Attachment and Its Crucial Importance
My
training was steeped in the work of what is referred to as the Object-Relations
School, that emphasized human relationships as the cornerstone of
what our id or drives were set out to try to procure.
In
western society, we have increasingly valued independence, autonomy
and self-reliance as the sine qua non of mental health. And yet
attachment theorists such as John Bowlby, Mary Ainsworth, and others,
have taught us that it is not only our efforts to promote independence
in our children that is important, but also, and no less-so, our
capacity to have loving and attached feelings for our children that
is so very important.
Ainsworth's
"Strange Situation" allows us to look at a laboratory
procedure to assess infant-parent attachment status and classify
it into three attachment categories: secure, anxious-avoidant, and
anxious-resistant. These patterns of attachment can be seen played
out in various ways throughout childhood, adolescence and adult
life.
My
clinical experience has shown that many or even most presenting
problems in psychotherapy occur in the context of attachment issues,
and that attachment theory can be a useful model through which to
look at marital issues, parent-child relationships, and to conceptualize
parenting abilities.
Attachment
is so crucial to our sense of ourselves and our own well-being.
Many will remember Harry Harlowe's monkey experiments which showed
that without the cloth covered "mother-monkey", the baby
monkey who got milk from the wire monkey, could not survive. Many
actually killed themselves with severe head banging.
And
so, we must never lose sight of the importance of Bowlby's central
position which is the crucial importance of having had, and being
for another, an attachment figure that is sufficiently near, attentive
and responsive.
03/05
