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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Attachment theory | 8/12 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attachment_theory | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T15:31:31.580137+00:00 | kb-cron |
Attachment theory rode a post-World War 2 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, made it one of 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, their common sense and "natural loving care" were the keys to successful parenting. A similar structure of feeling emerged in post-war Britain.
=== Formulation of the theory === Following the publication of Maternal Care and Mental Health, Bowlby sought new understanding from the fields of evolutionary biology, ethology, developmental psychology, cognitive science and the theory of control systems. He formulated the innovative proposition that mechanisms underlying an infant's emotional tie to the caregiver(s) were not learnt, but emerged as a result of evolutionary pressure. He set out to develop a theory of motivation and behaviour-control built on observational science rather than Freudian interpretation. Bowlby argued that with attachment theory, he had made good the "deficiencies of the data and the lack of theory to link alleged cause and effect" of Maternal Care and Mental Health.
=== Psychoanalysis === Bowlby was trained as a psychoanalyst under the supervision of Melanie Klein in the school of object relations theory. Unlike Freudian theory, which holds that infants are born into a state of primary narcissism that makes social relations with other people impossible, object relations theory proposes that babies have emotional relations with their mother from the start of life, albeit dominated by phantasy. Thus, Bowlby was educated to believe that the infant-mother relationship is of supreme importance to human beings from the dawn of life, a belief that attachment theory celebrates.
=== Ethology === One of the main lessons Bowlby drew from ethology was the importance of the direct observation of animals in their 'home' environments to scientific theory-building. Thus, he constantly stressed the advantages of basing his theory of infancy on verifiable observations of babies' action patterns, rather than psychoanalytic reconstruction of their fantasy lives. After Bowlby's attention was drawn to ethology in the early 1950s by reading Konrad Lorenz's work, he imported several ethological concepts into attachment theory including fixed action patterns, instincts and later, behavioural systems. He also drew on ethology to emphasize the importance of recognizing the evolutionary origins of human social behaviour, particularly in infants. Initially, Bowlby imported the ethological concepts of imprinting and critical periods into his theory. He was particularly impressed by Konrad Lorenz's findings about imprinting in ducklings and goslings. So he hypothesised that there was a sensitivity period during which this attachment system best operated, lasting from six weeks to twelve months of age. However, over time, research proved there were more differences than similarities between attachment behaviours in human babies and imprinting in waterbirds, so the analogy was dropped.
=== Cybernetics === The theory of control systems (cybernetics), developing during the 1930s and 1940s, influenced Bowlby's thinking. The young child's need for proximity to the attachment figure was seen as balancing homeostatically with the need for exploration. (Bowlby compared this process to physiological homeostasis, whereby, for example, blood pressure is kept within limits). The actual distance maintained by the child would vary as the balance of needs changed. For example, the approach of a stranger or an injury would cause the child exploring at a distance to seek proximity. The child's goal is not an object (the caregiver) but a state; maintenance of the desired distance from the caregiver, depending on circumstances.
=== Cognitive development === Bowlby's reliance on Piaget's theory of cognitive development raised questions about object permanence (the ability to remember an object that is temporarily absent) in early attachment behaviours. An infant's ability to discriminate between strangers and to react to the mother's absence seemed to occur months earlier than Piaget suggested was cognitively possible. More recently, it has been noted that the understanding of mental representation has advanced so much since Bowlby's day that present views can be more specific than those of Bowlby's time.
=== Internal working model ===
Bowlby discovered the internal working model construct in the writings of an eminent scientist interested in the neural basis of animal memory, John Zachary Young, while rethinking what he considered to be scientifically outdated explanations of the psychoanalytic "internal world." Young himself was influenced by the work of the philosopher Kenneth Craik.