The Development of Attachment Theory and Its Strengths and Limitations

The types of studies in the area of attachments before Mary Ainsworth were the works of Harry Harlow, John Bowlby, and William Blatz. Harry Harlow was born October 31st, 1905 in Iowa to a small farming community. He obtained his BA and PhD at Stanford University in experimental psychology. Harlow did studies on attachment with baby rhesus monkeys. According to Harlow, he “showed that maternal care in infancy was essential for adult sexual adjustment and mental health” (Vicedo, 2009). In his study, he had two replicas of maternal monkeys for the baby monkeys. One of the ‘mothers’ was warm to the touch as well as being soft. The other just had food and was just made of wire. The baby monkey showed more interest in the warm and fuzzy mother and barely went to the one with food. This showed Harlow that the baby monkey cared more about the warm and fuzzy mother. The second study on the baby monkey was scaring the baby monkey. The baby went running to the mother that provided warmth. To summarize, “the moral of this legend is one about the power of biology and the determinant effects of factors like mother love, which are necessary to fulfill an organism’s innate needs” (Vicedo, 2009). This was also an important conclusion to a

John Bowlby was a psychoanalyst and has developed his knowledge and understanding into the theory of Attachment. Bowlby believed that children have been born programmed to form attachments which will help them survive; this is known as evolutionary attachments. Bowlby believed that all attachments are instinctive, he said that attachments are shown when the child is under conditions of feeling threatened, such as: separation, fear and insecurity. In 1969 and 1988 Bowlby suggested that fear of strangers was an important survival mechanism; he said that babies display natural behaviours, such as: crying, laughing, smiling and crawling, this ensures the baby to feel in close contact with the mother.

In 1951 John Bowlby developed the concept of attachment theory. He argued that infants are genetically predisposed to form an attachment with their mothers. This statement was based off his study of children separated from their homes during World War Two, commissioned by the World Health Organization. Bowlby argued that the period between the child 's age of 6 months and 3 years was especially crucial towards this bond. Due

8. Bowlby developed the attachment theory. He defined his theory as a “lasting psychological connectedness between human beings.” Bowlby believed that suggests infants are “biologically predisposed to form attachments with primary caregivers in early life.” The infant's means of attachment aids the infant in feeling more safe, secure and “increases their likelihood of survival.” Caregivers are a secure base. Harlow proposed the idea of contact comfort. The idea of contact comfort was shown with the rhesus monkey experiment. The monkeys were given two surrogate mothers, one of cloth and one of wire. Because of the cloths comfort, monkeys were most likely to be attached to that “mother”, even if the other “mother” of only wire was providing food. Harlow also concluded that if a monkey was isolated from their mother for a prolonged period of time that the monkey would show autistic characteristics. Ainsworth’s also made discoveries of her own when

Attachment theory was developed by John Bowlby during his observation of evacuated children during World War II and it describes the dynamics of long term relationships. Its most important tenet is that an infant needs to develop a healthy relationship with at least one primary caregiver for social and emotional development to occur normally and that further relationships are built on the patterns developed in the earliest relationship (Bowlby 1988).

This study was about baby rhesus monkeys that were removed from their mother at birth and put in a new home. In this environment there were two surrogate mothers, one made of soft cloth which offered nourishment and one made of wire offered food.

Attachment is an integral part of the human condition, through it bonds are created between child and caregiver and these bond help contribute to a developing person’s sense of self and the world around them. These feeling of connection carry over from parent, to child, to later life from the person to their partner and then their own children. Attachment theory grew out of the understanding that young children in their early fragile stages of development require protection and security to increase their chance of survival, protection is present in the form of the parents from whom physical and a psychological sense of security comes. The infant sees their parents as a protector and a secure base through which they can always turn to in moments of stress when experiencing the world (Browne & Shlosberg, 2006).

Bowlby’s theory is an evolutionary theory because, in his view attachment is a behavioural system that has evolved because of its survival value and, ultimately, its reproductive value. According to Bowlby, children have an innate drive to become attached to a caregiver because attachment has long-term benefits. Both attachment and imprinting ensure that a young animal stays close to a caregiver who will feed and protect the young animal. Thus attachment and imprinting are adaptive behaviours. Infants who do not become attached are less likely to survive and reproduce. Attachment ‘genes’ are perpetuated, and infants are born with an innate drive to become attached.

Parents play many significant roles in their child’s life, including teacher or guidance, playmate, disciplinarian, caregiver, and attachment figure (Benoit, 2004). However, the most important role for parents is as an attachment figure, which can predict the child’s later social and emotional outcome. The first six months, therefore, is the most crucial period for parents and infants to develop this connection. Many people often have mistaken attachment with bonding. Bonding is referring to physical contact, and in this case depended on skin-to-skin contact child during early infant years. This concept of bonding is not the same with the attachment theory, however, providing physical contact when an infant cry until they are calm may help with forming a secure base for a child. According to Diane Benoit, the attachment is where the child uses its caregiver as a secure base from which to explore and, when necessary, as a haven of safety and a source of comfort (Benoit, 2004).

This paper investigates the application of Attachment Theory to the study of infants with sensory-motor disabilities. It first summarizes the tenets of classic Attachment Theory as developed by Bowlby and Ainsworth in the second half of the twentieth century. Next, it argues that some of the underlying assumptions of the canonical form of Attachment Theory need to be revised in light of feminist and cultural critiques and work in Disability Studies in order to develop more appropriate metrics and to apply Attachment Theory in a more sensitive and effective manner to a diverse population. It concludes by pointing to ways forward to develop a more inclusive approach to understanding the development of attachment in infants with sensory-motor

Harlow didn't stop there, this only made him more curious, so he gave them no choice between the mothers. He found that monkeys who had a soft contact and relationship with the cloth mother resulted in the infant behaving differently than those who developed a relationship with the wire mother. The cloth mother's infants benefitted in positive emotional attachment by the soft feeling of the cloth which provided security and reassurance to the infants. The cloth mother's infants also clung to her when they were scared and calmed down quickly. While the wire mother's infants did not go to her and took a while to calm themselves down. The outcomes to this experiment were groundbreaking. Harlow proved that a mother's love toward their infant was emotional, rather than physiological, which differed from past research. "Nurturing ones infant was found a far more determining factor in the healthy psychological development" of the infants than the biological nature between a mother and their infant ("Adoption"). He also proved that attachment between a mother and infant in the early stages of life was critical and crucial to the positive development of their relationship and the infant's well-being. These both were considered huge progresses and

On November 20th 2014, our lecture that was presented was on attachment. Dr. Lutz gave examples on attachment of monkeys and bird infants with their parents. Konrad Lorenz came up with the imprinting theory. This was the process in which new born birds and some mammals becomes attached to their mothers. This is because of protection, food, etc. We also learned about Harlow’s study, in which he used monkeys to test attachment. During the study he had a baby monkey, and two fake moms. One was made from copper, but had a bottle. The other was made from cloth. We would think that when the monkey saw the bottle he would stay with that mom, but he went to the mom that was made from cloth, because of comfort.

Child attachment has been a topic that has been greatly researched by both Psychologists and researchers alike, particularly the study called “Strange situation” by Bowlby (1969) Bowlby believed that most mental health issues could be related to early childhood behaviour. He believed that all childhood attachment was an instinctive behaviour and was activated when children were put in a stressful situation, and this seemed to enhance emotions such as separation, fear and insecurity (Bowlby, 1969) he also stated that fear of strangers is an instinctive reaction as it promotes the survival mechanism. Babies are expected to show attachment behaviours from very early on, and due to this they display social releases in order to increase proximity to a mother figure, these releases include things such as smiling, crawling and crying. According to Bowlby, mothers and babies were biologically programmed with the need to stay connected to each other. He also suggested that a child initially only forms an attachment with one carer figure,

Many psychologists have come and gone, and many different theoretical orientations have been developed. With each orientation has come a new perspective on development, behaviour and mental processes. Some are similar, yet others could not be more contradictory. Attachment is one such theoretical orientation, developed by John Bowlby out of his dissatisfaction with other existing theories. Although Bowlby rejected psychoanalytical explanations for early infant bonds, the theory of attachment was influenced in part by the principles of psychoanalysis; in particular the observations by Ana Freud and Dorothy Burlingham of young children separated from

The Attachment theory is based on the concept of an “attachment behavioral system” which is a homeostatic process that manages an infant’s proximity of “seeking and contact maintaining behaviors with specific individuals to provide physical or psychological safety and security” (Berman & Sperling, 1994, p.5, as cited in Berghaus, 2011 ). John Bowlby’s Attachment Theory states that the “foundation stone” for a child’s personality, the one that is crucial to their development, is the “emotional connection between the child and their primary caregiver”. Mary Ainsworth’s Attachment Theory (1913–1999) is the other key figure in the foundation of attachment theory (cited by Berghaus, 2011). Ainsworth’s Uganda study is considered as the first developmental study that viewed the infant–mother attachment from an evolutionary perspective which pre-dated Bowlby’s presentation of his formal account of attachment theory to the British Psychoanalytic Society by four years (Bretherton, 2003).