ATTACHMENT

The term attachment is used in contemporary scientific literature in four distinct senses: a form of behavior whose goal is to maintain proximity to the other person (smiles, vocalization, tears, approach behavior); the bonds of attachment that are related to the affiliation between parents and children; the system of attachment, in which the child's goal is to seek proximity with the attachment figure and obtain an internal feeling of security; and, finally, relationships that involve the offer of attention, emotional availability, and the search for comfort in parent-child relations.

Attachment is a behavioral control system of biological origin, which involves the use of the attachment figure by the child as a "secure base" from which it can explore the environment. In John Bowlby's theory, the form assumed by the child's attachment is based on its actual interactive experiences with its attachment figures and not with the fantasies they arouse. These feelings of security or insecurity (anxious attachment, resistant attachment, avoidance attachment, disorganized attachment) about the parental figures are organized during the first year of life in the form of an "internal model of work" that will give rise to stable forms of reaction in the face of distress and novelty.

From the start of the twentieth century, the medical literature was cognizant of the effects of the lack of maternal care of infants (Chapin, 1916; Spitz, R., 1945). In 1951 Bowlby wrote a monograph on maternal care and mental health. In 1959 Harlow, working with primates, provided experimental proof of the independence of attachment and the satisfaction of physiological needs. This led Bowlby to propose, in 1969, the concept of "attachment behavior" and to emphasize its importance for normal development. Bowlby's student Mary Ainsworth proposed the experimental paradigm of the "strange situation," which could be used, in the laboratory or at home, to study the reactions of infants over a year old to the presence of a stranger, followed by a short separation and reunion. It was used to classify attachment behavior with either of the parents into types: secure attachment (type B) against various insecure attachments (anxious-avoidant, or type A; anxious-resistant, or type C; and disorganized, or type D). The work of Mary Main focused on describing parents' speech about their children and in classifying it into coherent, avoidant, involved, or disorganized types. Longitudinal studies show a clear correlation between the speech category of the parent most directly involved with the child and the type of attachment formed by the child. The relation appears clearly during experiences of absence and abuse and the phenomenon of disorganized attachment.

Attachment is not a psychoanalytic concept; it is part of ethology. However, the concept was developed and applied within the context of psychopathology and the study of infant development by a psychoanalyst, a leading member of the British Society of Psychoanalysis, who had been responsible for training for many years. To the great regret of its inventor, the concept of attachment, although it underwent considerable development in the field of developmental research, was not extensively used in clinical practice, at least, not until recently. Of course, the concept of attachment clashes with the classical theory of anaclisis. It is also true that from the point of view of attachment theory, infantile sexuality is of little importance and the emphasis is on the real and repeated experiences of early childhood. However, contemporary psychoanalysts would be wrong to neglect this essential dimension of human relations, important because of its development in the first year of life, the formation of the different styles of attachment described by Main and observable after the first year of infancy in Ainsworth's "strange situation," as well as the persistence of attachment in adolescent and adult life. Attachment theory clarifies the development of early parent-infant relations and the modes of organizing representations.

Finally, there is remarkable convergence between the concept of attachment and psychoanalytic theory in the work of John Bowlby and Mary Main on the transgenerational transmission of styles of attachment through the consistency of parents' speech concerning their own infancy. Starting from the "secure base" represented by the analyst, the patient can explore the disturbances in his earliest relationships and eliminate their continuation in his interpersonal relations and their transmission to his own children through the expression, in narrative form, of his emotional experience, which is re-expressed in the transference. The concept of attachment assumes its place in psychopathology as a tool for analyzing early development and exploring its structure in the psychoanalytic experience.

Antoine GuÉdeney

See also: Abandonment; Amae, concept of; Anaclisis/anaclitic; Aphanisis; Bowlby, Edward John Mostyn; Ethology and psychoanalysis; Individual; Infant development; Infantile neurosis; Maternal; Maternal care; Primary need; Sucking/thumbsucking; Tenderness.

Bibliography

Ainsworth, Mary; Blehar M.C.; Waters E.; et al. (1978), Patterns of attachment: A psychological study of the strange situation, Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Bowlby, John. (1969). Attachment and loss (Vol. 1). London: Hogarth Press.

——. (1988). A secure base: Clinical applications of attachment theory. London: Routledge.

Holmes, J. (1993). John Bowlby and attachment theory. London: Routledge.

Main, Mary, Kaplan, N., Cassidy, Jude. (1985). Security in infancy, childhood and adulthood: A move to the level of representation. Monographs of Society for Research in Child Development, 50 (1-2), 66-104.

Spitz, René. (1945). In R. S. Eissler, (Ed.), The psychoanalytic study of the child (Vol. I). New York: International Universities Press.

Chapin, H.D. (1916). A scheme of state control for dependent infants. Medical Record, 84, 1081-1084.