Attachment theory, originating in the work of John Bowlby, is a psychological, evolutionary and ethological theory that provides a descriptive and explanatory framework for understanding interpersonal relationships between human beings.
Over the years he formulated his theory of early attachments, Bowlby drew from a range of fields of thinking and research including forensic psychology (as in his study of 44 juvenile thieves), ethology, evolutionary biology, object relations theory (the branch of psychoanalysis in which he was trained by Melanie Klein), systems theory and cognitive psychology. There were some preliminary papers from 1958 onwards, but the full theory is published in the trilogy Attachment and Loss, 1969- 82. Despite the criticism Bowlby's work has continued to face since its inception on empirical, ethical and logical grounds, attachment theory remains the dominant approach to understanding early social development, having given rise to a great surge of empirical research into the formation of children's close relationships.
Brief description of theory In infants, behavior associated with attachment is primarily a process of proximity seeking to an identified attachment figure in situations of perceived distress or alarm, for the purpose of survival. Infants become attached to adults who are sensitive and responsive in social interactions with the infant, and who remain as consistent caregivers for some months during the period from about six months to two years of age. During the later part of this period, children begin to use attachment figures (familiar people) as a secure base to explore from and return to. Parental responses lead to the development of patterns of attachment which in turn lead to 'internal working models' which will guide the individual's feelings, thoughts, and expectations in later relationships. Separation anxiety or grief following serious loss are normal and natural responses in an attached infant.
The human infant is considered by attachment theorists to have a need for a secure relationship with adult caregivers, without which normal social and emotional development will not occur. However, different relationship experiences can lead to different developmental outcomes. Mary Ainsworth developed a theory of a number of attachment patterns or "styles" in infants in which distinct characteristics were identified; these were secure attachment, avoidant attachment, anxious attachment and, later, disorganized attachment. In addition to care-seeking by children, peer relationships of all ages, romantic and sexual attraction, and responses to the care needs of infants or sick or elderly adults may be construed as including some components of attachment behavior.
Post-war context Attachment theory rode a post-World War Two wave in Westernized countries toward child-centred parenting. The child-centred message of Benjamin Spock's post-war manual The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, first published in 1946, put it among the best-selling books of the twentieth century. Previous experts had warned parents not to spoil babies through rewarding them for crying by picking them up and comforting them, or by feeding them on demand. Babies should be fed once every four hours and otherwise left to cry it out. Spock saw such parenting as cruel. His manual promoted flexibility in child-rearing, advising parents to treat each child as an individual and emphasizing that, ultimately, the parents' common sense and their "natural loving care" were the keys to successful parenting.
A similar structure of feeling emerged in post-war Britain. Bowlby himself had been raised in a way which deprived him of maternal care. Brought up in a separate part of a big house by a nanny and nursemaids, he had just one one-hour visit to his mother a day. His father died when he was five, and at age seven he was dispatched to boarding school, coming home just once a year. He later remarked: “I wouldn’t send a dog away to boarding school at age seven”. So it is perhaps no surprise that, throughout his life, Bowlby’s work focused on the consequences of maternal deprivation. Nor, to the extent that a child-centred structure of feeling persists in the West, is it any surprise that attachment theory continues to dominate discussions of child care, despite its scientific challenges, especially among those who assume like Bowlby that a mother’s place is in the home.
Social deprivation as maternal deprivation Before setting out his theory of attachment in the late 1950s, Bowlby published two books arguing that child problems—juvenile delinquency in 1944 and the poor health of homeless children in post-war Europe in 1951—resulted from lack of maternal care. In 1953, Bowlby wrote a commentary on James Robertson’s film A Two-Year-Old Goes to Hospital which championed more flexible visiting hours for the mothers of children in hospital. (The film documented the dramatic effects of the hospitalization of a young child whose parents did not visit her.)
Bowlby was further influenced by studies from René Spitz which contrasted the catastrophic, sometimes fatal, effects of institutionalisation on infants who had no contact with any committed caregiver when compared to those who daily had hour-long visits from their mothers. Also in the 1950s, Bowlby read the Harlows’ work on the disastrous effects of social isolation on caged rhesus monkey babies as evidence for primates’ need for one-to-one maternal care.
Bowlby and his heirs have habitually written as if the negative effects of social deprivation on young children result primarily from their lack of a mother. Yet the juvenile thieves, homeless children, institutionalised infants, hospitalized two-year-olds and isolated baby monkeys which Bowlby liked to discuss were deprived of many things and people, not just their mothers. For example, Harlow’s work showed that if a baby monkey grew up in a cage with other baby monkeys to relate to, all of them grew up more healthily than monkeys reared solely with their mothers. Likewise, homeless children lack all stable family-relations as well as having no secure place to live. It was partly on these grounds that Michael Rutter's detailed review challenged Bowlby’s claims about ‘maternal deprivation’. Likewise, much attachment research fails to control for a mother-infant couple’s social support and background. Attachment research which does control for social circumstances proves that the main determinant of a young child’s long-term development is the social circumstances which surround them and their parents, not the kind of attachment they have to their mothers.
Psychoanalysis The early thinking of the object relations school of psychoanalysis, particularly Melanie Klein, influenced Bowlby. However, he profoundly disagreed with the prevalent psychoanalytic belief that infants' responses relate to their internal fantasy life rather than real-life events. As Bowlby formulated his concepts, he was influenced by case studies on disturbed and delinquent children, such as those of William Goldfarb published in 1943 and 1945.
Bowlby's view of attachment was also influenced by observations of young children separated from familiar caregivers, as provided during World War II by Anna Freud and her colleague Dorothy Burlingham. However, Bowlby rejected psychoanalytical explanations for early infant bonds. He rejected both Freudian "drive-theory", which he called the Cupboard Love theory of relationships, and early object-relations theory as both in his view failed to see the attachment as a psychological bond in its own right rather than an instinct derived from feeding or sexuality.Holmes pp. 62–3
Based on ideas of primary attachment and Neo-Darwinism, Bowlby identified what he saw as fundamental flaws in psychoanalysis: the overemphasis of internal dangers rather than external threat, and the view of the development of personality via linear phases with regression to fixed points accounting for psychological distress. Bowlby instead posited that several lines of development were possible, the outcome of which depended on the interaction between the organism and the environment. In attachment this would mean that although a developing child has a propensity to form attachments, the nature of those attachments depends on the environment to which the child is exposed.
From early in the development of attachment theory there was criticism of the theory's lack of congruence with various branches of psychoanalysis. For example, Freudians criticised him for denying in his theory any place for the father and the cultural influences he personified, influences which are at the heart of psychoanalytic theory. Bowlby's decisions left him open to criticism from well-established thinkers working on similar problems. In particular he opened himself up to critics who identified in attachment theory a biological reductionism which denied any place to cultural differences.
Ethology Bowlby's attention was first drawn to ethology when he read Lorenz's 1952 publication in draft form although Lorenz had published much earlier work. Soon after this he encountered the work of Tinbergen, and began to collaborate with Robert Hinde.Holmes p. 62 In 1953 he stated "the time is ripe for a unification of psychoanalytic concepts with those of ethology, and to pursue the rich vein of research which this union suggests".
Konrad Lorenz had examined the phenomenon of "imprinting" and felt that it might have some parallels to human attachment. Imprinting, a behavior characteristic of some birds and a very few mammals, involves rapid learning of recognition by a young bird or animal exposed to a conspecific or an object or organism that behaves suitably. The learning is possible only within a limited age period, known as a critical period. This rapid learning and development of familiarity with an animate or inanimate object is accompanied by a tendency to stay close to the object and to follow when it moves; the young creature is said to have been imprinted on the object when this occurs. As the imprinted bird or animal reaches reproductive maturity, its courtship behavior is directed toward objects that resemble the imprinting object. Bowlby's attachment concepts later included the ideas that attachment involves learning from experience during a limited age period, and that the learning that occurs during that time influences adult behavior. However, he did not apply the imprinting concept in its entirety to human attachment, nor assume that human development was as simple as that of birds. He did, however, consider that attachment behavior was best explained as instinctive in nature, an approach that does not rule out the effect of experience, but that stresses the readiness the young child brings to social interactions.Bowlby (1969) 2nd ed. pp. 220–223 Some of Lorenz's work had been done years before Bowlby formulated his ideas, and indeed some ideas characteristic of ethology were already discussed among psychoanalysts some time before the presentation of attachment theory.
Certain types of learning are possible, respective to each applicable type of learning, only within a limited age range known as a critical period. Bowlby's concepts included the idea that attachment involved learning from experience during a limited age period, influenced by adult behaviour. He did not apply the imprinting concept in its entirety to human attachment. However, he considered that attachment behaviour was best explained as instinctive, combined with the effect of experience, stressing the readiness the child brings to social interactions. Over time it became apparent there were more differences than similarities between attachment theory and imprinting so the analogy was dropped.