of insecure attachment during infancy and beyond. Our goal is to inspire researchers to continue advancing the field by finding new ways to tackle long-standing questions and by generating and testing novel hypotheses.

One gets a glimpse of the germ of attachment theory in John Bowlby's 1944 article, “Forty-Four Juvenile Thieves: Their Character and Home-Life,” published in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis . Using a combination of case studies and statistical methods (novel at the time for psychoanalysts) to examine the precursors of delinquency, Bowlby arrived at his initial empirical insight: The precursors of emotional disorders and delinquency could be found in early attachment-related experiences, specifically separations from, or inconsistent or harsh treatment by, mothers (and often fathers or other men who were involved with the mothers). Over the subsequent decades, as readers of this journal know, he built a complex and highly generative theory of attachment.

Unlike other psychoanalytic writers of his generation, Bowlby formed a working relationship with a very talented empirically oriented researcher, Mary Ainsworth. Her careful observations, first in Uganda ( Ainsworth, 1967 ) and later in Baltimore, led to a detailed specification of aspects of maternal behavior that preceded individual differences in infant attachment. Her creation of the Strange Situation ( Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978 ) provided a gold standard for identifying and classifying individual differences in infant attachment security (and insecurity) and ushered in decades of research examining the precursors and outcomes of individual differences in infant attachment. (A PsycInfo literature search using the keyword “attachment” yields more than 15,000 titles).

By the beginning of the 21 st century, the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine's Committee on Integrating the Science of Early Childhood Development based its policy and practice conclusions and recommendations on four themes, one of which was that “early environments matter and nurturing relationships are essential ( Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000 , p. 4) … Children grow and thrive in the context of close and dependable relationships that provide love and nurturance, security, responsive interaction, and encouragement for exploration. Without at least one such relationship, development is disrupted, and the consequences can be severe and long-lasting” (p. 7). This clear and strong statement could be made in large part because of the research inspired by Bowlby's theory and Ainsworth's creative research methods.

Years after Ainsworth's Strange Situation was proposed, Mary Main and colleagues (e.g., George, Kaplan, & Main, 1984 ; Main, Kaplan, & Cassidy, 1985 ) provided a way to study the intergenerational transmission of attachment patterns. They and other researchers found that a parent's “state of mind with respect to attachment” predicted his or her infant's pattern of attachment. Moreover, since the 1980's there has been an explosion of research examining attachment processes beyond the parent-child dyad (e.g., in adult romantic relationships), which has supported Bowlby's (1979) belief that attachment is a process that characterizes humans “from the cradle to the grave” (p. 129). In the present article, space limitations lead us to focus principally on attachment processes early in life and consider the adult attachment literature largely in relation to parental predictors of infant attachment.

A Simple Model of Infant-Mother Attachment

During the 70 years since Bowlby's initial consideration of the developmental precursors of adolescent delinquency and psychopathology, researchers have provided a complex picture of the parental and experiential precursors of infant attachment, the links between early attachment-related experiences and later child functioning, the mechanisms involved in explaining these links, and moderators of these linking mechanisms. Much has been learned at each of several analytic levels, including behavior, cognition, emotion, physiology, and genetics. Figure 1 summarizes this literature in a simple model. We have selected several of the components in Figure 1 for further discussion. For each component, following a brief background and review of the current state of knowledge, we offer suggestions for future research, based largely on identification of gaps in theory or methodological innovations that make new lines of discovery possible. We begin by considering one of the central concepts of attachment theory, the internal working model, followed by a consideration of physiological mechanisms that also help to explain the influence of early attachments. Next, we consider the caregiving behavior that predicts infant attachment and the perplexing issue of the transmission gap between parental Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) classifications and infant Strange Situation classifications. We then examine connections between attachment and (a) child psychopathology, (b) neurobiology, (c) health and immune function, (d) empathy, compassion, and altruism, (e) school readiness, and (f) culture. Finally, we discuss the translational application of attachment research to reducing the risk of developing or maintaining insecure attachments and the policy implications of attachment research.

Note . A complete depiction of attachment processes would require several pages. For instance, here we note the parent's own attachment representations as a contributor to parental attachment-related behavior. There are many other important contributors to parental behavior, including culture, SES, parental age, parental personality, child temperament, and presence or absence of a partner, to name a few. Each of the constructs and arrows in Figure 1 could be surrounded by numerous others.

Internal Working Models

One of the key concepts in attachment theory is the “attachment behavioral system,” which refers to an organized system of behaviors that has a predictable outcome (i.e., proximity) and serves an identifiable biological function (i.e., protection). According to Bowlby (1969/1982 ), such a system is organized by experience-based “internal working models” (IWMs) of self and environment, including especially the caregiving environment.

It is by postulating the existence of these cognitive components and their utilization by the attachment system that the theory is enabled to provide explanations of how a child's experiences with attachment figures come to influence in particular ways the pattern of attachment he develops. (pp. 373-374)

Much of the research on these models is based on the notion that, beginning in the first year of life, mentally healthy individuals develop a “secure base script” that provides a causal-temporal prototype of the ways in which attachment-related events typically unfold (e.g., “When I am hurt, I go to my mother and receive comfort”). According to Bretherton (1991 ; Bretherton & Munholland, 2008 ), secure base scripts are the “building blocks” of IWMs. Theoretically, secure children's and adults' scripts should allow them to create attachment-related “stories” in which one person successfully uses another as a secure base from which to explore and as a safe haven in times of need or distress. Insecure individuals should exhibit gaps in, or distortion or even absence of, such a script. H. Waters and colleagues ( H. Waters & Rodrigues-Doolabh, 2001 ; H. Waters & Waters, 2006 ) tested this hypothesis by having children complete story stems that began with a character's attachment behavioral system presumably being activated (e.g., a child rock-climbing with parents hurts his knee). Secure attachment at 2 years of age was positively correlated with the creation of stories involving knowledge of and access to the secure base script at ages 3 and 4. (A similar methodology has been used in studies of young adults; see Mikulincer, Shaver, Sapir-Lavid, & Avihou-Kanza, 2009 .)

New Directions in the Examination of IWM Formation during Infancy

Despite Bowlby's hypothesis that infants develop IWMs during the first year of life (see also Main et al., 1985 ), almost no empirical work has focused on attachment representations during infancy (instead, most research on IWMs has involved children, adolescents, and adults). We believe, as do others ( Johnson et al., 2010 ; Sherman & Cassidy, 2013 ; Thompson, 2008 ), that IWMs can be studied in infancy. Such work is made possible by recent efforts to bridge social-emotional and cognitive developmental research (e.g., Calkins & Bell, 2010 ; Olson & Dweck, 2008 ), along with methodological advances and accumulating research on an array of previously unexplored infant mental capacities.

Attachment researchers have assumed that infants recall the emotional nature of their attachment-related social experiences with specific individuals (e.g., experiences of comfort with vs. rejection by mother), and that they use these memories to create IWMs that guide their attachment behavior in subsequent interactions with these individuals. This claim has been supported with correlational research findings; for example observations indicating that infants' daily interactions with attachment figures are linked to their IWMs reflected in behavior in the Strange Situation ( Ainsworth et al., 1978 ). These findings can now be supplemented with results from experimental studies.

There is a compelling body of experimental work showing that infants extract complex social-emotional information from the social interactions they observe. For example, they notice helpful and hindering behaviors of one “person” (usually represented by a puppet or a geometric figure) toward another, they personally prefer individuals who have helped others, they form expectations about how two characters should behave toward each other in subsequent interactions, and they behave positively or negatively toward individuals based on what they have observed (e.g., Hamlin & Wynn, 2011 ; Hamlin, Wynn, Bloom, & Mahajan, 2011 ). This work could and should be extended to include attachment relationships, revealing in detail how infants form “models” of particular adults and then modify their emotional reactions and social behaviors toward those adults accordingly ( Johnson et al., 2010 ). At present, there is no experimental research showing that infants form expectations about the later social behavior of another person toward them based on the infants' own past interactions with that person – a capacity that is assumed to underlie infants' development of working models of their caregivers.

As explained in detail in another paper ( Sherman & Cassidy, 2013 ), we urge infancy researchers to consider the specific cognitive and emotional capacities required to form IWMs and then to examine these capacities experimentally. Methods used by researchers who study infant cognition, but rarely used by attachment researchers (e.g., eye-tracking, habituation paradigms), will prove useful. For example, habituation paradigms could allow attachment researchers to study infant IWMs of likely mother and infant responses to infant distress (see Johnson et al., 2010 ). Another research area relevant to attachment researchers' conception of IWMs concerns infants' understanding of statistical probabilities. When considering individual differences in how mothering contributes to attachment quality, Bowlby (1969/1982) adopted Winnicott's (1953) conception of “good enough” mothering; that is, mothering which assures a child that probabilistically, and often enough, the mother will prove responsive to the child's signals. Implicit in such a perspective is the assumption that an infant can make probabilistic inferences. Only recently has there been a surge in interest in the methods available to evaluate this assumption of attachment theory (e.g., Krogh, Vlach, & Johnson, 2013 ; Pelucchi, Hay, & Saffran, 2009 ; Romberg & Saffran, 2013 ; Xu & Kushnir, 2013 ).

One useful conceptual perspective, called rational constructivism, is based on the idea that infants use probabilistic reasoning when integrating existing knowledge with new data to test hypotheses about the world. Xu and Kushnir (2013) reviewed evidence that by 18 months of age, infants use probabilistic reasoning to evaluate alternative hypotheses ( Gerken, 2006 ; Gweon, Tenenbaum, & Schulz, 2010 ), revise hypotheses in light of new data ( Gerken, 2010 ), make predictions ( Denison & Xu, 2010 ), and guide their actions ( Denison & Xu, 2010 ). Moreover, infants are capable of integrating prior knowledge and multiple contextual factors into their statistical computations ( Denison & Xu, 2010 ; Teglas, Girotto, Gonzales, & Bonatti, 2007 ; Xu & Denison, 2009 ). Xu and Kushnir (2013) have further proposed that these capacities appear to be domain-general, being evident in a variety of areas: language, physical reasoning, psychological reasoning, object understanding, and understanding of individual preferences. Notably absent from this list is the domain of social relationships, including attachment relationships.

Several questions about probabilistic inferences can be raised: Do infants make such inferences about the likely behavior of particular attachment figures, and could this ability account for qualitatively different attachments to different individuals (e.g., mother as distinct from father)? Do infants use probabilistic reasoning when drawing inferences related to the outcomes of their own attachment behaviors? (This is related to if-then contingencies: “If I cry, what is the probability that χ will occur?”) How complex can this infant reasoning become, and across what developmental trajectory? “If I do χ, the likelihood of outcome y is 80%, but if I do w , the likelihood of y is only 30%.” Do infants consider context? “If I do χ, the likelihood of y is 90% in context q , but only 20% in context r .” How do infants calculate variability in these probabilities across attachment figures?

In sum, it seems likely that infants use statistical inference to understand their social worlds. This ability would seem to be evolutionarily adaptive in relation to attachment figures, because infants could incorporate probabilistic inferences into their IWMs and use them to guide their attachment behavior. Important advances in our understanding of attachment behavior might occur with respect to how and when this incorporation happens, and also with respect to the role of statistical inference in infants' openness to change in response to changing environmental input (e.g., in response to interventions designed to change parental behavior).

Child-Parent Attachment, Response to Threat, and Physiological Mechanisms of Influence

Bowlby's emphasis on cognitive IWMs as the mechanism through which early experiences influence later functioning is understandable given the emerging cognitive emphasis in psychology when he was writing. But scientists are becoming increasingly aware that the effects of attachment-related experiences are carried in the body and brain in ways not easily reducible to cognition. As a way to touch briefly on the physiological processes involved in attachment, we focus here on a central issue in attachment theory: infants' responses to threat as these are shaped by attachment relationships. One of the core propositions of attachment theory is that proximity to an attachment figure reduces fear in the presence of a possible or actual threat. As explained in the previous section, Bowlby thought the mechanism that explained this link is children's experience-based cognitive representation of the availability of an attachment figure. Specifically, it is because securely attached infants are more likely than insecurely attached infants to have mental representations of caregiver availability and responsiveness that they are able to interpret a threat as manageable and respond to it with less fear and anxiety. Yet in species that do not possess human representational capacities, the link between attachment and response to threat clearly exists, suggesting that in humans there is likely to be more to attachment orientations than cognitive IWMs. (For the initial and more extensive discussion of ideas presented in this section, see Cassidy, Ehrlich, and Sherman [2013] .)

Another Level of “Representation” or Internal Structure: Physiology

Since the time of Bowlby's original writings, one important advance that has extended our understanding of the link between attachment and response to threat has roots in Myron Hofer's laboratory in the 1970s. Hofer, a developmental psychobiologist, noticed defensive vocal protest responses to maternal separation in infant rat pups and asked what non-representational process could account for them. He and his colleagues conducted a series of tightly controlled experiments to identify what physiological subsystems, which he called hidden regulators, are disrupted when mothers are removed from their pups (for reviews, see Hofer, 2006 ; Polan & Hofer, 2008 ). The pups exhibit changes in multiple physiological and behavioral systems, such as those controlling heart rate, body temperature, food intake, and exploration. Hofer concluded that mother-infant interactions have embedded within them a number of vital physiological regulatory functions that are disrupted by separation from mother and do not require cognitive mediators. These regulators can be disentangled by experimentally manipulating parts of a “mother”: the food she provides, her warmth, her licking and grooming, etc. Later, Meaney and colleagues (e.g., Liu et al., 1997 ; reviewed in Meaney, 2001 ) found that rat pups that received high levels of maternal licking and grooming and arched-back nursing positions had milder responses to threat and increased exploratory behavior – effects that lasted into adulthood (and in fact, into subsequent generations as a function of maternal affection in each successive generation). This research group further found that individual differences in maternal behavior were mediated by differences in offsprings' gene expression ( Weaver et al., 2004 ), a finding that has opened up a new research domain for researchers studying both animals and humans ( Sharp, Pickles, Meaney, Marshall, Tibu, & Hill, 2012 ; Suomi, 2011 ).

Early Attachment-Related Experiences and Human Infant Biological Response to Stress

In humans, a fully developed stress response system, the HPA axis, is present at birth ( Adam, Klimes-Dougan, & Gunnar, 2007 ). A growing body of research indicates that differences in the quality of early care contribute to variations in the initial calibration and continued regulation of this system. This regulation in turn plays an important role in shaping behavioral responses to threat ( Jessop & Turner-Cobb, 2008 ).

Researchers have examined connections between caregiving experiences and infant stress physiology by comparing infants' cortisol levels before and after a stressful task (e.g., the Strange Situation). For example, Nachmias, Gunnar, Mangelsdorf, Parritz, and Buss (1996) found that inhibited toddlers who were insecurely attached to their caregivers exhibited elevated cortisol levels following exposure to novel stimuli. There is also experimental evidence that mothers' touch buffers infants' cortisol stress response (in this case, during the still-face laboratory procedure in which mothers are asked to cease interacting emotionally with their infants; Feldman, Singer, & Zagoory, 2010 ). Children living in violent families endure particularly stressful caregiving environments, which are extremely dysregulating for them ( Taylor, Repetti, & Seeman, 1997 ). A number of studies have documented the disrupted stress response of maltreated children (e.g., De Bellis et al., 1999 ; Hart, Gunnar, & Cicchetti, 1995 ). Even living in a family in which the violence does not involve them directly has negative consequences for children, and studies suggest that the quality of caregiving in these harsh environments plays an important role in modifying the stress response (e.g., Hibel, Granger, Blair, Cox, & The FLP Investigators, 2011 ).

Attachment as a Regulator of Infant Stress Reactivity: Further Questions

Just as infants are thought to have evolved a capacity to use experience-based information about the availability of a protective caregiver to calibrate their attachment behavioral system ( Main, 1990 ), and given the close intertwining of the attachment and fear systems, it is likely that infants also evolved a capacity to use information about the availability of an attachment figure to calibrate their threat response system at both the behavioral and physiological levels ( Cassidy, 2009 ). And this capacity is probably not solely “cognitive,” which raises important questions for research: How are representational and physiological processes linked and how do they influence each other and affect child functioning? Does the nature of their interaction vary across particular aspects of child functioning and across developmental periods? How can we understand these interactions in relation to both normative development and individual differences?

In humans, representations and physiological (e.g., stress) reactions are thought to affect each other in ways unlikely to occur in other species. Sapolsky (2004) noted that, in humans, representational processes – the anticipation of threat when none currently exists – can launch a stress response. Relatedly, Bowlby (1973) , focusing on the link between attachment and fear, specified representational “forecasts of availability or unavailability” of an attachment figure as “a major variable that determines whether a person is or is not alarmed by any potentially alarming situation” (p. 204). Thus, the representations that others will be unavailable or rejecting when needed – that is, representations that characterize insecure attachment – could contribute to chronic activation of physiological stress response systems, as could the associated representations of others as having hostile intentions ( Dykas & Cassidy, 2011 ). Conversely, in times of both anticipated and actual threat, the capacity to represent a responsive attachment figure can diminish physiological responses associated with threatening or painful experiences (see Eisenberger et al., 2011 ; Coan, Schaefer, & Davidson, 2006 ). Moreover, consideration of linkages between representational and non-representational processes must include the possibility that causality flows in both directions: Physiological stress responses can presumably prompt a person to engage in higher-level cognitive processes to understand, justify, or eliminate the stressor.

When and how do young children use attachment-related representations as regulators of stress? Neither normative trajectories nor individual differences in the use of representations to influence stress reactivity have been examined extensively. Evidence that stress dysregulation can lead to the conscious engagement of representational processes comes from children as young as 4 who are able to describe strategies for alleviating distress (e.g., changing thoughts, reappraising the situation, mental distraction; Sayfan & Lagattuta, 2009 ). Less studied but of great interest are possible “automatic emotion regulation” processes ( Mauss, Bunge, & Gross, 2007 ) that do not involve conscious or deliberate self-regulation. Recent studies of adults show that there are such processes, that there are individual differences in them that might relate to attachment orientations, that they are associated with particular brain regions that are not the same as those associated with conscious, deliberate emotion regulation, and that they can be influenced experimentally with priming procedures.

Many researchable questions remain: Given the extent to which many forms of psychopathology reflect problems of self-regulation in the face of stress (e.g., Kring & Sloan, 2010 ), can “hidden regulators” stemming from infant-mother interactions tell us about the precursors of psychopathology? What about hidden regulators embedded within a relationship with a therapist (who, according to Bowlby [1988] , serves as an attachment figure in the context of long-term psychotherapy)? When change occurs following long-term therapy, does this change emerge through cognitive representations, changes at the physiological level, or both? See Cassidy et al., (2013) for additional suggestions for future research.

Maternal Caregiving and Infant Attachment: Intergenerational Transmission of Attachment and the “Transmission Gap”

In 1985, Main and colleagues published the first evidence of the intergenerational transmission of attachment: a link between a mother's attachment representations (coded from responses to the AAI; George et al., 1984 ) and her infant's attachment to her ( Figure 1 , Path c). Based on findings from Ainsworth's initial study of the precursors of individual differences in infant attachment ( Ainsworth et al., 1978 ), researchers expected this link to be explained by maternal sensitivity: That is, they believed that a mother's state of mind with respect to attachment guides her sensitive behavior toward her infant ( Figure 1 , Path a), which in turn influences infant attachment quality ( Figure 1 , Path b). However, at the end of a decade of research, van IJzendoorn (1995) published a meta-analysis indicating that the strong and well-replicated link between maternal and infant attachment was not fully mediated by maternal sensitivity (see also Madigan et al., 2006 ). van IJzendoorn labeled what he had found as the “ transmission gap .” Moreover, meta-analytic findings revealed that the link between maternal sensitivity and infant attachment, although nearly universally present across scores of studies, was typically considerably weaker than that reported in Ainsworth's original study ( De Wolff & van IJzendoorn, 1997 ).

The transmission gap has been one of the most perplexing issues facing attachment researchers during the past 15-20 years. Immediate attempts to understand it focused largely on measurement of maternal behavior. Many studies have been aimed at understanding why the strength of the association between maternal sensitivity and infant attachment, while not negligible, is lower than the particularly strong effect found in Ainsworth's original study, and lower than attachment researchers expected. These studies have provided important insights, but no consensus has emerged about how to understand maternal behavior as a predictor of infant attachment. Continued efforts in this area are essential, and they will inform both researchers' understanding of the workings of the attachment behavioral system and clinicians' attempts to reduce the risk of infant insecure attachments.

Further consideration of Bowlby's concept of the secure base may help researchers better understand maternal contributors to infant attachment. First, we should note that any consideration of caregiving influences necessitates consideration of differential child susceptibility to rearing influence. According to the differential susceptibility hypothesis ( Belsky, 2005 ; see also Boyce & Ellis, 2005 , on the theory of biological sensitivity to context, and Ellis, Boyce, Belsky, Bakermans-Kranenberg, & van IJzendoorn, 2011 , for an integration of the differential susceptibility hypothesis and the theory of biological sensitivity to context), children vary genetically in the extent to which they are influenced by environmental factors, and for some children the influence of caregiving behavior on attachment may be minimal. Moreover, we underscore that the thinking presented in the present paper relates to the initial development of infant attachment during the first year of life; contributors to security are likely to differ at different developmental periods.

A focus on secure base provision

For Bowlby (1988) , the secure base concept was the heart of attachment theory: “No concept within the attachment framework is more central to developmental psychiatry than that of the secure base” (pp. 163–164). When parents provide a secure base, their children's confidence in the parents' availability and sensitive responsiveness when needed allows the children to explore the environment freely. The secure base phenomenon contains two intertwined components: a secure base from which a child can explore and a haven of safety to which the child can return in times of distress. In fact, as noted earlier, the central cognitive components of secure attachment are thought to reside in a secure base script (i.e., a script according to which, following a distressing event, the child seeks and receives care from an available attachment figure, experiences comfort, and returns to exploration).

If the goal of research is to understand what components of a parent's behavior allow a child to use the parent as a secure base, researchers should focus as precisely as possible on the parent's secure base provision rather than on his or her parental behavior more broadly. Through experience-based understanding of parental intentions and behavior, an infant gathers information to answer a central secure base question: What is my attachment figure likely to do when activation of my attachment system leads me to seek contact? If experiences lead the infant to believe that the parent will be responsive (most of the time) to behaviors related to activation of his/her attachment system, then the infant will use the parent as a secure base, and behavioral manifestations of the secure base script will appear (i.e., the secure base script will be evident in the Strange Situation attachment assessment, and the infant will be classified as secure). In 2000, E. Waters and Cummings, when proposing an agenda for the field in the millennium of the 2000s, urged that the secure-base concept be kept “at center stage in attachment theory and research” (p. 164). We share this opinion, and believe that additional consideration of the secure base notion will provide a useful framework within which to consider parental behavior as a predictor of infant attachment.

Bowlby (1988) emphasized that an infant's sense of having a secure base resides in the infant's confidence that parental sensitive responsiveness will be provided when needed (e.g., specifying “especially should he [the infant] become tired or frightened” [p. 132]). As such, it may be useful for attachment researchers to frame their question as: Which contexts provide the infant with information about the parent's likely behavior when needed – not in all contexts, but specifically in response to activation of the infant's attachment system ? Bowlby (1969/1982) described the relevant contexts as “fall[ing] into two classes: those which indicate the presence of potential danger or stress (internal or external), and those concerning the whereabouts and accessibility of the attachment figure” (p. 373).

Especially during the early years of life, both of these circumstances are likely to be associated with infant distress. This association has led some writers to wonder whether maternal response to infant distress is particularly predictive of infant attachment quality (e.g., Thompson, 1997 ), and there is compelling evidence that this is the case (e.g., Del Carmen, Pedersen, Huffman, & Bryan, 1993 ; Leerkes, 2011 ; Leerkes, Parade, & Gudmundson, 2011 ; McElwain & Booth-LaForce, 2006 ). When infants experience comfort from parental sensitive responses to their distress, they develop mental representations that contribute to security (“When I am distressed, I seek care, and I am comforted”). These representations are then thought to guide secure attachment behavior, and the physiological regulation that comes from regaining calmness in contact with the parent is thought to calibrate the child's stress reactivity systems and feed back into further secure mental representations (e.g., Cassidy et al., 2013 ; Suomi, 2008 ). The greater predictive power of the maternal response to distress, compared to maternal response to non-distress, may emerge from the considerable intertwining of infant distress and the infant's attachment system during the first year of life.

Future studies attempting to predict infant attachment might benefit from a framework that considers two components of parental behavior: (a) parental behavior related specifically to the secure base function of the infant's attachment system as Bowlby described it (see above), and (b) parental response to infant distress. Table 1 presents a 2 (attachment-related or not) × 2 (infant distressed or not) matrix that gives rise to a number of research questions. One key question is the following: Is parental behavior in response to an infant's attachment behavioral system most predictive of infant attachment, regardless of whether or not the infant is distressed (i.e., parental behavior in both cells 1 and 2)? Another set of questions relates to distress: Is parental response to any form of infant distress the most central predictor of infant attachment (i.e., parental behavior in both cells 1 and 3)? Does the termination of the physiological and emotional dysregulation of distress – no matter what the cause – that occurs through parental care solidify a tendency to use the parent as a secure base? Or do the cognitive models that derive from experiences of distress in different contexts (e.g., distress during play versus distress when seeking comfort) contribute differentially to secure base use? Most previous research has not drawn distinctions concerning the context of infant distress; future work that considers this distinction is needed.

Note . The following examples describe 5- to 12-month old infants participating in studies with their mothers in Cassidy's lab. Cell 1 . The context is attachment-related, and the infant is distressed: After having been left alone in an unfamiliar laboratory playroom, a crying 12-month-old crossed the room to her returning mother and reached to be picked up. Cell 2 . The context is attachment-related, and the infant is not distressed: An 8-month-old infant had been playing contentedly for 20 minutes near her mother at home. The mother had been sitting on the floor holding a toddler whose hair she was braiding. When the mother finished and the toddler moved away, the infant crawled to the mother, clambered up on her lap, and snuggled in for a hug; after exchanging tender pats with her mother, the infant returned to play on the floor. The lack of accessibility to the mother may have led to the infant's seeking contact in a manner that did not involve other activities (e.g., play or feeding). Cell 3 . The context is not attachment-related, and the infant is distressed: A 12-month-old infant became distressed when a toy was removed. Cell 4 . The context is not attachment-related, and the infant is not distressed: An infant, with her mother nearby, played happily with toys.

Additional questions raised by Table 1 include: Is it the combination of maternal behavior when the infant's attachment system is central, along with any behavioral response to infant distress, that best predicts infant attachment (i.e., maternal behavior in cells 1, 2, and 3)? Finally, is it the case (as some have suggested; e.g., Pedersen & Moran, 1999) that maternal behavior in all four cells is predictive of infant attachment? Attempts to increase understanding of the precursors of infant attachment will require the development of detailed coding systems.

Finally, it will be crucial for future research conducted within a secure base framework to identify the specific maternal behaviors in response to activation of the infant's attachment system that predict infant security (for one approach, see Cassidy et al., 2005 , and Woodhouse & Cassidy, 2009 , who note that providing physical contact until the infant is fully calmed may be a more powerful predictor of later security than the general sensitivity of the parent's response). Basic research examining the extent to which infant distress occurs in relation to the attachment behavioral system will provide an important foundation for further work.

Additional mediational pathways: Genetics, cognitions, and emotions

Following the discovery of the transmission gap, several studies examined the possibility of a genetic mediating mechanism. However, neither behavior-genetic nor molecular-genetic research so far indicates a genetic component to individual differences in secure vs. insecure attachment, although mixed findings have emerged concerning a genetic vulnerability for infant disorganized attachment ( Bakermans-Kranenburg & van IJzendoorn, 2004 , 2007 ; Bokhorst et al. 2003 ; Fearon et al., 2006 ; Roisman & Fraley, 2008 ). (For evidence that variability in infants' serotonin-transporter-linked polymorphic region 5-HTTLPR predicts not whether infants are secure or insecure, but their subtype of security or subtype of insecurity, see Raby et al., 2012 ). Future research should examine other genes and gene X environment interactions (see Suomi, 2011 , for examples from primate research).

Despite a conceptual model of intergenerational transmission in which maternal behavior is central, examination of additional linking mechanisms purported to underlie maternal behavior, such as maternal cognitions and emotions, will continue to be important. Perhaps such factors may be more reliably measured than maternal behavior, and if they are, mediating relations may emerge to shed light on mechanisms of transmission (e.g., Bernier & Dozier, 2003 ). Moreover, from a clinical standpoint, factors thought to underlie maternal behavior may be more amenable targets of intervention than her behavior itself. For example, continued examination of maternal cognition through the study of constructs such as reflective functioning and maternal insightfulness may shed light on the link between mother and child attachment ( Oppenheim & Koren-Karie, 2009 ; Slade, Sadler, & Mayes, 2005 ). These constructs refer to the extent to which a mother can see the world from her infant's point of view while also considering her own mental state. There is evidence that these and other components of maternal cognition (e.g., perceptions of the baby, attributions about infant behavior and emotions, maternal mindmindedness) are linked to maternal and/or child attachment, and additional research is needed to clarify the extent to which these components mediate the link between the two (e.g., Leerkes & Siepak, 2006 ; Zeanah, Benoit, Hirshberg, Barton, & Regan, 1994 ).

Another aspect of maternal functioning that should prove fruitful for researchers examining the transmission gap is maternal emotion regulation. As Cassidy (2006) has proposed, much maternal insensitivity can be recast as a failure of maternal emotion regulation. That is, when mothers themselves become dysregulated in the face of child behavior or child emotions that they find distressing (particularly child distress), their maternal behavior is more likely to be driven by their own dysregulation rather than the needs of the child (see also Slade, in press ). Evidence that maternal emotion-regulation capacities contribute to problematic parenting and insecure attachment has been reported ( Leerkes et al., 2011 ; Lorber & O'Leary, 2005 ), as have data indicating that maternal state of mind with respect to attachment (i.e., maternal secure base script knowledge) is uniquely related to maternal physiological regulation in response to infant cries (but not in response to infant laughter; Groh & Roisman, 2009 ). Unfortunately, although there is a sound conceptual and empirical basis for maternal emotion regulation as a mediator of the link between maternal and child attachment, there has been no empirical examination of this possibility.

In sum, the direction of future work depends on researchers' goals. If the goal is to understand the maternal behavior that mediates the link between maternal state of mind and child attachment, then the focus, obviously, must be on maternal behavior. If, however, the goal is to understand what factors may guide maternal behavior, and as such may themselves be successful targets of intervention, then examination of factors such as maternal cognitions and emotions should prove useful as well.

Caregiving as a Function of Adult Attachment Style

Although most researchers using self-report measures of adult attachment have not focused on links with parenting, there is a substantial and growing body of literature (more than 50 published studies) that addresses this link (see Jones, Cassidy, & Shaver, 2013 , for a review). Whereas researchers using the AAI have focused mainly on links between adults' AAI classifications and their observed parenting behaviors , attachment style researchers have focused mainly on links between adult attachment style and self-reported parenting cognitions and emotions (reviewed by Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007 ). But the few studies in which self-report attachment measures were used to predict parenting behavior have found support for predicted associations (e.g., Edelstein et al., 2004 ; Mills-Koonce et al., 2011 ; Rholes, Simpson, & Blakely, 1995 , Study 1; Selcuk et al., 2010 ). This is especially the case for maternal self-reported attachment-related avoidance (note that each of these studies was conducted with mothers only [Edelstein et al. included 4 fathers], so caution is warranted in generalizing these findings to fathers).

It would be useful to have more studies of adult attachment styles and observed parenting behavior. It would also be important to conduct longitudinal and intergenerational research using self-report measures. Prospective research is needed examining the extent to which adult attachment styles predict both parenting behaviors and infant attachment (see Mayseless, Sharabany, & Sagi, 1997 , and Volling, Notaro, & Larsen, 1998 , for mixed evidence concerning parents' adult attachment style as a predictor of infant attachment). Of related interest to researchers examining attachment styles and parenting will be longitudinal research examining the developmental precursors of adult attachment as measured with self-report measures (see Fraley, Roisman, Booth-LaForce, Tresch Owen, & Holland, 2013 , and Zayas, Mischel, Shoda, & Aber, 2011 , for evidence that self-reported attachment style in adolescence and early adulthood is predictable from participants' mothers' behavior during the participants' infancy and early childhood).

In general, we need more merging of social and developmental research traditions. It would be useful to include both the AAI and self-report attachment style measures in studies of parenting behaviors and cognitions. It would also be useful to know how the two kinds of measures relate similarly and differently to parenting variables. Scharf and Mayseless (2011) included both kinds of measures and found that both of them prospectively predicted parenting cognitions (e.g., perceived ability to take care of children), and in some cases, the self-report measure yielded significant predictions when the AAI did not (e.g., desire to have children). From the viewpoint of making predictions for practical or applied purposes, it is beneficial that both interview and self-report measures predict important outcomes but sometimes do so in non-redundant ways, thus increasing the amount of explained variance.

Mothers and Fathers

It is unclear whether it is best to think of a single kind of parental caregiving system in humans or of separate maternal and paternal caregiving systems. Harlow proposed separate maternal and paternal systems in primates (e.g., Harlow, Harlow, & Hansen, 1963 ). Within a modern evolutionary perspective, the existence of separate maternal and paternal caregiving systems is readily understood. Because mothers and fathers may differ substantially in the extent to which the survival of any one child enhances their overall fitness, their parenting behavior may differ. In addition, the inclusion of fathers in future attachment research is crucial. We contend that the field's continued focus on mothers is more likely to reflect the difficulty of recruiting fathers as research participants than a lack of interest in fathers. Bowlby, after all, was careful to use the term “attachment figure” rather than “mother,” because of his belief that although biological mothers typically serve as principal attachment figures, other figures such as fathers, adoptive mothers, grandparents, and child-care providers can also serve as attachment figures. Presumably, it is the nature of the interaction rather than the category of the individual that is important to the child. Also, addition of fathers will permit examination of attachment within a family systems perspective ( Byng-Hall, 1999 ; Johnson, 2008 ). Future research should examine (a) whether the precursors of infant-father attachment are similar to or different from the precursors of infant-mother attachment; (b) whether the Strange Situation best captures the quality of infant-father attachments (some have suggested that it does not; Grossmann Grossman, Kindler, & Zimmermann, 2008 ); (c) the influence of infants' relationships with fathers and father figures on their subsequent security and mental health; (d) possible differences in the working models children have of mothers and fathers; and (e) possible influences of parents' relationship with each other on the child's sense of having, or not having, a secure base ( Bretherton, 2010 ; Davies & Cummings, 1994 ).

Attachment and Psychopathology

As mentioned at the outset of this article, Bowlby was a clinician interested in the influence of early experiences with caregivers on children's later mental health and delinquency ( Bowlby, 1944 , 1951 ). Yet following a line of thinking that later came to characterize the developmental psychopathology approach (e.g., Cicchetti, 1984 ), Bowlby developed attachment theory as a framework for investigating and understanding both normal and abnormal development ( Sroufe, Carlson, Levy, & Egeland, 1999 ). Given space limitations and the focus of this journal, we will concentrate on relations between attachment and child psychopathology ( Figure 1 , Path d; see Cassidy & Shaver, 2008 , and Sroufe, Egeland, Carlson, & Collins, 2005a , for reviews of attachment and psychosocial functioning more broadly). The vast majority of existing studies have, however, not focused on clinically diagnosed psychopathology, but have been concerned with relations between attachment and continuous measures of internalizing and externalizing symptoms (e.g., assessed with the Child Behavior Checklist [CBCL]; Achenbach, 1991 ).

Bowlby's Theory of Attachment and Psychopathology

Bowlby used Waddington's (1957) developmental pathways model to explain how early attachment relates to later developmental outcomes, including psychopathology. According to this model, developmental outcomes are a product of the interaction of early childhood experiences and current context (at any later age). Early attachment is not expected to be perfectly predictive of later outcomes. Moreover, attachment insecurity per se is not psychopathology nor does it guarantee pathological outcomes. Instead, insecurity in infancy and early childhood is thought to be a risk factor for later psychopathology if subsequent development occurs in the context of other risk factors (e.g., poverty, parental psychopathology, abuse). Security is a protective factor that may buffer against emotional problems when later risks are present (see Sroufe et al., 1999 , for a review).

Attachment and Internalizing/Externalizing Behavior Problems: State of the Field

Over the past few decades, there have been many studies of early attachment and child mental health. The findings are complicated and difficult to summarize, as explained by Fearon, Bakermans-Kranenburg, van IJzendoorn, Lapsley, and Roisman (2010 , p. 437): “With the sheer volume, range, and diversity of studies…it has become virtually impossible to provide a clear narrative account of the status of the evidence concerning this critical issue in developmental science” (italics added). Studies contributing to this body of work have used diverse samples and different methods and measures, and have yielded inconsistent and, at times, contradictory results. Fortunately, two recent meta-analyses ( Fearon et al., 2010 ; Groh, Roisman, van IJzendoorn, Bakermans-Kranenburg, & Fearon, 2012 ) provide quantitative estimates of the degree of association between child attachment and internalizing/externalizing symptoms.

The meta-analyses revealed that insecurity (avoidant, ambivalent, and disorganized combined) was related to higher rates of internalizing and externalizing symptoms (though the link appears to be stronger for externalizing symptoms). When the subtypes of insecurity were examined individually, avoidance and disorganization were each significantly related to higher rates of externalizing problems, but only avoidance was significantly related to internalizing problems. Ambivalence was not significantly related to internalizing or externalizing. Contrary to expectations, neither meta-analysis yielded much support for an interaction of child attachment and contextual risk in predicting behavior problems. For example, neither meta-analysis found support for the predicted child attachment by SES interaction. However, given that high versus low SES is a rather imprecise measure of the numerous psychosocial risk factors that could contribute (individually and additively) to behavior problems, along with evidence from large sample studies supporting an attachment by risk interaction (e.g., Fearon & Belsky, 2011 ), these results should be interpreted cautiously. In sum, the answer to the question “Is early attachment status related to later mental health difficulties?” is a resounding yes, but the precise nature of the connections remains unclear.

Attachment and Psychopathology: Gaps in the Research and Future Directions

More research is needed on mechanisms, or mediators, that help to explain how insecurity, or a particular form of insecure attachment, leads in some cases to psychopathology. These mechanisms should be considered at different levels of analysis: neurological, hormonal, cognitive, behavioral, and social-interactional. Mediators may include difficulties in emotion regulation and deficits in social skills, for example. Given the documented links between early attachment and emotion regulation and physiological stress responses ( Cassidy, 1994 ; Spangler & Grossmann, 1993 ), as well as the role of emotion dysregulation and HPA axis irregularities in psychopathology ( Gunnar & Vazquez, 2006 ; Kring & Sloan, 2010 ), emotion regulation seems to be a promising target for mechanism research. More research is also needed on potential moderators and risk factors, such as age, gender, personality, traumas and losses, SES, exposure to family and neighborhood violence. Researchers should consider the cumulative effects of multiple risk factors as well as interactions among risk factors ( Belsky & Fearon, 2002 ; Fearon & Belsky, 2011 ; Kazdin & Kagan, 1994 ).

Given that most research on the mental health sequelae of early attachment has focused on internalizing and externalizing symptoms in non-clinical samples, future research should focus more on clinically significant problems and consider specific clinical disorders. The CBCL is not a measure of psychopathology, although it does indicate risk for eventual psychopathology ( Koot & Verhulst, 1992 ; Verhulst, Koot, & Van der Ende, 1994 ). Future research should address why the link between attachment and problematic behaviors is stronger for externalizing than for internalizing problems, and whether this difference holds for diagnosable pathology (e.g., conduct disorder or major depression). This may be partially a measurement issue. The CBCL is often completed, with reference to a child, by a parent, a teacher, or both. It may be easier to see and remember externalizing behaviors than it is to notice whether a child is experiencing anxiety, sadness, or internal conflicts. Another important diagnostic issue is comorbidity. It is very common for clinicians to assign a person to multiple diagnostic categories. Perhaps attachment theory and related measures could help to identify common processes underlying comorbid conditions and suggest where their roots lie ( Mineka, Watson, & Clark, 1998 ). One likely possibility is emotion regulation and dysregulation influenced by early experiences with parents.

Moreover, additional research is needed on the precise nature of the early childhood predictive factors and issues of causation. Is the issue really attachment status at age 1, for example, or is it continual insecure attachment across years of development? Also, we need to know whether attachment status per se is the issue or whether, for example, poor parenting predicts both attachment classification and psychopathology. Answering these questions will require studies using repeated assessments of attachment, parenting, context, and psychopathology. Further, there is increasing recognition of the importance of genetics and gene-by-environment interactions in understanding the development of psychopathology (e.g., Moffitt, 2005 ). Given preliminary evidence for genetic influences on disorganized attachment ( Lakatos et al., 2000 ) as well as evidence for a gene-by-early-maternal-sensitivity interaction in predicting mental health outcomes ( Bakermans-Kranenburg & van IJzendoorn, 2006 ), this area of inquiry is a very promising avenue for further research. There is also growing evidence concerning environmental effects on gene expression (i.e., epigenetics; Meaney, 2010 ). Especially interesting is the possibility that secure attachment may protect a child from the expression of risky genotypes (see Kochanska, Philibert, & Barry, 2009 , for preliminary evidence).

The Neuroscience of Attachment

Recent methodological advances (e.g., fMRI) have enabled researchers to investigate the neural correlates of attachment in humans. Initial theoretical formulations and empirical findings from the nascent subfield of “attachment neuroscience” ( Coan, 2008 ) have begun to provide answers to important questions about the neurobiology of attachment. Recent advances in this area include: (a) identifying key brain structures, neural circuits, neurotransmitter systems, and neuropeptides involved in attachment system functioning (see Coan, 2008 , 2010 , and Vrtička & Vuilleumier, 2012 , for reviews); (b) providing preliminary evidence that individual differences in attachment can be seen at the neural level in the form of differential brain responses to social and emotional stimuli ( Vrtička & Vuilleumier, 2012 ); (c) demonstrating the ability of attachment figures to regulate their spouses' neural threat response (i.e., hidden regulators; Coan et al., 2006 ); and (d) advancing our understanding of the neurobiology of parenting (see Parsons, Young, Murray, Stein, & Kringelbach, 2010 , for a review).

These early findings suggest important directions for attachment research. First, the vast majority of research on the neurobiology of attachment has been conducted with adults (yet see Dawson et al., 2001 ; White et al., 2012 ). However, researchers have the tools to examine the neural bases of attachment in younger participants. It is feasible to have children as young as 4 or 5 years old perform tasks in a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner ( Byars et al., 2002 ; Yerys et al., 2009 ), and less invasive measures such as EEG are commonly used with infants and even newborns. Additional investigations with younger participants could move the field of attachment neuroscience forward in important ways. For example, researchers could find ethically acceptable ways to extend the work of Coan and colleagues (2006) to parents and children: Just as holding the hand of a spouse attenuates the neural threat response in members of adult couples, holding the hand of a caregiver may have a similar effect on children. Researchers should also extend the sparse literature on how individual differences in attachment in children relate to differential neural responses to social and emotional stimuli.

Second, there is a need for longitudinal investigations that address several important unanswered questions: (a) What does child-parent attachment formation look like at the neural level in terms of the circuits involved and changes in neurobiology over time? (b) What is the role of developmental timing (i.e., sensitive and critical periods in brain development) in the formation of neural circuits associated with attachment? (c) Is the neural circuitry associated with attachment the same for children, adolescents, and adults? Some researchers have suggested that the neural circuitry associated with attachment may be different at different ages ( Coan, 2008 ).

Third, future research should examine the ability of experience to change neural activity in brain regions related to attachment, and should explore potential clinical implications of these findings. For example, Johnson et al. (2013) compared the ability of spousal hand-holding to buffer neural responses to threat before and after couples underwent Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT). They found that EFT increased the ability of hand-holding to attenuate threat responses; similar examination of both parent and child neural activity in response to attachment-related interventions would be informative.

Fourth, it is important for future research to identify which, if any, brain regions are specific to attachment and which are shared with other related social constructs such as caregiving or affiliation more broadly. There is initial evidence that caregiving and attachment involve both unique and overlapping brain regions ( Bartels & Zeki, 2004 ).

Finally, given the inherent interpersonal nature of attachment, future research should attempt to study attachment-related neural processes in situations that approximate as closely as possible “real” social interactions ( Vrtička & Vuilleumier, 2012 ). To date, all studies of the neuroscience of attachment have focused on the neural activity of only one partner in a relationship. By capitalizing on further methodological advances in neuroimaging (e.g., hyperscanning; Montague et al., 2002 ) researchers may be able to examine simultaneously the neural activity of a parent and child while they are interacting.

Attachment, Inflammation, and Health

Evidence is accumulating that attachment insecurity in adulthood is concurrently associated with negative health behaviors (e.g., poor diet, tobacco use; Ahrens, Ciechanowski, & Katon, 2012 ; Huntsinger & Luecken, 2004 ; Scharfe & Eldredge, 2001 ) and problematic health conditions (e.g., chronic pain, hypertension, stroke, heart attack; McWilliams & Bailey, 2010 ). Despite these intriguing cross-sectional findings in adult samples, much less is known about how early attachment relates to long-term health outcomes. One longitudinal study ( Puig, Englund, Collins, & Simpson, 2012 ) reported that individuals classified as insecurely attached to mother at 18 months were more likely to report physical illnesses 30 years later. Two other studies found that early insecure attachment was associated with higher rates of obesity at age 4.5 ( Anderson & Whitaker, 2011 ) and 15 ( Anderson, Gooze, Lemeshow, & Whitaker, 2012 ). Additional longitudinal investigations of the links between early attachment and health outcomes are needed to replicate these findings in different samples using a wider variety of health measures (e.g., medical records, biomarkers, onset and course of specific health problems).

Another goal for future research is to advance our understanding of the processes or mechanisms by which early attachment is related to later health outcomes. Recent proposals that early psychosocial experiences become “biologically embedded” at the molecular level and influence later immune system functioning (e.g., inflammation) provide a promising model with which to pursue this kind of research (see Miller, Chen, & Parker, 2011 , for a review of the conceptual model and its empirical support). In brief, the model proposes that early adverse experiences result in immune system cells with a “proinflammatory phenotype” and neuroendocrine dysregulation leading to chronic inflammation. Inflammation, in turn, is involved in a variety of aging-related illnesses including cardiovascular disease, autoimmune diseases, and certain types of cancer ( Chung et al., 2009 ).

As mentioned earlier, there is mounting evidence that early experiences with caregivers (including their influence on attachment) contribute to the calibration and ongoing regulation of the HPA axis (e.g., cortisol reactivity, diurnal cortisol rhythms), a system that is central to the body's stress response ( Adam et al., 2007 ; Gunnar & Quevedo, 2007 ; Luijk et al., 2010 ; Spangler & Grossmann, 1993 ). The HPA axis also plays an integral role in inflammatory responses and immune system functioning. In addition, there is evidence that early maternal warmth (retrospectively reported) can buffer the deleterious effects of early adversity on pro-inflammatory signaling in adulthood ( Chen, Miller, Kobor, & Cole, 2011 ; see also Pietromonaco, DeBuse, & Powers, 2013 , for a review of the links between adult attachment and HPA axis functioning). Finally, studies show that attachment in adulthood is concurrently related to biomarkers of immunity: attachment-related avoidance is related to heightened levels of the proinflammatory cytokine interleukin-6 (IL-6) in response to an interpersonal stressor ( Gouin et al., 2009 ) and to lower levels of natural killer cell (NK) cytotoxicity (NK cells are involved in immune defense; Picardi et al., 2007 ); attachment-related anxiety is related to elevated cortisol production and lower numbers of T cells ( Jaremka et al., 2013 ).

These initial findings provide an empirical basis for researchers to pursue further the connections between attachment and health. Future research should prospectively examine the relation between early attachment security and biomarkers of inflammation in adulthood. Further, researchers should attempt to elucidate the relations among attachment, HPA axis functioning, inflammation, and the immune system to better understand the biological processes underlying the link between early experience and later health outcomes.

Attachment and Empathy, Compassion, and Altruism

Shortly after the development of the Strange Situation, which allowed researchers to validly assess infants' attachment orientations, there was strong interest in the potential links between attachment security and prosocial motives and behaviors (e.g., empathy, compassion). From a theoretical standpoint, there are reasons to expect that secure children – whose own needs have been responded to in a sensitive and responsive way – will develop the capacity to respond to the needs of others empathically. Several early investigations confirmed the association between child attachment security and empathic responding ( Kestenbaum, Farber, & Sroufe, 1989 ; Sroufe, 1983 ; Teti & Ablard, 1989 ). Over the past 24 years, however, the link between child attachment status and prosocial processes (e.g., empathy, helping, altruism) has received surprisingly little research attention (though see Panfile & Laible, 2012 ; Radke-Yarrow, Zahn-Waxler, Richardson, Susman, & Martinez, 1994 ; van der Mark, van IJzendoorn, & Bakermans-Kranenburg, 2002 ). In contrast, social/personality psychologists have generated substantial and compelling empirical support for a connection between adult attachment and prosocial motives and behaviors.

Mikulincer, Shaver, and colleagues ( Mikulincer & Shaver, 2001 ; Mikulincer, Shaver, Gillath, & Nitzberg, 2005 ; Mikulincer, Shaver, Sahdra, & Bar-On, in press ) have demonstrated that both dispositional and experimentally augmented attachment security (accomplished through various forms of “security priming”) are associated with several prosocial constructs, including reduced outgroup prejudice, increased compassion for a suffering stranger and willingness to suffer in her place, and the ability and willingness of one partner in a couple to listen sensitively and respond helpfully to the other partner's description of a personal problem. In addition, surveys completed in three different countries (United States, Israel, the Netherlands) revealed that more secure adults (measured by self-reports) were more likely to volunteer in their communities (e.g., by donating blood or helping the elderly). Avoidant respondents were much less likely to volunteer, and although anxious respondents volunteered, their reasons for doing so (e.g., to receive thanks, to feel included) were less generous than those of their more secure peers ( Gillath et al., 2005 ).

Further study of how early attachment relates to various forms of prosocial behavior is needed. Developmental attachment researchers would benefit from using the experimental techniques that Mikulincer, Shaver, and colleagues used. Are young children who were classified as secure in the Strange Situation (especially in comparison to children classified as avoidant) more willing to help a suffering individual or more willing to interact with a child from a different ethnic group? Can experimental security “boosts” increase tolerance, empathy, compassion, and altruism in children? There is already robust experimental evidence that infants as young as 14 to 18 months readily engage in altruistic behavior (e.g., retrieving an out-of-reach object for a stranger; see Warneken & Tomasello, 2009 , for a review). To the best of our knowledge, however, no study has examined whether variations in infant attachment predict individual differences in this kind of instrumental helping behavior (although the potential for attachment-related differences has been proposed by Dweck; see Tomasello, Dweck, Silk, Skyrms, & Spelke, 2009 ). Warneken and Tomasello (2009) have proposed that these early helping behaviors reflect a biological predisposition for altruism in infants that begins to be influenced by social and cultural experiences only “a year or two after [the infants] have started behaving altruistically” (p. 400). However, given the innumerable social experiences that infants encounter in the first year of life and the pioneering work by Johnson and colleagues ( Johnson, Dweck, & Chen, 2007 ; Johnson et al., 2010 ) showing that 12- to 16-month-old infants with different attachment patterns have different expectations about others' helpfulness, it may be possible to observe attachment-related individual differences in early helping behaviors earlier than Warneken and Tomasello suggest.

Attachment and School Readiness

In recent years researchers, educators, and policy makers have been increasingly interested in understanding factors that predict children's school readiness and in developing and testing programs that may better prepare children (particularly at-risk children) for school entry. In his 2013 State of the Union Address at the beginning of his second term, President Obama proposed implementing universal, high-quality preschool for all American children with the idea that these early preparatory experiences will enhance school readiness and future academic performance. The focus of much of the initial research on school readiness has been on children's basic cognitive skills such as early literacy and numeracy abilities (e.g., Duncan et al., 2007 ). More recently, researchers have recognized the importance of other competencies such as emotion regulation and social skills (e.g., High and the Committee on Early Childhood, Adoption, and Dependent Care and Council on School Health, 2008 ). Further, High et al. listed “strong nurturing relationships” as one of the universal needs of children that must be met to promote school readiness and positive educational outcomes (p. e1009).

The conclusions reached by High et al. suggest that child attachment security is an important factor to consider when studying school readiness and developing programs designed to improve school readiness (for initial empirical evidence, see Belsky & Fearon, 2002 , and Stacks & Oshio, 2009 ). Decades of research have provided substantial evidence that early attachment security is associated with better emotion regulation capacities and greater social competence (e.g., Cassidy, 1994 ; Sroufe et al., 2005a ; Thompson, 2008 ). In addition, research has demonstrated that secure attachment is associated with better academic performance ( Granot & Mayseless, 2001 ) as well as enhanced cognitive skills and executive functions ( Bernier, Carlson, Deschênes, & Matte-Gagné, 2012 ; Jacobsen, Edelstein, & Hofmann, 1994 ). Thus, as research on school readiness continues to advance, greater consideration of the direct and indirect influences of early attachment security on school readiness is warranted. For example, researchers should test mediational models in which attachment security predicts greater emotion regulation or social competence, which in turn predicts greater school readiness. In addition, both parenting and school readiness interventions could consider whether increasing parental secure base provision fosters a child's school readiness. Moreover, consideration of the extent to which preschool teachers perform secure base and safe haven functions for their young students, and whether these components of the student-teacher relationship relate to young children's classroom functioning will be important (see Commodari, 2013 ).

Attachment and Culture

Bowlby (1969/1982 ) viewed the attachment behavioral system as a product of human evolutionary history, making it cross-culturally universal. Ainsworth's (1967 ; Ainsworth et al., 1978 ) early studies in Uganda and the US provided empirical support for similar attachment processes in very different cultures. Although some researchers have disputed the cross-cultural validity of core tenets of attachment theory (e.g., Rothbaum, Weisz, Pott, Miyake, & Morelli, 2000 ), decades of research strongly suggest that the basic phenomenon and the major kinds of individual differences are universal (see van IJzendoorn & Sagi-Schwartz, 2008 , for a review). Three hypotheses rooted in attachment theory have been examined and supported in cross-cultural research: that secure attachment is the most prevalent pattern in all cultures and is viewed as the most desirable pattern; that maternal sensitivity influences infant attachment patterns; and that secure infant attachment predicts later social and cognitive competence.

Yet much more research is needed. As psychological knowledge, research, and applications become increasingly global, it will become more feasible to map the detailed effects of cross-cultural and contextual differences in parenting, co-parenting, community care, environmental harshness and instability, and conflicts and war on attachment patterns and attachment-related mental health problems. It will be increasingly important to define “culture” and “context” more specifically. Within any large and diverse society, and in every large urban area (in a world increasingly urbanized), there are many cultures and subcultures. Moreover, within any modern society there are large differences in ethnicity, religion, diet, education, income, economic security, and threats to health and the availability of medical care. It is therefore important not to think of differences only between nation states but also within different groups and contexts within each nation.

Translating Attachment Research to Clinical Practice Interventions with Infants and Young Children at Risk for Insecure Attachment

Just as the study of individual differences in attachment began with the study of infants, so the systematic study of how to create attachment-related change focused initially on attempts to alter the developmental trajectory of infants who are at risk of developing or maintaining insecure attachments. Given the substantial and converging longitudinal research underscoring the risks associated with insecure attachment (e.g., poorer mental and physical health and lower social competence), the need to intervene to reduce the risk of insecure attachment is clear. In the past 20 years, researchers and clinicians have developed numerous therapeutic programs to prevent or reduce insecure attachment ( Bakermans-Kranenburg, van IJzendoorn, & Juffer, 2003 ; Egeland, Weinfield, Bosquet, & Cheng, 2000 ; see Berlin, Zeanah, & Lieberman, 2008 , for a review). Despite the fact that a handful of attachment interventions have shown initial success (e.g., Bernard et al., 2012 ; Cassidy et al., 2011 ; Cicchetti, Rogosch, & Toth, 2006 ; Hoffman, Marvin, Cooper, & Powell, 2006 ; Klein Velderman, Bakermans-Kranenburg, Juffer, & van IJzendoorn, 2006 ; Lieberman, Weston, & Pawl, 1991 ; Lyons-Ruth & Easterbrooks, 2006 ; Sadler et al., 2013 ; Toth, Rogosch, Manly, & Cicchetti, 2006 ; van den Boom, 1994 , 1995 ), we have as yet a collection of individual initiatives with little replication. More research is needed to identify the critical targets of attachment interventions and to understand the process of change.

Targets of early intervention

What should an intervention target? Until recently, this question was framed largely as: Should interventions target parental behavior, parental representations, or both? Greater specificity is required. When an intervention targets parental behavior, what specific components of behavior should be targeted? We discussed potential aspects of parental behavior earlier. When an intervention targets parental representations, what specific components should be targeted? Should interventions target representations of the parent her- or himself, of the infant, of the relationship; of the baby as an entity with a mind (e.g., mentalizing approaches; Slade et al., 2005 ); or maternal attributions about the infant's behavior ( Bugental et al., 2002 )?

Several studies (described earlier) suggest additional intervention targets. For example, the evidence that maternal emotion regulation capacities influence parenting ( Dix, 1991 ; Leerkes, Crockenberg, & Burrous, 2004 ; Lorber & Slep, 2005 ; Smith & O'Leary, 1995 ) suggests that targeting maternal emotion regulation capacities might be useful in bringing about change (e.g., the Circle of Security intervention; Hoffman et al., 2006 ). Another target of intervention is suggested by research with non-human primates and other mammals that demonstrates the soothing and regulatory functions that physical contact with an attachment figure can provide ( Hofer, 1994 , 2006 ; Meaney, 2001 ; Suomi, 2008 ; see Feldman, Singer, & Zagoory, 2010 , for such evidence in humans; see also Field, 2011 ). Interventions focused on infant-mother contact may prove useful (see Anisfeld, Casper, Nozyce, & Cunningham, 1990 , for a randomized trial in which mothers assigned to carry their infants in soft baby carriers were more likely to have infants who were securely attached at age 1). Of course, consideration of intervention targets necessarily requires considering moderators of intervention effectiveness. Targeting certain components may be more effective for some mothers than others.

The desire to intervene to reduce the risk of insecure attachment rests on the assumption that doing so in turn reduces the risk of poor child functioning, including a reduction in behavior problems and psychopathology. Remarkably, although there are a number of studies, described above, that show a link between insecure attachment and behavior problems and psychopathology, much less research has focused on whether intervening to reduce the risk of insecure attachment actually leads to a reduction in later problems (yet see Dozier et al., 2006 ; Moss et al., 2011 ; Klein Velderman et al., 2006 ; van den Boom, 1995 ; Van Zeijl et al., 2006 ). Future intervention research should test the change model according to which improving parenting reduces the risk of insecure attachment, which in turn reduces child behavior problems and psychopathology. Given that behavior problems associated with early insecure attachment may not emerge until later in development, and the evidence that the link between insecure attachment and behavior problems grows stronger over time ( Fearon & Belsky, 2011 ), longitudinal studies with long-term outcome assessments will be an important component of future intervention research.

Intervention development and issues of implementation

No attachment intervention has yet achieved widespread implementation. When following the typical efficacy-to-effectiveness clinical model, researchers initially design an intervention with a highly specified protocol, and only once it has proven to be efficacious in a tightly controlled setting do they begin to consider the adaptations needed for effectiveness in real-world settings. With attachment-based infant interventions, the problem has been that initial interventions are typically very expensive, and real-world social agencies attempting to meet the needs of at-risk infants cannot afford them. This is an unfortunate situation, especially because, over the past decade, there has been a call for researchers to attend to issues of implementation during the early stages of intervention planning. For instance, an argument that “the focus on feasibility in the prevention research cycle should not be restricted to the effectiveness stage” has been put forward by Ialongo and colleagues (2006) .

Several components of early attachment-based interventions make implementation at a broad public health level impractical. Many such interventions involve videotaping individual parent-infant interactions and providing individualized parental feedback (e.g., Dozier et al., 2006 ; Klein Velderman et al., 2006 ). This requires considerable resources: extensive training and supervision of staff; expertise and time to create individual diagnostic and treatment plans; and time, space, equipment, skills, and parental assent for individual videotaping. From an attachment perspective, the problem is how to provide an individualized approach that does not require expensive highly skilled staff. This problem has not been easy to solve (e.g., Berlin, Ziv, Amaya-Jackson, & Greenberg, 2005 ). Continued attempts to develop interventions that are widely and affordably implementable are important.

We urgently need evaluations of comprehensive theory- and research-based intervention protocols that can be widely implemented among families whose infants and children are at elevated risk for developing or maintaining insecure attachments . Addressing this need is in keeping with the NIMH (2008) strategic plan's objective of moving interventions to “common practice” more quickly and of examining interventions in “the care setting in which they are delivered” (p. 35). Continued testing of attachment-based interventions should occur further down the efficacy-to-effectiveness stream – with affordable protocols that can be provided through existing service delivery mechanisms. Expensive interventions are not implementable on a broad scale within the current American health care and educational structures.

Intervention development and testing are enormously expensive, yet replication of existing interventions is crucial. We propose that the dedication of resources to development of new interventions occur only when theory, clinical perspectives, or research indicate that existing interventions lack an important component that could reasonably contribute to change.

Interventions during Adolescence

Adolescence is a period of increased risk-taking behavior and mental health disorders ( Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2012 ; Roberts, Attkisson, & Rosenblatt, 1998 ), and attempts to reduce these problematic symptoms and behaviors are important. The dramatic biological and cognitive changes that occur during adolescence have led some researchers to consider this period as a second sensitive period (e.g., Andersen & Teicher, 2008 ; Guttmannova et al., 2011 ), and as such, adolescents may be particularly open to environmental interventions that can lead to improved functioning.

Interventions designed to help adolescents are typically targeted at the reduction of specific problems (e.g., depression or delinquency), and there are many effective interventions for helping troubled adolescents (e.g., Dishion & Kavanagh, 2003 ; Stein, Zitner, & Jensen, 2006 ). Yet given evidence that the link between attachment security and healthy functioning continues to exist in adolescence ( Dykas, Ziv, & Cassidy, 2008 ; Kobak & Sceery, 1988 ; see Allen, 2008 , for a review), increasing adolescent attachment security may also be an effective means of reducing adolescent problems. In other words, does an intervention focused on the adolescent-parent attachment relationship increase the likelihood of reduced problematic adolescent behavior? There has been remarkably little research on this important question. Moreover, the associations among intervention, attachment, and psychopathology may be more complex in adolescence than they are in infancy and early childhood. Another important way to examine the connections among these factors is to design studies to determine whether reducing adolescent psychopathology contributes to secure adolescent attachment.

In an intervention designed to enhance adolescent-parent attachment security – with the idea being that increased security will reduce the prevalence of adolescent problems – questions about intervention approaches arise. For instance, should an intervention include the parent, the adolescent, or both? Bretherton (1992) described Bowlby as the first family therapist because of his proposition that change in a child's attachment to a parent is possible only when there is change within the interaction between the child and the parent (see also Byng-Hall, 1999 ). There has been almost no examination of this proposition in adolescence. One randomized controlled trial ( Diamond et al., 2010 ) showed that Attachment-Based Family Therapy (ABFT) was more efficacious than Enhanced Usual Care in reducing adolescents' depressive symptoms and suicidal ideation.

Policy Implications

Throughout this article we have suggested topics for future research. At least as important are the needs for application of the findings already obtained and increased collaborations among researchers, policy makers, educators, and child service workers. Here we list a few important areas for such efforts.

Attachment research has clearly established the importance of early experiences with parents for child development. Yet far too many parents enter parenthood with insufficient knowledge about child development and the importance of the early parent-child relationship, and without the knowledge and skills needed to parent in a sensitive, responsive manner. Unfortunately, there is almost no future-parent education at any grade level in public schools. In American schools, there seems to be a greater focus on education about sex than about successful parenting. (And most sex education classes do not deal with other aspects of couple relationships, even though there is a considerable body of attachment-related research relevant to establishing and maintaining healthy couple relationships – a foundation for healthy parent-child relationships.) Even at the college level, there are few courses aimed at preparing young adults for healthy marriages and parenting. Researchers and educators should work together to develop future-parent curricula that could be implemented as part of high school and university education. There are several empirically supported parent training programs based on attachment research (described earlier; see Berlin et al., 2008 , for a review), but these have yet to be made a part of general education.

In the context of dramatic social and economic changes, many parents are struggling to strike a balance between work and family responsibilities and to find quality care for their children while the parents are at work or school. There is a need for more flexible work arrangements that recognize child care as a prime societal concern. This includes re-examination of parental leave policies that require parents to return to work too soon after childbirth, either because of company policy or because of financial necessity. In addition, greater attention to the training and screening of childcare workers and prospective foster parents is warranted. In a review of attachment theory and its implications for society, Sweeney (2007) suggested, among several policy implications, “legislative initiatives reflecting higher standards for credentialing and licensing childcare workers, requiring education in child development and attachment theory, and at least a two-year associate's degree course as well as salary increases and increased stature for childcare positions” (p. 342). The massive NICHD childcare study showed that high quality daycare is compatible with secure attachment of young children to their parents, and also that when home conditions make secure attachment unlikely, high quality daycare can increase children's chances of achieving attachment-related security ( NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, 1997 ).

Policies directed at helping families in which one or both parents serve in the military could also be informed by attachment theory and research. Military service often entails frequent moves within the United States and separation of at least one parent from the family during periods of service overseas. In thousands of cases, the separation ends with a soldier's death, and his or her family is left to cope with the tragedy. Attention to helping spouses and children cope effectively with attachment-related stresses that have the potential to damage their lives for years to come has increased in recent years (e.g., Maholmes, 2012 ; see also Riggs & Riggs, 2011 , for consideration of military families within an attachment theory framework), but there continues to be a need for research-informed interventions that consider the particular challenges faced by military families (for discussion, see Miller, Miller, & Bjorklund, 2010 ; Paris et al., 2010 ).

We end with a brief mention of policy implications related to parental incarceration. Elsewhere ( Cassidy, Poehlmann, & Shaver, 2010 ) we have provided reviews and studies related to this issue. Often, incarcerated parents are unable to see their children, and pressures are placed on the rest of extended families, and in many cases on the foster care system. For each adult placed in prison, there are likely to be, on average, more than one or two people outside of prison who suffer from the incarceration. Policy makers could consider the separations and losses that accompany parental incarceration within an attachment framework. Research is needed to assess the value of greater contact between incarcerated individuals and their children, and of parenting interventions that can take place as part of rehabilitation.

Brief Conclusions

Our goal in this article has been to provide a current “state of the art” description of what is known in many important areas of attachment research, discuss gaps in current knowledge, and suggest important avenues for future research and for creating and evaluating practical interventions. Although we have, by design, focused on issues within attachment research specifically, an important enterprise for the future is to consider how attachment is differentiated from, and integrated with, other features of development. As our colleague Alan Sroufe responded when asked his views on the future of attachment research (personal communication, 2012; see also Sroufe, Egeland, Carlson, & Collins, 2005b ), “There is a lot more to personal development than attachment, and there is a lot more even to parenting than attachment. The task is to describe how all of this fits and works together.” That task arises with respect to every phase of development – infancy, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. And the range of issues and factors to be considered is somewhat different at every stage or phase of development.

Certain large goals of any worthy society – the mental and physical health of its members, the optimal development of each individual's interests and capacities, and a safe environment free of violence and hatred – are likely to be achieved only to the extent that infants and children receive the benefits of what Bowlby and Ainsworth called a safe haven and a secure base, which as far as we can see imaginatively into the future are likely to depend on responsive attachment figures. Partly through the efforts of Bowlby, Ainsworth, and their intellectual offspring, it has been possible to improve hospital procedures, reduce child abuse, contribute to better parenting, increase understanding of the development of psychopathology, and to provide a much better understanding of our social nature as mammals, primates, and human beings. With the goal of a mentally and physically healthy human race in mind, we can simultaneously be proud of the accomplishments of attachment researchers and look forward to participating in addressing the many intellectual, clinical, and educational challenges remaining.

Acknowledgments

Author Note: The writing of this article was supported by awards to Jude Cassidy from NIDA (R21 DA025550), to Jason Jones from NIDA (F31 DA033848), and to Phillip Shaver from the Fetzer Institute. The authors are grateful to Susan S. Woodhouse for engaging in extensive conversations about maternal response to distress, and to Kenneth N. Levy for helpful suggestions about links between attachment and psychopathology.

Invited contribution to the 25 th anniversary edition of Development and Psychopathology .

Contributor Information

Jude Cassidy, University of Maryland.

Jason D. Jones, University of Maryland.

Phillip R. Shaver, University of California, Davis.

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Article contents

Attachment theory and research.

• Pehr Granqvist Pehr Granqvist Stockholm University
•  and  Robbie Duschinsky Robbie Duschinsky Sidney Sussex College Cambridge
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190236557.013.51
• Published online: 31 August 2021

Attachment theory was founded by John Bowlby (1907–1990), a British child psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. The theory builds on an integration of evolutionary theory and ethology, cybernetics and cognitive science, as well as psychoanalytic object relations theory. The theory postulates that an attachment behavioral system evolved via natural selection processes. Bowlby conceived of the attachment system as a behavioral control system that continuously monitors the offspring’s proximity to caregivers, which has in turn been associated with protection from dangers and thus increased chances of survival and reproduction in humans’ and many other mammals’ ancestral environments. Attachment is a species-wide phenomenon denoting the strong bonds that children form to their caregiver(s), seeking to maintain proximity and communication, protesting separations, and using the caregiver(s) as a safe haven to return to for comfort and protection and as a secure base to explore the environment from. Attachments take time, maturation, and repeated sequences of interaction to form and are typically observed from the second half of children’s first year of life onward. According to the theory, attachment-related experiences with the caregiver(s) become internalized in the form of cognitive-affective representations of self and others (internal working models [IWMs]) that organize the child’s behavior and displays of affect in relation to the caregiver(s). Although malleable, such IWMs display a certain measure of continuity across time and situations and may generalize to affect the individual’s expectancies and behavioral inclinations in other and later interpersonal relationships. As pioneered by Mary Ainsworth and colleagues, attachments vary in quality, largely depending on the caregiver’s behaviors (e.g., responsivity and sensitivity to the child’s signals), whereas evidence for a direct influence of genetic heritability is limited. Variations in attachment are typically described using two dimensions (secure–insecure, organized–disorganized) subsuming four categories (secure, insecure–avoidant, insecure-resistant–ambivalent, disorganized–disoriented). Much of the empirical research regarding attachment has focused on these variations and their measurement. Ainsworth and colleagues’ Strange Situation Procedure (SSP), applicable for children aged 10–18 months, is often heralded as the “gold standard” attachment measurement tool. The concerted body of research indicates that secure attachment (or associated factors), marked by confidence in the caregiver’s availability, is generally a protective factor in socioemotional development. In contrast, insecure (avoidant and resistant) attachment, characterized by lack of confidence in the caregiver’s availability, is generally a vulnerability factor in development. Disorganized attachment, reflecting confused, conflicted, or apprehensive child behaviors in the presence of the caregiver (in the SSP), is a risk factor in development, most notably for externalizing behavior problems. Notably, the effect sizes observed have typically been small to moderate, and much is unknown about linking mechanisms and moderating influences. Although most readily observed in early childhood, humans form attachments throughout the lifespan. Accordingly, much research has also focused on adult (e.g., spousal) attachment and the intergenerational transmission of attachment from caregivers to their children.

• attachment quality
• development

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Introduction

• Published: August 2020
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Attachment theory is among the most popular theories of human socioemotional development, with a global research community and widespread interest from clinicians, child welfare professionals, educationalists, and parents. It has been considered ‘one of the most generative contemporary ideas’ about family life in modern society. 1 It is one of the last of the grand theories of human development that still retains an active research tradition. Indeed, Simpson and Howland have observed that ‘perhaps no single theory in the psychological sciences has generated more empirical research during the past 30 years than attachment theory’. 2 Attachment theory and research speak to fundamental questions about human emotions, relationships, and development. They do so in terms that feel experience-near, with a remarkable combination of intuitive ideas and counter-intuitive assessments and conclusions. Over time, attachment theory seems to have become more, rather than less, appealing and popular, in part perhaps due to alignment with current concern with the lifetime implications of early brain development. 3 Emerging reports on the economic costs of insecure attachment may make a further contribution to this appeal over the coming years. 4 In a 2018 survey conducted by the British government of organizations working with children in need of help and protection, attachment theory was, by a large margin, cited as the most frequently used underpinning perspective. 5 Attachment ideas have been used to support recognition of the importance of stable, trusting relationships for children’s socioemotional development, with the credibility of links to an established empirical research paradigm. 6 Attachment also provides a framework for interpreting the underlying logic or meaning of the behaviour of children and young people following relational adversities. 7 These qualities have contributed to the popularity of attachment among social workers, 8 clinicians, 9 and health visitors, 10 in training and support provided to foster carers and adoptive parents, 11 in parenting education courses and materials given to parents by health and care professionals, 12 in forensic contexts, 13 and in professional development courses for teachers. 14

Yet the most well-known account of attachment is in many regards based on certain early claims by John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth, the originators of attachment theory, at the expense of their own and others’ later conclusions and qualifications. Ainsworth herself complained of a tendency to describe psychological theories in terms of early findings and ideas; these enter into circulation, ricochet and rebound among domains of practice, and get repeated and repeated. Later developments, even important ones, become difficult to access and incorporate, with textbooks and summaries sustaining an outdated caricature. 15 Already in 1968, Ainsworth wrote to Bowlby with concern: ‘attachment has become a bandwagon’. 16

In the helping professions, the idea of attachment theory is well known, and even forms part of the mandatory curriculum for some professions. At the same time, knowledge of developments in attachment theory and research may not be strong. Qualitative research by Furnivall and colleagues found that ‘there was a sense that professionals knew the word but not the underlying theory … although there was strong support for the importance of the fundamental concept’. 17 Likewise Morison and colleagues found that staff working in residential childcare generally stated in interview that their practice was informed by attachment theory, but struggled to say exactly how. 18 Bennett and Blome have observed that welfare agencies give lip-service to attachment in providing a support for the credibility of their work, but may provide a protocol-focused organizational culture that ultimately discourages practitioners from gaining expertise regarding attachment research and its implications. 19

Elizabeth Meins, one of the UK’s leading attachment researchers through the 1990s and 2000s, has recently turned her back on the paradigm. She has argued that regardless of the scientific advances made by attachment research, the benefits arising from these have been outstripped by the problems caused by public misunderstandings. Meins’ position is unusual. However, it sets out clearly the stakes in the gap between attachment research today and how it is widely understood:

Somewhere along the line, the idea that early attachment is the best predictor of all aspects of later development has gained credence. We need to get out of our ivory towers and unite in calling out this caricature of our research. I stand by my claim that laying so much emphasis on attachment isn’t helpful. Being made to worry about whether you have a secure attachment with your baby won’t make you a better parent; healthcare professionals who are provided with oversimplified hype about the predictive power of attachment won’t give families good advice; and letting non-experts who think they know the attachment literature loose in the political arena won’t result in good policies for children and families. 20

Meins’ remarks suggest the value in taking stock of qualifications, innovations, and amendments made by later researchers in relation to Bowlby’s early claims. One important early attempt at such taking stock was Becoming Attached by Robert Karen, published in 1994. 21 Karen described the emergence of the attachment paradigm in the work of Bowlby and Ainsworth, and its subsequent elaboration by younger researchers such as Sroufe, Main, and Shaver. Karen interviewed all these researchers, as well as conducting extensive study of their published works until 1992. He documented how attachment theory was introduced by John Bowlby in the 1950s and 1960s. He traced how Bowlby sought to revise psychoanalytic theory in order to create a scientific model that nonetheless retained the strengths of psychoanalysis in relevance to clinical work. The theory was not well received at the time by the psychoanalytic community. However, Karen showed, through the work of Mary Ainsworth, how attachment theory entered into American developmental psychology, where it took firm root, first among Ainsworth’s immediate collaborators and then across the subdiscipline. Central to the establishment of attachment theory within developmental psychology, in Karen’s account, was Ainsworth’s introduction of the Strange Situation procedure, an observational assessment of infant–caregiver attachment relationships using separations and reunions to examine infants’ expectations about their caregiver. Ainsworth found that infants’ behaviour in the Strange Situation was associated with observations of the care they received at home. Infants who could confidently explore in the Strange Situation and retreat to their caregiver for comfort when distressed were those whose caregiver had been attentive and responsive to their signals over the first year of life. Ainsworth therefore termed this pattern of behaviour ‘secure attachment’.

Karen also documented how longitudinal studies by Ainsworth’s collaborators and students had shown the value of attachment theory as an approach within developmental psychology, and validated the Strange Situation as a predictive measure. Ainsworth’s student Mary Main demonstrated that patterns of behaviour towards each parent in the Strange Situation are largely independent, confirming Ainsworth’s interpretation that the behaviours were less individual traits than reflections of infant expectations about particular relationships. Qualities from autobiographical interviews with parents were also found to have predictable associations with their children’s behaviour in the Strange Situation. This formed the basis of the introduction of the Adult Attachment Interview. Karen also explored the findings of the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation, led by Alan Sroufe and Byron Egeland. These researchers followed up a large high-risk sample since the 1970s. This longitudinal study has been of particular importance in both supporting and qualifying claims by Bowlby, Ainsworth, and Main about the developmental implications of attachment. Karen also reported another key development: the growth of research on attachment within social psychology, initiated by Phillip Shaver and colleagues, and drawing on self-report assessments of adult attachment.

Karen’s book came out at an important moment for attachment research. Bowlby and Ainsworth were no longer available to act as leaders. Main’s methodological innovations had been introduced but were still in the process of being validated in other laboratories. Karen could discuss the Minnesota group’s follow-up of their sample from infancy to preschool, but the data from later childhood were still being analysed. And Shaver and colleagues had introduced their early ‘love quiz’ self-report measure of adult attachment, but the properties of this assessment were subject to significant criticism. The relationship between the developmental psychologists and the social psychologists was relatively hostile, and it was wholly unclear how the ideas and measures of the two traditions would relate to one another. Yet alongside sorrow at the loss of Bowlby and Ainsworth, and tensions over the future direction of attachment research and theory, it was a time of great excitement for the field. The standing of attachment research as a scientific paradigm had been established by the 1980s, and support from research funders had led to a rapid growth in the size of the field by the mid-1990s. 22

Since Karen’s book, there has been substantial academic scholarship exploring the early years of attachment research from a historical perspective. Inge Bretherton, a student and colleague of Ainsworth, and Jeremy Holmes, a clinician and colleague of Bowlby, also published influential celebratory reviews in the early 1990s. 23 Work to document the emergence of Bowlby and Ainsworth’s research by academic historians began in the late 1990s, and remains thriving today. 24 There has also been a rich tradition of critical discussion of the relationship between Bowlby’s ideas and post-war gender and parenting cultures. 25 However, the important developments in the field of the past 30 years have not been examined by historians, a startling gap in light of the revolutions in theory and method that have taken place in these decades. Peter Fonagy and Chloe Campbell, significant figures in the British attachment research community, have criticised historians of attachment research for focusing too exclusively on Bowlby and Ainsworth, neglecting attention to the ways in which the paradigm has changed over time. 26 These changes are also of great interest for the history of science, illustrating dynamics in the relationship between theory and method in psychological science, debates about the function of categorization, problems in the conceptualization of emotional development, changing appeals to evolutionary theory and ontologies of human nature, and shifts in the relationship between developmental science and its publics. The images of attachment research offered by commentators outside the field are generally outdated, hackneyed, and too often inaccurate. 27 This loses critical psychology access to an influential and superbly rich case—one relevant to major current concerns such as the history of emotion in the human sciences, debates about psychological categorisation, and ways of imagining human relationships. In turn, attachment research loses effective critical interlocutors.

Cornerstones re-examines the background and current approaches of key laboratories that have contributed to attachment research as it exists today. In this way the book traces the development in a single scientific paradigm through parallel albeit separate lines of inquiry. The laboratories in focus, those examined by Karen, exemplify particular advances and dilemmas the field has faced. Cornerstones seeks to use a focus on five research groups as a lens on wider themes and challenges faced by the contemporary field as it has emerged. In doing so, the book uses certain landmarks that suggest some of the fundamental logic, infrastructure, and points of orientation in attachment research as a terrain.

The book in no way aims to be a comprehensive account of attachment research. 28 This scholarship is diverse. It does not form a single totality, but rather a region with points of density and intensity. Both the density and intensity of work within attachment research are structured by research groups, which are shaped by and shape the field. Chapters aim to remain with researchers long enough to offer a sense of their characteristic ways of thinking and tone, to feel them as figures keeping us company—if sometimes quarrelling, sometimes pulling in unison—within the broader history of developments in the field. Readers will note that the book does not contain chapters focusing on the research groups of influential direct students of Ainsworth such as Jude Cassidy, Patricia Crittenden, Roger Kobak, and Bob Marvin, and other research leaders such as Kim Bartholomew, Jay Belsky, Martha Cox, Peter Fonagy, Karlen Lyons-Ruth, Avi Sagi-Schwartz, Sue Spieker, and Marinus van IJzendoorn. A younger cohort of research leaders would also need to be considered in a characterization of contemporary research groups, including—but by no means limited to—Marian Bakermans-Kranenburg, Gurit Birnbaum, Mary Dozier, Robin Edelstein, Pasco Fearon, Chris Fraley, Patrick Luyten, Sheri Madigan, Carlo Schuengel, Jeff Simpson, Gottfried Spangler, and Glenn Roisman. All these figures will feature in the present book, however. And a further book is already underway to examine key research groups that gained prominence only after Karen’s Becoming Attached . This will include attention to major preoccupations of the 1990s and 2000s, such as studies of attachment and the developing brain.

The concept of a ‘generation’ can be used pragmatically to characterise members of a cohort who, facilitated by structural factors that suggest commonalities, regard themselves as facing a bundle of common challenges, including delimitation and appraisal of the legacy of an earlier generation. 29 In an important sense, just as Karen was writing at a point of transition from the first to the second generation of attachment researchers, this book has been written during a transition from the second to the third generation of attachment researchers. The leaders of the research groups considered in this book have, with the exception of Mikulincer, now retired. 30 Consideration of their work is intended to offer an opportunity to examine the strengths and the limitations, and clarify some of the debates, that have characterized the second generation of attachment researchers and which have formed the context in which a new generation of leaders are inheriting the field of attachment research. In a letter to Mary Main, Bowlby wrote that ‘there is no need for the old to learn from the young in order for the population to benefit from youthful innovation. The supersession of an older generation by a younger is sufficient.’ 31 Now it is Main’s own generation who are putting down their tools, and a new set of research leaders who must take stock of what they have learned, and of what hold this learning has on them.

There are several excellent books that have taken a thematic approach in offering the reader a guide and introduction to contemporary attachment research, most notably the Handbook of Attachment edited by Cassidy and Shaver, Understanding Attachment and Attachment Disorders by Prior and Glaser, and Adult Attachment by Gillath, Karantzas, and Fraley. 32 Thompson, Simpson, and Berlin’s Attachment: The Fundamental Questions also will offer a systematic stock-taking of the present state of attachment research when it is published next year. 33 However, a thematic approach to synthesis can risk making an area of research appear seamless and without edges. In particular, it can lose track of the social dynamics, debates, and diverging use of the same terminology that organize a field of inquiry and the relationships between research groups. Thompson has argued that this heterogeneity must be captured by any attempt to understand attachment research today, even if it makes for a more intricate story. 34 The chapters of Cornerstones draw on a complete analysis of published scholarly and popular works by each research group, as well as unpublished doctoral theses published in English where these were available through inter-library loan.

This signals an important limitation. Much of the imagination, passion, and artistry of research, much of its process and messy creation out of different elements, much of its influence by and influence on social interactions, is hidden in textual records, especially those that go into print. 35 Many of the most vital social dynamics of the field of attachment research do not feature in the textual record. For instance, the available texts offer little vantage on interactions between attachment researchers and clinical and social welfare professionals. Some commentators have described attachment theory and research as little more than an ideology for the coercive evaluation, classification, and discipline of families by professionals. 36 In response to such accusations, apologists have countered that attachment theory and research are no different than any other form of knowledge of children and families, and that contemporary attachment research, adequately understood, offers no support for oppression of families. 37 Both claims are likely too flat, masking the diversity within attachment discourses and their changes over time and between contexts. Neither the accusations nor the apologetics are based on empirical research, or on textual evidence. In fact, very little is readily available in the public domain about the circulation of ideas between research and practice. 38 Colleagues and I currently have research on these questions underway, drawing on interviews, focus groups, ethnography, and analysis of a large archive of clinical case records. 39

Yet even if subject to systematic and important limitations, the written record available for a study of important research groups in the history of attachment is extensive. And I have been grateful to have access to some texts in this area beyond the published record. Chapters draw extensively on materials from the John Bowlby Archive at the Wellcome Collection, the Mary Ainsworth Archive at the Nicholas and Dorothy Cummings Center for the History of Psychology, and the Mary Main and Erik Hesse personal archive (currently being catalogued for the Wellcome Collection). 40 These archives provide access to a treasure trove of unpublished lectures and seminars, correspondence, notes, and speculations, and drafts of published works and coding manuals. For Bowlby, I have been able to access the surviving part of his library at Human Development Scotland (the location of the rest of the Bowlby library is unknown, even to his family!). This has permitted study of relevant marginalia—for instance the annotations on his personal copy of the works of Freud. Mary Main and Erik Hesse have also made available the manuscripts of two major unpublished books from 1986 and 1995, describing the methods and ideas of their Berkeley group. Use of unpublished materials, such as correspondence, has helped this book attend to the lines of continuity and discontinuity over time and between research groups.

For readers less familiar with attachment research, it is hoped that Cornerstones can provide a thorough introduction to theories and methods that form the basis for contemporary attachment research. Attention to a number of research groups offers an ‘arsenal of exemplars’ for how key questions have been approached, as well as clarifying the stakes in debates between researchers and clarifying the meaning of terminology. 41 At the same time, for readers more familiar with attachment research, the book seeks to surprise and defamiliarize. Historical inquiry offers a point of access for considering how an area of scientific practice decides its objects, priorities, and tools, and in doing so can provide a way of refreshing a reader’s perspective on the present and its concerns. 42 The interested reader is also advised to review the book’s detailed footnotes, many of which explore some of the peculiar catacombs and other structures underneath the more well-known landscapes of attachment research.

Attachment and historical time

Cornerstones is oriented by the perception that, despite their very substantial differences, historical research and attachment research have points of overlap in how they regard time. 43 Several attachment researchers have, in fact, offered substantial—if scattered—commentary on the idea of history, informed by reading in the history and philosophy of science. From early in his career, Bowlby was wholly convinced of the importance of patients’ history for making sense of their trajectory through life, including the capacity of the past to shape or influence behaviours without the awareness of the individual themselves. As a clinician, history taking was second nature to him. 44 Beyond this, however, Bowlby was an avid, lifelong reader of social and political history in his spare time. He had a strong belief in the value of slow, in-depth historical research, which reached its culmination in his decision to dedicate his final years to a grand study of the life of Charles Darwin. 45 In Bowlby’s time, historians of science tended to shy away from evaluating the ideas of an earlier scientist in light of later developments. This practice was motivated by an effort to truly understand scientific practices in their own context. 46 Bowlby was impatient with this view. Reflecting on his reading of philosophers of science such as Kuhn, Lakatos, and Popper, he had a different image of historical analysis. 47 His book on Darwin treats it as obvious that later scientific developments can help historians understanding what an earlier scientist was attempting to feel out and explore, the constraints they faced, and limitations or tensions within their understanding and terminology.

In the Darwin biography, unpublished materials are treated as different but not necessarily inferior sources of information. Both are asked to play their part in filling out the development of ideas and scientific practices over time. Bowlby felt that history can, and at times should, help ‘exhume’ the ‘archaeological remnant’ of ideas that have been lost or thrust into the background over time. 48 He warned that ‘so long as our history is hidden from us, so long as we hide our history from ourselves, we are very likely to see the present and future in the terms of the past’. 49 In his view, the history of a research paradigm holds open the possibility of greater critical awareness of its ideas and methods, including a sense of what avenues have been or might be more or less fruitful. This can contribute to greater flexibility and freedom of action in facing contemporary dilemmas. Another potential benefit of historical inquiry, Bowlby held, is that such research can directly contribute to ‘the formulation of specific hypotheses and theories’, even if this is not its primary purpose. 50

Bowlby emphasized the ‘appalling complexity’ of history, whether this is the history of societies, persons, or ideas, since it has to capture ‘highly specific interacting events’. 51 Scientific research is partly shaped by the phenomena under investigation. However, Bowlby stated that historians of science, and their emphasis on the social relationships and cultural contexts that underpin research, have had a ‘profound influence on my whole conception of what science is and how scientists operate’. 52 In finding a path through this complexity, Bowlby urged that the historian’s priority must be on attempting to discern what problems a scientist or a group of scientists were trying to solve. 53 If close attention is paid to the problems that were faced in a particular period, comparison between earlier and later developments need not result in anachronism. Cautions are required when pursuing such a project. We should take care not to collapse the problems faced by different periods and how those problems were understood; we must not assume that words always meant the same thing over time; and we must not assume that later developments were inevitable or necessarily the best path that could have been taken. Nonetheless, Bowlby’s book on Darwin strongly evidences a perspective which has gained ground in recent years within the history of science: that earlier and later scientific developments shed light on one another when examined together. 54

Yet, more than this, Bowlby wondered ‘whether something living which has developed historically can ever be restructured without reference to its historical origins as a social institution’. 55 As such, in Bowlby’s view, historical awareness may not just be helpful but actually may be a necessary ingredient for the continued vitality of an area of research. This argument would also be put forward some years later by both historians and developmental psychologists who would describe the use of historical methodology in the critical examination of psychological paradigms as a ‘necessary supplement’ to the hypothesis-testing tradition of academic psychological research. 56

Alan Sroufe and the Minnesota group also offered reflections on what it means to know the past, as part of a deep and abiding concern with the nature of continuities and discontinuities in development over time. 57 Like Bowlby, Sroufe was respectful of history and felt that ‘it is important to bring forward the lessons of the past and at the same time redraw them with an eye on current problems and current understanding’. 58 For Sroufe, the essential commonality between history and developmental psychology lies in the fact that both acknowledge that early events do not determine later ones. Early events shape what is taken forward from the past in ways that then frame subsequent interactions between individuals, groups, or societies and their wider environments. In this account, the past is not used up but continues to inflect the present, perhaps resourcing and supporting, perhaps depleting or obstructing what is now possible: ‘the emerging complexity is not specified by prior features, yet it is founded on them’. 59 Furthermore, in Sroufe’s interpretation of the concept of ‘development’, the present is not the sum of the past. There may well be ways in which earlier forms possessed strengths for particular purposes that have not been passed on to later forms. There remains the potential, in Sroufe’s words, for ‘lessons from the past’. 60

Historical entities like attachment research and the structure of a personality can be imagined as a maze of little streets and squares, with houses from various periods nonetheless situated by earlier structures. It is these structures, which continue to both constrain and enable what is built today, that come into view when science or a human personality is considered in historical terms. Both history and developmental science are oriented by an amazing and strange aspect of the human condition: our pasts are both discontinuous with our present and, disconcertingly, still with us. The two disciplines agree that we make our homes on top of and within the standing structures or ruins of our pasts: ‘though we may be done with the past, the past is by no means done with us’. 61 This perspective on the past suggests a changed attitude to bereavement, to the extent that aspects of the past remain with us. Bowlby held that we can even retain the dead as secure attachment figures at a symbolic/representational level, if we can accept the loss whilst taking courage and reassurance from memories and other aspects of the person’s legacy. 62

Both history and developmental science agree that the past shapes what we can build, where, and with what stability. Both disciplines recognize that important aspects of our lives are often best regarded as by-products of the past, rather than immediately functional and well judged in the present. Yet both perceive that this by-product can be used or adapted responsively, that contingency is material and runs deep. In making sense of such contingency, history and developmental science have significant respective commitments that emphasize the social basis of the self, and the effects of this for the knowing subject. As such, Sroufe and colleagues expressed concern that when the legacy of the past is ‘unnoticed, disallowed, unacknowledged or forgotten’, present-day social practices will likely not be responsive, well judged, or especially resilient to challenges. 63

In agreement with Bowlby’s image of history, Cornerstones takes a stance in proactively evaluating aspects of attachment as a research paradigm. Particular attention is paid to aspects of the history of attachment research that have structured or shaped the present, especially those that have become taken-for-granted over time. Ideas are considered for their cogency, terminology for its clarity, and empirical claims are appraised against the available evidence. Appeals by researchers to earlier or contemporary theory or research for authority or support are evaluated both for the accuracy of the commentary and for the function the citation appears designed to serve. This includes analysis of the ways in which interpretations of Bowlby and Ainsworth have served as sites for alignment or struggle between later researchers. Each chapter identifies the strengths and particular insights associated with the work of the research group under discussion, and changes that have occurred over time in methodology and theory, and a section at the close of each chapter considers some potential limitations.

Much of what goes on within a research group occurs behind the scenes. Where the textual record makes this possible, which is not in every case, the biographical contributories to the research priorities of principal investigators are identified in the introduction to each chapter. However, science is a collective work and has a collective legacy. So chapters attempt to consider the perspectives and efforts of the principal investigators within the context of their work with collaborators and as embedded within a wider context. Each chapter seeks to identify the opportunities, debates, and challenges faced by the field of attachment research, and how these were shaped by and shaped the priorities and concerns of particular research groups, leading to the making and remaking of methodology, knowledge, and authority over time. Chapters are intended to be readable as standalones; none necessarily requires knowledge of the others. However, the cumulative work of the book as a whole will permit comparison and evaluation of the positions of different research groups when confronted with related concerns. The book as a whole is also intended to facilitate translation, since differences in method or terminology have often obscured the relationship between the claims of different groups of researchers.

One of the primary forms of attachment-based intervention with families is video-feedback. Researchers found that showing caregivers exemplars of ‘ideal’ parenting on film was counterproductive. It did not serve as a useful model, and instead lowered the feelings of self-worth and self-efficacy of caregivers. However, for a friendly individual to show caregivers a film of their own behaviour with their child, and watch together, noticing interactions in the film and what stemmed from these moments, had a different effect. This technique has been repeatedly found to have a meaningful effect on adults’ caregiving behaviour (Chapter 6 ). 64   Cornerstones is written with the analogous hope that looking together at the recent past, with joint attention to how things occurred and what then ensued, may form a basis for clarifying how things stand and whether there might be other ways of acting in the present and future. This will likely not always be comfortable reading for attachment researchers. At the same time, Cornerstones is written with affection for the field and its genuine insights into the strange, drunk-dialling human heart. 65

Both attachment research and its reception have had enough polemics already. Yet achieving measured and sincere evaluation is a complex task. There are structural pressures on historians of science and social historians to take a flatly critical stance towards scientific claims about family life, treating this as an inappropriate incursion of science as ideology. As Latour and Bourdieu have observed, the conditions of academic production, which separate critics in a variety of ways from the practices they are describing, obscure internal differences in the object of study and may contribute to a wish to ‘debunk’ the scientific work. 66 There has indeed been a tendency in history and sociology to adopt a stance in which psychological knowledge is regarded as a vast smooth power, without artistry or contingency in its formation. 67 Nonetheless, this tendency for the external observer to be somewhat heedless of the demands practice makes on insiders may, in certain regards, be part of what history has to offer. For instance, Cornerstones closely examines matters—for instance the items of scales for measuring attachment—that researchers themselves have generally simply taken for granted as workable for practical purposes at a local level. Yet judgements about what is workable by individual researchers can have huge cumulative unintended consequences as the years go by. Part of the specific relevance of historical analysis for research psychology is in the identification and description of such consequences. 68

Ainsworth highlighted that empirical research always entails compromises. In her view, heterogeneity among research groups can be to the benefit of psychological science as a whole, since the compromises may well be in different places. 69 Similarly, reflecting on the nature of psychological theory, Sroufe has argued that ‘embracing a particular model of disturbance is analogous to putting on lenses which may bring some issues or questions into focus while distorting others in ways that may not be obvious to the observer’. 70 As suggested by Ainsworth and Sroufe’s reflections, though all contributing to the study of attachment in some sense, the research groups considered in Cornerstones have varied strengths and primary concerns. Treating them together, and with attention to their commentary on and elaborations of one another, helps reveal these differences and their wider stakes. 71 It also helps in understanding the priorities, methodological choices, and terminology of each group, which at all times were, in part, structured toward those communicated by or anticipated from other research groups as well as the wider discipline. Essentially, Cornerstones aims to acknowledge and understand the point of view of particular researchers and research groups, without assuming that this point of view is the only or best one available in the field, even on their own original ideas and results. 72

Ordinary and scientific language

One of the recurrent themes of this book is the way in which communication between research groups, and communication with wider publics, has been hindered by confusion about the meaning of concepts. Part of the appeal of attachment research lies in its central reference to experience-near metaphors and terms such as ‘attachment’, ‘mother’, ‘security’, ‘sensitivity’, ‘disorganization’, ‘coherence’, ‘anxiety’, ‘dissociation’, and ‘trauma’. Yet, equally, part of the difficulty with understanding attachment research is that not one of these terms is used by attachment researchers in line with ordinary language, and rarely with the same meaning between research groups.

It is not unusual for terms to take on a life of their own in shaping human perceptions and actions, both in scientific and ordinary language, a life in turn conditioned by the structures and conditions within which the language occurs. 73 The independent life of language has been an especially common issue for psychological discourse, as previous historians have observed. 74 The researchers discussed in this book from Bowlby onwards have themselves been aware of this issue. For instance, Shaver and Brennan have observed that in ordinary language ‘depression’ can encompass alienation, low self-esteem, helplessness, and dissatisfaction with life. However, psychological researchers may well want to distinguish these states, and investigate their respective contribution to clinical symptoms. 75 Ordinary use of the word ‘depression’ thus diverges from the clinical use of the term—and perhaps both in turn diverge from the term as used in research contexts. Shaver and colleagues have argued that the issue expresses the broader predicament of academic and clinical psychology, which attempt to characterize and support change within the sphere of human everyday life, and therefore begin with the terms and problems of everyday language. 76 And just like everyday life, ordinary language is unruly, multiply invested, and occasionally nutty or treacherous.

However, even if potential confusions with ordinary language is a broader problem for psychology, attachment research has been unusually vulnerable from the start. It is helpful to see that Bowlby was pulled in two directions. 77 On the one hand, he was keen to make use of the advantages of ordinary language. Ordinary language is excellent for doing less precise work, for making evocative claims, and for communicating with diverse audiences in ways that resonate with everyday concerns. 78 It is intrinsically historical and pitted with depth, a reserve of images and connotations. Bowlby wanted to communicate simply and evocatively, making ideas available to a wide public and clinical audiences. He held no tenured academic post, and especially in the 1950s and 1960s, was intent on speaking beyond the academic community to support changes in policy and the lives of children and families. Bowlby also appreciated the flexibility of ordinary language, and the advantages that this could bring to science. He felt that it can be beneficial in the context of working out ideas, to draw on ordinary language without strict definitions ‘for, once a definition is laid down, it tends to straitjacket thought and to control what the worker permits himself to observe’. 79

However, there is also a danger in reliance on ordinary language, which Bowlby came to recognize increasingly over the span of his long career. Use of everyday terms, rich in existing connotations, ‘makes it extremely difficult to tie any specialised meaning to any particular word’. 80 Above all, the connotations of a term from ordinary language can inadvertently accompany the word into scientific language. And no amount of scrubbing and qualifying will ever fully hold back these connotations from influencing discussions between scientists, let alone attempts by scientists to communicate with their publics. 81 In a chapter drafted for his final book, Bowlby expressed regret that Darwin’s intellectual legacy has been damaged by assuming the ordinary language connotations of terms that he in fact used in a technical sense: ‘it has been unfortunate that in his own expositions of his scientific procedures, Darwin uses words and phrases that have misled readers and have resulted in misconceived criticism.’ For instance, ‘where we would say we built an explanatory model, Darwin refers to himself as ‘speculating’, giving the false impression that he lacked rigour or reason as he put forward an explanation. 82

The most basic example of such problems can be seen with the term ‘attachment’ itself, which Benjafield situates as one of the most characteristic examples of linguistic polysemy in all the history of psychology. 83 There is a gulf between the ordinary connotations of the term and how it is used by attachment researchers. And there is a further gap between narrower and broader uses of the term by Bowlby, and then by subsequent attachment researchers. In ordinary language, the word means to bind something to something else, physically or emotionally. In Bowlby’s narrower usage, the word meant a specific set of behaviours and states that facilitate care-seeking. In Bowlby’s broader usage, the word meant all and any intimate relationships. Such multiple investments in the term have had a powerful legacy. They have contributed to the intuitive appeal of attachment theory, making it seem user-friendly to diverse publics. And it has contributed to ceaseless miscommunication by and among researchers. ‘Attachment’ is a fuzzy term, in both the sweet and worst senses. By the 1980s Bowlby admitted ruefully in correspondence that he kept using the word to describe children’s care-seeking behaviours ‘for purely historical reasons’. 84 This was despite the fact that it necessitated work, time and again, to clarify the distinction between the technical usage and the various connotations of the term, including adjudication between his own earlier multiple uses.

One of the leaders of the second generation of attachment research, Everett Waters, acknowledged that attachment theory is worse than most areas of psychology for muddling ordinary and technical scientific language. In Waters’ view, scientists do and likely should use ordinary language regularly, calling on common metaphors and ideas in order to communicate technical notions. This can be a generative process, contributing helpfully to new theoretical and methodological developments, as well as the circulation of forms of knowledge. 85 However, Waters has argued, when scientific and ordinary language are mistaken for one another, the results can be problematic ways that are difficult to notice and redress:

In psychology, and more so, attachment theory, the words we use to label ideas often get in the way. They misdirect us in what we think we should do next. Many implications that people draw from their knowledge of attachment theory are probably not rigorously derived from the logic of the underlying theory. Take this example: you ask a college class, what kinds of developmental problems might arise from being insecure in your attachment to your mother? They start thinking that insecure sounds like afraid, fearful, anxious, shy, uncomfortable, maybe incompetent, and the reasoning goes on to a conclusion that insecure is therefore a bad thing. This is not being deduced from some mechanism that is spelled out in attachment theory. It is merely associative. 86

Unless we can be sure that others know just what we mean by ‘attachment’, Waters argued, severe cautions are needed. In fact, ‘the less often we use the word “attachment” in this discussion, and the more often we refer specifically to what you are asking about, the better off we’ll all be’. 87 However, Waters’ warning has gone generally unheeded. Attachment research has had comparatively strong platforms for reporting and synthesizing empirical findings but weak platforms for the critical discussion of concepts and terminology—besides, to an extent, the journal Attachment & Human Development and the Handbook of Attachment . 88

Luyten has argued that ‘much of the language of … attachment theory may have had its time. There is an unmistakable tendency to reify.’ 89 Yet any attempt to replace or bypass unclear terminology related to attachment will be difficult, perhaps even counter-productive, unless the various meanings of concepts within the scientific community are understood. There can be a variety of ways of discerning such meanings, including interviews, focus groups, and Q-sort tasks. 90 However, historical analysis of written material has particular advantages for tracing lines of continuity and discontinuity in the uses of terms. The five research groups considered in this book are cornerstones in the development of the research paradigm as it exists today, and have in many regards set the terms of discussion. They are also, perhaps with the exception of the Minnesota group, the prime originators of the most serious confusions in the use of attachment language. As a result, historical study of the contributions of these research groups and the debates between them offers both an introduction to and a clarification of the central concepts and terminology of attachment research.

Summary of chapters

Chapter 1 focuses on the work of John Bowlby. It describes the lines of agreement and disagreement between Bowlby and the psychoanalytic theory of his day, and the extent of his debt to Robert Hinde and ethology. The chapter clarifies ways in which incompatibilities between psychoanalysis and ethology have contributed to tensions within Bowlby’s work and subsequent attachment theory. Access to Bowlby’s unpublished correspondence and notes provides the basis for a new interpretation of several of Bowlby’s key concepts, including monotropy and aggression. The chapter discusses Bowlby’s unpublished book written with Jimmy Robertson in the 1950s and 1960s on the effects of major separations experienced by young children. And the chapter presents previously unavailable ideas from Bowlby’s unpublished book on defence mechanisms from the 1960s, which sheds light on his later information processing model. The chapter also pieces together the full story of Bowlby’s work with a patient, Mrs Q., the account of which is scattered across a dozen of Bowlby’s writings. The chapter closes by discussing some ways in which limitations in Bowlby’s work have proven obstacles for later attachment researchers.

Though the terms ‘attachment theory’ and ‘attachment research’ are sometimes used interchangeably, attachment as an empirical research paradigm may be regarded as having fully commenced only with Ainsworth’s work. Chapter 2 begins by introducing the biographical context of Ainsworth’s work, including her early work at Toronto University. Ainsworth’s concept of ‘security’ and her attempt to develop self-report measures of security are reappraised, placing Ainsworth’s work in the context of her debt to her teacher Blatz. The chapter then draws on Ainsworth’s published and unpublished writings to consider the strengths and limitations of her Uganda ethnography and Baltimore longitudinal study. This helps clarify Ainsworth’s goals in her development of a scale to measure sensitivity and in developing the Strange Situation procedure. A central concern of the chapter is close examination of the theoretical commitments contained in Ainsworth’s choices in the design of her coding protocols, including the justifications she provided for characterizing individual differences in infant attachment as three categories, and how she handled discrepancies. The chapter also considers the work of Ainsworth’s collaborator and student Everett Waters. Waters played a critical role in the validation of Ainsworth’s measure, and stimulated an influential debate about the stability of attachment over time. However, he also acknowledged the limitations of the Strange Situation procedure, and developed other measures for assessing attachment in childhood and adulthood based on Ainsworth’s ideas. In addition, the chapter addresses other concerns that have been raised regarding Ainsworth’s work, including the extent of its cross-cultural validity.

Chapter 3 explores the contributions of Mary Main, Erik Hesse and the Berkeley longitudinal study. The Berkeley group generated the dominant approach to method and theory for the second generation of attachment research, and helped establish the priorities and values of the field over recent decades. Drawing on archival materials, the introduction offers a new interpretation of the development of Main’s work. This highlights the fundamental role she gave to attentional processes, and leads to a new account of how Main conceptualized minimizing and maximizing attachment strategies. Recognition of the centrality of attention to Main’s theory also helps makes sense of her introduction of the disorganized attachment classification and her development of the Adult Attachment Interview. The chapter draws on two unpublished books by Main to describe her methodological innovations, and how they were achieved, and also to clarify misunderstandings of her goals. This includes discussion of Main and colleagues’ use of the concepts of ‘disorganization’, ‘fear’, and ‘internal working model’, and how these related to earlier ideas by Bowlby and Hinde. A particular focus of the chapter is on the six-year systems for assessing attachment developed by Main and colleagues. Relatively little information about these coding systems is in print, and yet close consideration of these methods offers a powerful window into Main’s thinking about attachment and development, as well as into her more well-known assessments of infant and adult attachment. The chapter also draws on an examination of the development of the Adult Attachment Interview coding system from the 1980s to the 2000s to offer clarifications regarding Main and Hesse’s ideas regarding ‘lack of resolution’ of loss and trauma. The precise relationship between trauma and dissociation in their thinking—which has often been confused by subsequent attachment researchers—is described, drawing on a major theoretical work by Main and Hesse published only in Italian.

Chapter 4 considers the work of Alan Sroufe, Byron Egeland, and the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation. The Minnesota group has served as a fundamental source of stability and support for the developmental tradition of attachment research. The chapter begins by describing the origins of the Minnesota study in the context of growing policy and academic interest in the consequences of child maltreatment. The chapter presents the first sustained commentary on Sroufe’s ideas about emotion, attachment, and development. These ideas were vital to the selection of measures and interpretation of results in the longitudinal study. Headline concepts like ‘felt security’ were influential for subsequent attachment theory. However, other ideas such as affects as social currency, and intrusive intimacy, are interesting but less well known. The chapter examines the antecedents and sequalae of attachment in the Minnesota study. It then considers the contribution made by the study of attachment at Minnesota to the emergence of developmental psychopathology as a movement within developmental science. This includes consideration of Sroufe, Egeland, and colleagues’ distinctive approach to conceptualizing risk and resilience. Two case studies from the Minnesota study are used to illustrate how the multiple, rich assessments conducted over decades offered the research group an encompassing picture of human lives. And the legacy of Sroufe and Egeland is discussed for two former students who have subsequently returned to take leadership roles at Minnesota: Dante Cicchetti and Glenn Roisman. The chapter also discusses ways in which Sroufe and Egeland’s theoretical commitment to holism has contributed to both strengths and limitations in their work.

Chapter 5 discusses Phillip Shaver, Mario Mikulincer and the Experiences in Close Relationships scale, the most widely used self-report measure of adult attachment. The chapter begins by revisiting Ainsworth’s reasons for abandoning self-report measures of security, and Shaver and Hazan’s reason for reigniting this approach. Shaver and Hazen’s development of the ‘love quiz’ and early work on adult attachment is discussed, considering ways in which their ideas converged and diverged from earlier attachment theory. The chapter then explores the creation of the Experiences in Close Relationships scale, which has provided a methodological and theoretical basis for the social psychological tradition of attachment research over subsequent decades. The chapter clarifies Shaver and Mikulincer’s approach to conceptualizing and measuring attachment, and secure base use, and minimizing and maximizing strategies. It is anticipated that this will help translation between the social psychological and developmental traditions of attachment research. The chapter also considers original contributions made by Shaver and Mikulincer and colleagues through their inquiries into the relationship of adult attachment styles with sexuality and with religious practices. The chapter closes with examination of the items of the Experiences in Close Relationships scale, and the ways in which the mechanics of the measure have limitations for capturing the implications of both security and trauma for adult attachment.

Acknowledgements

Work on this book has taken five years, during which time I have accumulated an absurd number of debts. A more detailed account of the experience and nature of these accumulated debts can be found in Duschinsky, R. (2019) Attachment and the archive: barriers and facilitators to the use of historical sociology as complementary developmental science. Science in Context , 32(3), 309–26.

First off, my apologies are due to my father for failing, as yet, to turn Chapter 3 into a film. I agree that it should be. The reader is welcome to be in touch with advice for casting. More generally, I would be delighted to hear from readers and to learn from their thoughts about attachment research, past and present.

I am grateful to my mother for first encouraging me to read Bowlby as a teenager. Having ideas from attachment theory as a reference point through adolescence and adult development was a true resource. I have also taken courage from witnessing her indomitability in the face of health challenges, as well as her thirst for adventure. Conversations with my wife have likewise contributed directly to this book. Cornerstones benefited from her good judgement in appraising forks in the road, her insights as a clinician, her strength in the face of our losses, and from the countless ways in which our relationship makes me happy.

The basis of Cornerstones has been access to the John Bowlby, Mary Ainsworth, and Mary Main/Erik Hesse Archives. My first thanks therefore must go to the Wellcome Collection for hosting the Bowlby Archive (reference: PP/Bow/), the Nicholas and Dorothy Cummings Center for hosting the Ainsworth Archive, and to Mary Main, Erik Hesse, and Naomi Gribneau-Bahm at Berkeley for their efforts to make materials available for study (soon to arrive at the Wellcome Collections). These are inexhaustible, miraculous collections, and I feel deeply lucky to have had access to them. This archival research has been enriched by the kindness Mary Main and Erik Hesse have shown me, in the course of years of correspondence and multiple visits. This has been a transformative gift. I have especially appreciated our wider conversations about poetry and family, as well as their patience with my endless questions and criticisms. And—on a personal level—I have appreciated the chance to see, and hopefully learn something from, a marriage so pervaded in every part by affection and security.

Special thanks are due to the Wellcome Trust for making it possible for me to work on this book (Grant WT103343MA), and for encouraging the menagerie of spin-off projects. I have appreciated Dan O’Connor, Tom Bray, Lauren Couch, Jack Harrington, Jenny Haynes, and Ross MacFarlane, among others, for their faith in me. Chapter 3 was enhanced by Mary Sue Moore’s generosity in sharing the detailed notes she took during the 1987 Adult Attachment Institute in London.

Among colleagues, I am grateful to Sarah Foster, an ally and friend. Sarah’s creativity, meticulousness, and insight have fed this project from the very start, and helped it grow. Thanks are similarly due to Sophie Reijman, who has also been an ally and friend on this journey. It has been a joy and a privilege to work with her. Cornerstones is dedicated to Sophie, and to León, her new little one. Marinus van IJzendoorn and Marian Bakermans-Kranenburg have been unstinting in their generosity and care, not least in encouraging Sophie Reijman to come to join me at Cambridge in the first place. I have learnt so much from discussions with them across the themes of this book, and had great fun spending time together.

Affectionate thanks are likewise due to Judith Solomon for having me to stay during her Fulbright Visiting Professorship at Vienna University, a visit that has subsequently formed the basis for many varied and fun conversations. A reader who would like to see ‘proceedings’ from these conversations might take a look at Duschinsky, R., Greco, M., & Solomon, J. (2015) The politics of attachment: lines of flight with Bowlby, Deleuze and Guattari. Theory, Culture & Society , 32(7–8), 173–95; or Solomon, J., Duschinsky, R., Bakkum, L., & Schuengel, C. (2017) Toward an architecture of attachment disorganization: John Bowlby’s published and unpublished reflections. Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry , 22(4), 539–60.

My grateful thanks to Martin Baum, Charlotte Holloway, Janine Fisher, Julie Musk and Lucía Pérez at Oxford University Press for their support for this book.

Chapters of this book have benefited greatly from feedback from Marian Bakermans-Kranenburg, Sasha Ban, Kazuko Behrens, Richard Bowlby, Jean-François Bureau, Betty Carlson, Patricia Crittenden, Tsachi Ein-Dor, Jo Faulkner, Pasco Fearon, Chris Fraley, Lydia Fransham, Pehr Granqvist, Philip Heslop, Erik Hesse, Jeremy Holmes, Juliet Hopkins, Michael Lamb, Mary Main, Karin Maraney, Bob Marvin, Mario Mikulincer, Mary Sue Moore, Mikhael Reuven, Anne Rifkin-Graboi, Glenn Roisman, Avi Sagi-Schwartz, Jessica Saffer, Carlo Schuengel, Judith Solomon, Alan Sroufe, Paul Stenner, Alessandro Talia, Anne Tharner, Ross Thompson, Marinus van IJzendoorn, Marije Verhage, Mary Jo Ward, Everett Waters, and Judy Keiner. I am also grateful to other researchers who have offered encouragement for this work, including but by no means limited to Byron Egeland, Kelly Brennan-Jones, Steve Farnfield, Peter Fonagy, Deborah Jacobvitz, Kasia Kozlowska, Mirjam Oosterman, David Shemmings, Gottfried Spangler, Ruan Spies, Phil Shaver, Miriam and Howard Steele, Frank van der Horst, Sue White, David Wilkins, and Matt Woolgar.

I am grateful to Tommie Forslund and Kate White for all that I have learnt from them in the course of editing the Attachment Reader for Wiley and Trauma and Loss: Key Texts from the John Bowlby Archive for Routledge. The Bowlby family have been remarkable in their wholehearted support of these endeavours, and their helpful feedback.

At Cambridge, I am grateful to Jonathan Mant and the Primary Care Unit, who provide my academic home and secure base. The last stage of the book’s composition has been bewildering and painful on various fronts in terms of losses and family health. Jonathan’s kindness has helped make it possible to continue. I have similarly felt fortunate to be part of Sidney Sussex College, which has been a supportive community at every turn. Particular thanks are due to Max Beber, Richard Penty, Brett Gray, and Gary Gerstle for their availability through difficult times. I have benefited from the mentorship of Mary Dixon-Woods, Claire Hughes, and Susan Golombok, who have been role models and ever-thoughtful friends. Finally, I feel deeply fortunate for the intellectual companionship and camaraderie of my immediate research group: Lianne Bakkum, Helen Beckwith, Barry Coughlan, Sarah Foster, Julia Mannes, Sophie Reijman, Sam Reisz, Guy Skinner, and Melody Turner. I am grateful to them for conversations about the ideas contained in this book as they have pursued aligned inquiries with other methodologies. And I am thankful for their unwavering support through the challenges of the last year.

  Pittman, J.F. (2012) Attachment orientations: a boon to family theory and research. Journal of Family Theory & Review , 4(4), 306–10 .

  Simpson, J.A. & Howland, M. (2012) Bringing the partner into attachment theory and research. Journal of Family Theory & Review , 4(4), 282–9, p.282 .

  Wastell, D. & White, S. (2017) Blinded by Science: The Social Implications of Epigenetics and Neuroscience . Cambridge: Policy Press . Discourses of ‘interpersonal neurobiology’, and the work of Allan Schore in particular, have been important for the take-up of appeals to attachment within popular and policy discourses emphasising the importance of child development for the brain. See, for example, Schore, A.N. (2001) Effects of a secure attachment relationship on right brain development, affect regulation, and infant mental health. Infant Mental Health Journal , 22(1–2), 7–66 ; and building from Schore’s work, Gerhardt, S. (2014) Why Love Matters: How Affection Shapes a Baby’s Brain , 2nd edn. London: Routledge . Schore’s work has been much less influential within the attachment research community. An exception is discussed in Chapter 3 .

  Bachmann, C.J. , Beecham, J. , O’Connor, T.G. , Scott, A. , Briskman, J. , & Scott, S. (2019) The cost of love: financial consequences of insecure attachment in antisocial youth. Journal of Child Psychology & Psychiatry , 60 (12), 1343-50 .

The particular utility of attachment ideas for clinicians and child welfare practitioners, increasing the credibility of practice through association with the evidence-base of attachment research, is praised directly in Bennett, C.S. & Nelson, J.K. (2008) Closing thoughts: special issue on attachment. Clinical Social Work Journal , 36, 109–11 . Concern about many ‘attachment-based’ therapies as pseudoscience has been raised by Mercer, J. (2019) Conventional and unconventional perspectives on attachment and attachment problems: comparisons and implications, 2006–2016. Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal , 36(2), 81–95 .

E.g. Haight, W.L. , Kagle, J.D. , & Black, J.E. (2003) Understanding and supporting parent–child relationships during foster care visits: attachment theory and research. Social Work , 48(2), 195–207 ; Farnfield, S. & Holmes, P. (eds) (2014) The Routledge Handbook of Attachment: Assessment . London: Routledge .

An important contribution to the popularity of attachment theory among social workers, especially in the UK, was made by Howe, D. , Brandon, M. , Hinings, D. , & Schofield, G. (1999) Attachment Theory, Child Maltreatment and Family Support: A Practice and Assessment Model . London: Palgrave .

For a useful review see Slade, A. & Holmes, J. (2017) Attachment in Therapeutic Practice . London: SAGE .

  Laybourne, G. , Andersen, J. , & Sands, J. (2008) Fostering attachments in looked after children: further insight into the group-based programme for foster carers. Adoption and Fostering , 32(4), 64–76 ; Benesh, A.S. & Cui, M. (2017) Foster parent training programmes for foster youth: a content review. Child & Family Social Work , 22(1), 548–59 .

  Wall, G. (2018) ‘Love builds brains’: representations of attachment and children’s brain development in parenting education material. Sociology of Health & Illness , 40(3), 395–409 . Attachment is a module in the Ready Steady Baby book, given to all new parents in Scotland. https://www.nhsinform.scot/ready-steady-baby/pregnancy/relationships-and-wellbeing-in-pregnancy/attachment-and-bonding-during-pregnancy .

  Ministry of Justice (2011) Working with Personality Disordered Offenders: A Practitioner’s Guide . London: HMSO ; Baim, C. & Morrison, T. (2011) Attachment-Based Practice with Adults: Understanding Strategies and Promoting Positive Change . Hove: Pavilion Publishing ; Brown, R. & Ward, H. (2012) Decision-Making within a Child’s Timeframe: An Overview of Current Research Evidence for Family Justice Professionals Concerning Child Development and the Impact of Maltreatment . London: Childhood Wellbeing Research Centre ; Crittenden, P.M. , Farnfield, S. , Landini, A. , & Grey, B. (2013) Assessing attachment for family court decision making. Journal of Forensic Practice , 15(4), 237–48 .

Ainsworth, M. (1968) Letter to John Bowlby , 27 April 1968. PP/Bow/K.4/12: ‘Attachment has become a bandwagon. There are so many people now interested in research in this area, and so many approaches, both theoretical and methodological. I am afraid that people will leap in in a half-baked way, that findings will be equivocal or conflicting, and that perhaps interest will move away from “attachment” dismissing it as one more area that did not “pan out”.’

  Morison, A. , Taylor, E. , & Gervais, M. (2019) How a sample of residential childcare staff conceptualize and use attachment theory in practice. Child & Youth Services , DOI: 10.1080/0145935X.2019.1583100 .

  Bennett, S. & Blome, W.W. (2013) Implementing attachment theory in the child welfare system: clinical implications and organizational considerations. In J.E. Bettmann & D.D. Friedman (eds) Attachment-Based Clinical Work with Children and Adolescents (pp.259–83). New York: Springer .

  Karen, R. (1994) Becoming Attached . New York: Warner Books . Karen’s book developed an earlier article: Karen, R. (1990) Becoming attached. The Atlantic , February . Karen’s stock-taking not only was influential for the public reception of attachment theory, but also influenced subsequent attachment research, such as providing a prompt for the development of the ‘Circle of Security’ intervention: Powell, B. , Cooper, G. , Hoffman, K. , & Marvin, B. (2016) The Circle of Security Intervention . New York: Guilford, p.9 .

The boom in funding for attachment research in the 1990s is discussed in White, K. & Schwartz, J. (2007) Attachment here and now: an interview with Peter Fonagy. Attachment: New Directions in Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy , 1(1), 57–61 .

  Bretherton, I. (1992) The origins of attachment theory: John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth. Developmental Psychology , 28(5), 759–75 ; Holmes, J. (1993) John Bowlby and Attachment Theory . London: Routledge .

E.g. Van Dijken, S. (1998) John Bowlby: His Early Life: A Biographical Journey into the Roots of Attachment Theory . London: Free Association Books ; Mayhew, B. (2006) Between love and aggression: the politics of John Bowlby. History of the Human Sciences , 19(4), 19–35 ; van der Horst, F. (2011) John Bowlby—From Psychoanalysis to Ethology: Unravelling the Roots of Attachment Theory . Oxford: Blackwell .

E.g. Birns, B. (1999) I. Attachment theory revisited: challenging conceptual and methodological sacred cows. Feminism & Psychology , 9(1), 10–21 ; Vicedo, M. (2013) The Nature and Nurture of Love: From Imprinting to Attachment in Cold War America . Chicago: University of Chicago Press . As Ruck observes, the popularity of the development of attachment theory for historians of science resides at least in part in the fact that ‘the theory offers a looking glass into the social foundations and effects of science; the function and logic of scientific controversies and disciplinary hierarchies; and the interrelation of descriptive and prescriptive scientific theories, scientific and popular discourse, and science and ideology all at once’ : Ruck, N. (2014) Review: Marga Vicedo. The nature and nurture of love. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences , 50(4), 410–11, p.410 .

  Fonagy, P. & Campbell, C. (2016) Attachment theory and mentalization. In A. Elliott & J. Prager (eds) The Routledge Handbook of Psychoanalysis in the Social Sciences and Humanities (pp.115–31). London: Routledge, p.123 .

For an example of a work in critical psychology that does little more than repeat stock criticisms with little relevance to contemporary attachment research, see Walsh, R.T.G. , Teo, T. , & Baydala, A. (2014) A Critical History and Philosophy of Psychology . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .

One expression of the sheer scale of the historical background to contemporary attachment research is the six-volume edited work of Slade, A. & Holmes, J. (eds) (2014) Attachment Theory . London: Sage . The editors aimed to collect 60 essential papers; however, 119 papers ultimately were judged indispensable. On the diversity of factors involved in canon formation, and above all the importance of subsequent resonance, see Fishelov, D. (2010) Dialogues with/and Great Books: The Dynamics of Canon Formation . Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press .

The idea of generations in attachment research is heuristic rather than intended as a simple statement of fact. Certainly, there are figures who do not fall easily within one generation or the other in terms of age and attitudes; Jude Cassidy, Jay Belsky, Marinus van IJzendoorn, and Gottfried Spangler are all clear examples. And the present book is centrally concerned with changes over time regarding theory, method, and research priorities that do not divide by generation. On the concept of ‘generations’ see Aboim, S. & Vasconcelos, P. (2014) From political to social generations: a critical reappraisal of Mannheim’s classical approach. European Journal of Social Theory , 17, 165–83 .

Ainsworth’s first doctoral students at Johns Hopkins graduated in 1972, among them Mary Main; her final doctoral students were Jude Cassidy in 1986 and Carolyn Eichberg in 1987. This means that most of Ainsworth’s doctoral students have moved into retirement over the past decade.

Bowlby, J. (1970) Letter to Mary Main , 18 November 1970. PP/Bow/J.4/1.

  Cassidy, J. & Shaver, P. (eds) (2016) Handbook of Attachment: Theory, Research, and Clinical Applications , 3rd edn. New York: Guildford ; Prior, V. & Glaser, D. (2006) Understanding Attachment and Attachment Disorders: Theory, Evidence and Practice . London: Jessica Kingsley Press ; Gillath, O. , Karantzas, G.C. , & Fraley, R.C. (2016) Adult Attachment: A Concise Introduction to Theory and Research . London: Academic Press . See also Holmes, P. & Farnfield, S. (2014) The Routledge Handbook of Attachment . London: Routledge .

  Thompson, R.A. , Simpson, J.A. , & Berlin, L. (eds) (2020) Attachment: The Fundamental Questions . New York: Guildford .

  Thompson, R.A. (2017) Twenty-first century attachment theory. In H. Keller & K. Bard (eds) The Cultural Nature of Attachment: Contextualizing Relationships and Development (pp.301–19). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, p.303 .

  Schickore, J. (2008) Doing science, writing science. Philosophy of Science , 75(3), 323–43 .

For example, Smeeton puts this polemically, alleging that ‘we watch as the next generation of social workers suffer the consequences of intellectual inbreeding, fumbling through practice with webbed theories and six-fingered methodologies that give up on families unable to reach the optimal state of a “secure pattern” attachment with their child’. Smeeton, J. (2017) From Aristotle to Arendt: a phenomenological exploration of forms of knowledge and practice in the context of child protection social work in the UK. Qualitative Social Work , 16(1), 14–28, p.16 . See also Garrett, M.P. (2017) Wired: early intervention and the ‘neuromolecular gaze’. British Journal of Social Work , 48(3), 656–74 . Such criticisms are not based on empirical work on how attachment research is conducted, transmitted, or applied.

One of the few studies found that the more training professionals had in attachment theory, the less likely they were to make judgemental comments about parents’ caregiving behaviours. McMahon, C. , Huber, A. , Kohlhoff, J. , & Camberis, A.L. (2017) Does training in the Circle of Security framework increase relational understanding in infant/child and family workers? Infant Mental Health Journal , 38(5), 658–68 .

Some early findings are presented in Reijman, S. , Foster, S. , & Duschinsky, R. (2018) The infant disorganised attachment classification: ‘Patterning within the disturbance of coherence’. Social Science & Medicine , 200, 52–58 .

Occasional further manuscripts have been made available by other attachment researchers including Chris Fraley, Klaus and Karin Grossmann, and Alan Sroufe.

Bowlby, J. (1974) Marginalia on Kuhn, second thoughts on paradigms . PP/Bow/H.98: Heavily underlined: ‘Acquiring an arsenal of exemplars, just as much as learning symbolic generalisations, is integral to the process by which a student gains access to the cognitive achievements of his disciplinary group’ (p.471).

This function of the history of psychology is discussed well in Capshew, J. (2014) History of psychology since 1945: a North American review. In R. Backhouse & P. Fontaine (eds) A Historiography of the Modern Social Sciences (pp.144–82). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .

The links between historical research and attachment research in this regard relate especially to researchers in the developmental tradition. The social psychological tradition of attachment research has offered fewer relevant reflections on the idea of history, reflecting a predominant tendency in the broader discipline of social psychology. However, see Billig, M. (2018) Those who only know of social psychology know not social psychology: a tribute to Gustav Jahoda’s historical approach. Culture & Psychology , 24(3), 282–93 .

  Bowlby, J. ( c .1932–33) History taking; methods of examining . PP/BOW/D.2/13 .

  Bowlby, J. (1990) Charles Darwin: A Life . New York: Norton .

  Wilson, A. & Ashplant, T.G. (1988) Whig history and present-centred history. The Historical Journal , 31(1), 1–16 .

See Bowlby, J. (1982) A case of mistaken identity. Higher Education Quarterly 36(4): 328–32 ; Bowlby, J. (1962) Notes on Feyerabend . PP/BOW/H.99 ; Bowlby, J. (1974) Marginalia on Kuhn, Second Thoughts on Paradigms . PP/Bow/H.98 .

  Bowlby, J. (1976) In Dr Martin Bax. Are Mothers Necessary? Radio 3, October 1976. PP/Bow/F.5/7 .

  Bowlby, J. (1989) Attachment and Loss: Continuing Education Seminars. Film produced by David Scott May and Marion Solomon . Distributed by Insight Media .

  Bowlby, J. & Dahrendorf, R. (1958) Summary of discussions and topics for final session. Seminar delivered to members of the Stanford Conflict Seminar, February 1958. PP/Bow/H.67 . See also Chang, H. (2017) Who cares about the history of science? Notes and Records , 71(1), 91–107 .

  Bowlby, J. (1982) A case of mistaken identity. Higher Education Quarterly , 36(4), 328–32 .

  Bowlby, J. (1979) The ten books which have most influenced my thought, 24 October 1979. PP/Bow/A.1/8 .

  Bowlby, J. (1981) Jean Piaget: some reminiscences. The Tavistock Gazette , 5, 3–4, p.4 .

  Tosh, N. (2003) Anachronism and retrospective explanation: in defense of a present-centred history of science. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science , 34, 647–59 ; Oreskes, N. (2013) Why I Am a Presentist. Science in Context , 26(4), 595–609 ; Loison, L. (2016) Forms of presentism in the history of science: rethinking the project of historical epistemology. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A , 60, 29–37 .

  Bowlby, J. ( c .1950) Marginalia on Bronfenbrenner’s ‘Toward an integrated theory of personality’. PP/Bow/J.9/37 .

  Van IJzendoorn, M. & van der Veer, R. (1984) Main Currents of Critical Psychology , p.233, trans. M. Schoen . New York: Irvington Publishers . See also Klempe, S.H. & Smith, R. (eds) (2017) Centrality of History for Theory Construction in Psychology . New York: Springer .

The concept of ‘development’ of course has its own long history. See, for example, Wertheimer, M. (1985) The evolution of the concept of development in the history of psychology. In G. Eckardt , W.G. Bringmann , & L. Sprung (eds) Contributions to a History of Developmental Psychology (pp.13–25). Berlin: Mouton ; Valsiner, J. (1994) Irreversibility of time and the construction of historical developmental psychology. Mind, Culture, and Activity , 1(1–2), 25–42 .

  Sroufe, L.A. (1996) Emotional Development , p.xii. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .

  Sroufe, L.A. (2007) The place of development in developmental psychopathology. In A. Masten (ed.) Multilevel Dynamics in Developmental Psychopathology: Pathways to the Future: The Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology , Vol. 34 (pp.285–99). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, p.290 .

  Roisman, G.I. , Madsen, S.D. , Hennighausen, K.H. , Sroufe, L.A. , & Collins, A. (2001) The coherence of dyadic behavior across parent–child and romantic relationships as mediated by the internalized representation of experience. Attachment & Human Development , 3(2), 156–72, p.169 . An example of attachment researchers ‘building in the ruins’ is the way that the term ‘internal working model’ has been used by later attachment researchers to show that Bowlby was attentive to change, since these models were ‘working’, i.e. open to development. However, this was never Bowlby’s intention with the term: ‘working’ just meant that they were applied (Chapter 1 ). Nonetheless, the word ‘working’ has made available this subsequent interpretation.

  Bowlby, J. (1980) Loss . London: Pimlico : ‘for many widows and widowers it is precisely because they are willing for their feelings of attachment to the dead spouse to persist that their sense of identity is preserved and they become able to reorganize their lives along lines they find meaningful’ (p.98).

  Carlson, E.A. , Egeland, B. , & Sroufe, L.A. (2009) A prospective investigation of the development of borderline personality symptoms. Development & Psychopathology , 21(4), 1311–34, p.1315 .

  Juffer, F. , Bakermans-Kranenburg, M.J. , & van IJzendoorn, M.H. (eds) Promoting Positive Parenting: An Attachment-Based Intervention . New York: Psychology Press .

Cf. Mykhalovskiy, E. , Frohlich, K.L. , Poland, B. , Di Ruggiero, E. , Rock, M.J. , & Comer, L. (2018) Critical social science with public health: agonism, critique and engagement. Critical Public Health , 29(5) .

  Bourdieu, P. (2000) Pascalian Meditations . Stanford: Stanford University Press ; Latour, B. (2013) An Inquiry into Modes of Existence . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press . Illustrative of the ‘debunking’ narrative is Gaskins, S. (2013) The puzzle of attachment. In N. Quinn & J.M. Mageo (eds) Attachment Reconsidered: Cultural Perspectives on a Western Theory (pp.33–66). London: Palgrave .

  Sedgwick, E.K. (2003) Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity . Durham, NC: Duke University Press .

  Duschinsky, R. (2019) Attachment and the archive: barriers and facilitators to the use of historical sociology as complementary developmental science. Science in Context , 32(3), 309–26 .

  Ainsworth, M. (1972) Attachment and dependency: a comparison. In J. Gewirtz (ed.) Attachment and Dependency (pp.97–137). Washington, DC: Winston : ‘In terms of his problem, theoretical orientation, resources, opportunities, and personal style, each investigator chooses his own set of compromises. The interests of science seem likely to be best served in this context by a multiplicity of studies, each with its own compromises, which yet may in aggregate answer the questions’ (p.126).

  Sroufe, L.A. (1997) Psychopathology as an outcome of development. Development & Psychopathology , 9(2), 251–68, p.251 .

  Danziger, K. (1994) Does the history of psychology have a future? Theory & Psychology , 4(4), 467–84 : It is ‘when the professional community is divided in some profound way that a critical disciplinary history has a significant contribution to make’ (p.478).

  Hacking, I. (2002) Historical Ontology . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press ; Collins, H. & Evans, R. (2014) Actor and analyst: a response to Coopmans and Button. Social Studies of Science , 44(5), 786–92 .

  Cavell, S. (1994) In Quest of the Ordinary: Lines of Skepticism and Romanticism . Chicago: University of Chicago Press .

E.g. Smith, R. (2013) Between Mind and Nature: A History of Psychology . New York: Reaktion Books .

  Shaver, P.R. & Brennan, K.B. (1991) Measures of depression and loneliness. In J.P. Robinson , P.R. Shaver , & L.S. Wrightsman (eds) Measures of Social Psychological Attitudes , Vol. 1 (pp.195–289). San Diego: Academic Press : ‘In addition to being parts of ordinary language, “depression” and “loneliness” are technical terms within psychiatry and clinical psychology . … When ordinary concepts are used technically, definitional confusion may arise … these emotions are closely related to other states discussed in this book: alienation, low self-esteem, external locus of control (helplessness), and dissatisfaction with life. In ordinary language, this is as it should be; in professional social science it is problematic . … Another problem is that the terms “loneliness” and “depression” harbour implicit causal theories’ (p.195).

  Shaver, P.R. , Morgan, H.J. , & Wu, S. (1996) Is love a ‘basic’ emotion? Personal Relationships , 3, 81–96, p.83 . See also Derksen, M. (1997) Are we not experimenting then? The rhetorical demarcation of psychology and common sense. Theory & Psychology , 7(4), 435–56 .

Bowlby’s predicament can be seen within the wider context of psychoanalysis discourse in the period, which both wanted and repudiated the advantages of ordinary language. This issue is considered well in Abram, J. (2007) The Language of Winnicott: A Dictionary of Winnicott’s Use of Words . London: Karnac .

Geertz describes common sense as having five experiential properties: it is felt in use as ‘natural’, ‘practical’, ‘thin’/’simple’, ‘immethodical’, and ‘accessible’. Geertz, C. (1983) Common sense as a cultural system. In Local Knowledge (pp.73–93). New York: Basic Books .

  Bowlby, J. (1980) Loss , p.17. London: Pimlico .

  Bowlby, J. (1972) Notes towards Separation . PP/Bow/K.5./17 .

  Bowlby, J. (1973) Separation , p.118. New York: Basic Books . As a mature scholar, Bowlby regularly warned his students regarding the use of language in their theorizing. E.g. Issroff, J. (2005) Donald Winnicott and John Bowlby: Personal and Professional Perspectives . London: Karnac : ‘He concentrated on ensuring that language used was not loose, and on keeping speculation to a minimum’ (p.26). ‘Often he held forth about the importance of language used for conceptualising’ (p.27).

  Bowlby, J. (1987–90) Darwin’s Scientific Achievement . Cambridge University Library, MS Add. 8884 .

  Benjafield, J.G. (2016) The digital history of the anglophone vocabulary of psychology: an exploration using Zipfian methods. History of Psychology , 19(2), 125–40, p.127 .

E.g. Bowlby, J. (1983) Letter to Helen Block Lewis , 12 January 1983. PP/Bow/J.9/123: ‘As I expect you know, some difficulties have arisen over the best use of the term attachment. For purely historical reasons it seems best now to confine it to protection and comfort-seeking behaviour as seen most obviously in childhood.’

On the costs and gains of metaphor for Bowlby’s reception, see Duniec, E. & Raz, M. (2011) Vitamins for the soul: John Bowlby’s thesis of maternal deprivation, biomedical metaphors and the deficiency model of disease. History of Psychiatry , 22(1), 93–107 . The issue is likewise discussed in Fonagy, P. (2003) Some complexities in the relationship of psychoanalytic theory to technique. The Psychoanalytic Quarterly , 72(1), 13–47 : ‘Science regularly employs metaphor in the absence of detailed knowledge of the underlying process. Provided that metaphor is not confused with a full understanding—or, to use Freud’s expression, the scaffolding is not mistaken for the building—heuristic considerations might outweigh any disadvantages of such employment’ (p.36).

  Waters, E. & McIntosh, J. (2011) Are we asking the right questions about attachment? Family Court Review , 49(3), 474–82, p.474 .

Foucault refers to a ‘field of stabilization’ for the concepts and methods of a discipline that make recognition of equivalence possible. Attachment research has benefited from allowing many an expansive field of stabilization that allows many phenomena to be recognized as pertaining to ideas relating to attachment. On the concept of ‘field of stabilization’ see Foucault, M. (1969, 1972) The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language , p.103, trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith . New York: Pantheon .

  Luyten, P. (2015) Unholy questions about five central tenets of psychoanalysis that need to be empirically verified. Psychoanalytic Inquiry , 35(1), 5–23 .

For instance, the term ‘coherence’ has a central place in the conceptualization and coding of the Adult Attachment Interview (Chapter 3 ). Beijersbergen, Bakermans-Kranenburg, and van IJzendoorn conducted a detailed empirical study in 2006 to see whether attachment researchers used the term ‘coherent’ in the same way as ordinary language or other academic specialisms. The answer was a resounding ‘no’. Beijersbergen, M.D. , Bakermans-Kranenburg, M.J. , & van IJzendoorn, M.H. (2006) The concept of coherence in attachment interviews: comparing attachment experts, linguists, and non-experts. Attachment & Human Development , 8(4), 353–69 .

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Home — Essay Samples — Psychology — Psychological Theories — Attachment Theory

Essays on Attachment Theory

Choosing an attachment theory essay topic.

Attachment theory is an essential aspect of psychology that focuses on the relationships and bonds formed between individuals, particularly between children and their primary caregiver. When it comes to writing an essay on attachment theory, selecting the right topic is crucial. With a wide range of possible topics to choose from, it can be challenging to decide on the most suitable one. In this guide, we will discuss the importance of the topic, provide advice on selecting a topic, and offer a detailed list of recommended essay topics.

The Importance of the Topic

Understanding attachment theory is crucial in comprehending human behavior, especially in the context of early childhood development. It provides insight into how early relationships impact later emotional and social functioning, as well as mental health outcomes. Exploring attachment theory through essays allows for a deeper understanding of these complex dynamics and their implications in various aspects of life.

Advice on Choosing a Topic

When choosing a topic for an attachment theory essay, it is essential to consider your personal interests and the specific aspects of attachment theory that intrigue you the most. Selecting a topic that resonates with you will make the writing process more enjoyable and engaging. Additionally, consider the relevance of the topic to current research and societal issues, as this can add value to your essay.

Recommended Essay Topics

Attachment styles.

• Comparing and contrasting different attachment styles (secure, insecure-avoidant, insecure-ambivalent, disorganized).
• The role of attachment styles in adult romantic relationships.
• The impact of parental attachment styles on children's emotional development.

Attachment and Mental Health

• The relationship between attachment theory and mental health disorders (e.g., depression, anxiety, borderline personality disorder).
• The influence of early attachment experiences on the development of psychopathology.
• Attachment theory as a framework for understanding and treating mental health issues.

Attachment and Parenting

• The impact of attachment theory on parenting practices and child-rearing strategies.
• The role of attachment in the parent-child relationship and its implications for child development.
• Attachment theory and its relevance for modern parenting challenges.

Cultural and Societal Perspectives

• Exploring attachment theory in diverse cultural contexts and its implications for parenting and family dynamics.
• The influence of societal factors on attachment patterns and relationships.
• Attachment theory and its application in cross-cultural psychology.

Attachment and Early Childhood Development

• The significance of early attachment experiences on cognitive and socio-emotional development in children.
• The role of attachment in shaping resilience and coping mechanisms in early childhood.
• Attachment theory and its implications for early childhood education and intervention programs.

Choosing an attachment theory essay topic that aligns with your interests and offers value to the field of psychology is essential for producing a compelling and insightful piece of work. With the recommended essay topics provided, you can explore various aspects of attachment theory and its relevance in different contexts, contributing to a deeper understanding of human relationships and development.

The Importance of Attachment in Early Child Development

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Using Attachment Philosophy and Mentalization Theory by Fonagy to Examine Emma Stone’s Life

Analysis of the protagonist of 'pay it forward' movie through the theory of attachment, attachment theory in social work practice: exploring the potential, bond between mother and child: a nature vs nurture perspective, relationship between mother and child: impact on child development, relationship between mother and child: importance of bonding, teacher-student relationship: the role of the attachment theory, understanding attachment theory: exploring john bowlby's work, relevant topics.

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