A Brief History of Attachment Theory
Lifespan Human Development
Summer 2006
A Brief History of Attachment Theory The theory of attachment was originally developed by John Bowlby (1907 - 1990), a British psychoanalyst who observed intense and distressful behaviors among orphans in hospitals during and after World War II. Between 1948 and 1952 Bowlby, along with his employee and then colleague, James Robertson, came to realize that infants who had been separated from their parents were not able to form an attachment with a primary caregiver, leading to anxiety or ultimately to insecurity or disassociation. Bowlby’s theory was also influenced by his observations of nonhuman primates. In the helpless young, he saw infant behaviors geared towards fostering contact with the necessary caregiver. He first considered this attachment to be an evolutionary mechanism developed by mammalian offspring for survival of the species. If young mammals, including humans, are separated from their caregivers, they exhibit agitated behaviors and begin to demand attention from their primary caregiver. This distressed experience due to separation from the primary caregiver became known as "separation distress" and comes in three phases: protest, then despair, and finally detachment. Bowlby (1973) defined attachment as “any form of behavior that results in a person attaining or retaining proximity to some other differentiated and preferred individual, usually conceived as stronger and/or wiser” (p. 292). This attachment, when dynamic, enduring, and evolving, leads to a symbiotic relationship between the infant and the caregiver. The infant learns to respond to the caregiver based on signals given by the caregiver, and the caregiver learns the moods and needs of the infant based on the infant’s signals. Because infants and toddlers cannot verbalize or clearly articulate their deep mourning at being separated from their caregiver, Bowlby’s theory was rejected by his peers at first,
Summer 2006
A Brief History of Attachment Theory The theory of attachment was originally developed by John Bowlby (1907 - 1990), a British psychoanalyst who observed intense and distressful behaviors among orphans in hospitals during and after World War II. Between 1948 and 1952 Bowlby, along with his employee and then colleague, James Robertson, came to realize that infants who had been separated from their parents were not able to form an attachment with a primary caregiver, leading to anxiety or ultimately to insecurity or disassociation. Bowlby’s theory was also influenced by his observations of nonhuman primates. In the helpless young, he saw infant behaviors geared towards fostering contact with the necessary caregiver. He first considered this attachment to be an evolutionary mechanism developed by mammalian offspring for survival of the species. If young mammals, including humans, are separated from their caregivers, they exhibit agitated behaviors and begin to demand attention from their primary caregiver. This distressed experience due to separation from the primary caregiver became known as "separation distress" and comes in three phases: protest, then despair, and finally detachment. Bowlby (1973) defined attachment as “any form of behavior that results in a person attaining or retaining proximity to some other differentiated and preferred individual, usually conceived as stronger and/or wiser” (p. 292). This attachment, when dynamic, enduring, and evolving, leads to a symbiotic relationship between the infant and the caregiver. The infant learns to respond to the caregiver based on signals given by the caregiver, and the caregiver learns the moods and needs of the infant based on the infant’s signals. Because infants and toddlers cannot verbalize or clearly articulate their deep mourning at being separated from their caregiver, Bowlby’s theory was rejected by his peers at first,
References: Ainsworth, M., Blehar M., Waters, E., & Wall. S. (1978). Patterns of attachment: A psychological study of the strange situation. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum. Bowlby, J. (1973). Attachment and loss: Vol. 2. Separation: Anxiety and anger. New York: Basic Books. Bowlby, J. (1988). A secure base. New York: Basic Books. Fraley R. (2004). How to conduct behavioral research over the internet: A beginner 's guide to html and cgi/perl. New York: Guilford Press. http://www.web-research-design.net/cgi-bin/crq/crq.pl. Accessed 14 August 2006. Karen, R. (1994). Becoming attached. New York: Warner. Santrock, J. (2005). Life-span development. New York: McGraw-Hill. |Note. Descriptions of the adult attachment classification system are summarized from Main, Kaplan, and Cassidy (1985) and Main and Goldwyn | |(1984a, 1998a) |description of the infant D category is summarized from Main. and Solomon (1990). Data from Main (1996). | Appendix 2