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Attachment Science

In the 1950’s, researcher Harry Harlow conducted an experiment with monkeys that explored their preferences for nurture. Harlow gave the monkeys a choice of a wire mother monkey that provided milk and a cloth monkey that provided softness and warmth. He found that the monkeys preferred the cloth monkey over the wire one furthering the question of what motivates infants- as it was not food as had been previously thought. Around this time, John Bowlby, a psychiatrist in England, was tracking his observations in the behaviors and family lives of juvenile delinquents as well as children who were orphaned during World War II.  Bowlby observed patterns emerging in both groups and began to form hypothesis about the influence the infant-mother relationship has on the infants’ emotional development as well as longer-term behavioral outcomes. Bowlby worked alongside Mary Ainsworth, a developmental psychologist, exploring infant-parent relational patterns termed attachment. As more advances have been made in the understanding of neurobiology over the past 30 years, Allan Schore has emerged as a central figure the development of modern attachment theory/regulation theory. Schore's regulation theory identifies the neurobiological basis of the attachment system with the primary feature being how the attachment relationship shapes the ability to regulate emotion, attention, motivation as well as other endocrine and nervous system processes.

 

Attachment describes an inborn biological system as well as a relational quality with our caregivers and long-term romantic partners. Neurobiologically, the attachment system includes areas of the brain dedicated to emotional regulation, motivation, attentional and memory processes. The goal of the attachment system is to balance protection with exploration. As such, the attachment system and our attachment relationships serve to manage our affective arousal (anxiety) keeping it at optimal states for exploration/learning and engaging in relationships that foster survival and eventually procreation. In infancy, the attachment system motivates the infant to gain proximity to the parent/caregiver for protection and to meet their essential needs as their immature systems are unable to. As the infant progresses through childhood, adolescence and adulthood, experiences with the parent/caregiver are internalized as forms of memory often referred to as implicit memories or schemas that the person uses as references to predict how they can obtain protection and how they can get their needs met. 

 

When attachment relationships are characterized by sensitivity, attunement and responsiveness to the infants’ cues and needs, the infant develops a schema that their needs will be met if they prompt the caregiver with a cue or what is often referred to as a bid for attachment. We can liken the communication in the infant-parent relationship to a dance where each partner takes turns leading and following with sensitivity to each other’s cues to determine the appropriate move/response.

 

Attachment relationships also provide the infant with their first experience of self-efficacy when the infant finds that they can get their needs met through their action of capturing their caregiver’s attention to meet their need. Relationships such as these are referred to as having secure attachment where the need for protection is met allowing for exploration of the environment as well as the child’s inner world. In secure functioning relationships, the need for protection and safety is balanced with the need to explore leading to optimally integrated states. As this attachment strategy remains stable, this person develops a sense of confidence in themselves and engages in exploration of their inner world including their own thoughts, beliefs and feelings.   

 

Conversely, when attachment relationships are characterized by a lack of attunement, sensitivity, responsiveness and ability of the caregiver to regulate their own emotions or affect, the infant is required to adopt strategies that evoke attention from the caregiver to attend to their needs. Two distinct patterns emerge when infant-parent relationships lack secure functioning; Infants demonstrate either avoidant or ambivalent/resistant behaviors with their parent/s. These two behavioral patterns are broadly termed insecure or non-secure attachment. As the strategies this infant adopts are adaptive and lead to some sense of protection even if not optimal, they are useful and often productive strategies. However, these strategies take energy so are metabolically expensive which can lead to less expendable energy in desired areas such as learning or exploring the world. People with non-secure attachment strategies also tend to have difficulty being alone with their thoughts and exploring their inner world so tend toward distraction or thought rumination instead of turning inward to consider their own thoughts, beliefs and feelings. In the non-secure relational patterns, the need to explore is obstructed as the child remains more focused on the need to maintain protection and manage affective states that the parent/s is not attending to. 

 

It is important to note that in the non-secure dyads, the parent/caregiver has tremendous love for their baby but are limited in providing attunement and sensitivity to their child due to the way that they were parented as they only have their own experiences to serve as their caregiving representations. Research has found that parents with these experiences can learn appropriate ways of interacting with their infant/child with help in developing some understanding/resolution of their suboptimal attachment relationships with their caregivers enabling their child to develop security in their relationship. 

 

Secure and non-secure are both organized strategies meaning that there is some predictability or strategy to gain affect regulation or re-integrate/organize the self. In circumstances when the parent/caregiver has experienced trauma that is not resolved or struggles with significant dysregulation themselves prohibiting them from engaging in attuned and contingent interactions with their child, the child cannot use the parent to help them regulate their immature nervous system leaving them without effective strategies for regaining regulation also referred to as organization or integration. Infants that display a lack of strategy to gain proximity to a caregiver are referred to as disorganized/dysregulated. Research has shown that infants and children in this category without therapeutic intervention have higher rates of psychopathology (lack of ability to regulate affect) in adolescents and adulthood. However, numerous studies of children who display disorganization/dysregulation benefit greatly when parents learn to regulate themselves with more frequency allowing them to predictably engage with attunement and sensitivity to their child’s needs.

 

Decades of research has shown that non-secure attachment strategies are quite stable throughout the lifetime but can be altered with intervention of an attuned, sensitive, consistent adult such as a therapist teacher, mentor or romantic partner. As a therapist with extensive training in attachment, I often help people explore their strategies (ability to regulate) to examine how well the strategies are working for them at this stage of their lives as the strategies that we adopt in childhood are effective with our parents, they can-and often are, maladaptive or not functioning well in our peer or adult relationships. If in our exploration of our attachment strategies we find that our ability to regulate (integrate) is sub-optimal, we work collaboratively to identify specific ways to attain more optimal regulation promoting greater flexibility and balance in our nervous system as well as more satisfying relationships.

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