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How 7Ttachment Shapes Family Relationships

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How 7Ttachment Shapes Family Relationships C((!"( B )#&$&((#"&' &'(#$& ) #+ The Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships C#+((!"($'B! - (#"'$' research in many different countries. And -' because family dynamics are shaped by rela- tionships it provides an ideal framework for B Contents understanding family process. Examining F ((!"( what takes place within families through the Practitioner Pamphlets Series lens of attachment promises an evidence- Editor – Susanna Abse Why is attachment important? p.1 based perspective on the relationship processes that define family life. How The Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships !$#&("( exciting is that?! (TCCR) is a specialist centre of excellence for Families come in all shapes and sizes. If advanced training and practice providing What is attachment? p.2 you’ve read this once, you’ve read it many This booklet will introduce you to the con- tertiary level support to the mental health and times! Diversity defies us to make generali- cept of attachment, and to the main ap- family support field. Our work is grounded in sations about how families operate because proaches that have been used for assessing the experience of training practitioners and there are so many different types of family. the quality of attachment in families. It will supporting couples. TCCR aims to provide the Does attachment show If I use my family experience to make sense summarise ways in which attachment affects services that support couples, strengthen in behaviour? p.4 of yours I will most likely make assumptions how adults bring up their children. Most families and safeguard children. The work is that have no bearing on your experience importantly, it will consider how you, as a geared to improving the quality of adult couple and vice versa. So what can I draw on to family practitioner, might apply the concept relationships, preventing family breakdown, make sense of what goes on in your family in your work with those undergoing family supporting positive parenting and thereby Can attachment influence (and you in mine)? And is there anything we change. Don’t be put off by thinking that both can use to make sense of what hap- attachment theory is all about putting peo- promoting healthy development in children. how we communicate? p.6 pens in other families? ple into boxes, and sticking a ‘problem’ label D on some of them. Yes, there are ways of as- The answer to this last question is ‘yes’ sessing attachment security – and we shall To supply specialist therapeutic services to How does attachment (you’ll be relieved to hear!), and it is the con- be looking at some of them – but attachment couples and individuals experiencing difficul- cept of attachment. You will be very familiar is not a measure of personality. It is a con- ties in their relationships. affect parenting? p.8 with this concept, though you may not cept that sheds light on how people respond know it. It applies to all family relationships, to stressful situations, and an approach that To provide training and consultancy on whatever their form and cultural context. It takes into account how important the rela- has an empirical basis, coming out of the de- tionship environment is to shaping those delivering, developing and managing services tailed study of relationships over decades of responses. for parents and families. Are there implications for family support? p.9 To undertake research that contributes to the understanding of couple and family relationships and how best they might be improved. Where do you come in? p12 , founded in 1948, believes in the importance of the therapeutic relationship and Suggestions for further its ability to enhance and heal the lives of adults and children. In setting up TCCR reading & references p.13 60 years ago, the founders proposed the following guiding tenet- .E #&#&$#$ #" -+((!/ +++(&#&) 1 B ('((!"( (('( '("()&"%) (- ‘Attachment’ is a word that has wide colloquial residential nursery in Hampstead, to assist in usage. It can describe the sentiment that binds the study of the effects of separation on young # 0'((!"( us to our children, our parents, our lovers, our children. The films produced in the 1950s by friends, our pets, and even the ornaments and the Robertsons (James’s wife Joyce joining him objects that we consider important to us. in this project) made a huge impact. They influ- "$-' #'"''+((((!"()&$&#,!(- In this pamphlet it is used in a precise way that enced policies and practices in hospitals and is defined by attachment theory and applied other residential institutions, changing the #+"'(&''")$'(+"'$&(&#!&#&!$&#('( only to relationships between people. rules so that, )&""(#(($&'#"#&#!#&(+" "(&("'*" whenever possible, The architect of attachment theory was John children were not '"(($&'#"(#$&#*(#""(#*"()&#)(",$ #&')&' Bowlby (1907-1990), a psychiatrist and psycho- separated from analyst whose commitment to providing a their parents. His scientific basis for therapeutic practice led him collaboration with to move beyond the circle of his colleagues in Mary Ainsworth, the psychoanalytic community to learn also an American an- A from ethologists, anthropologists, systems theo- thropologist and rists and behavioural psychologists. His three co-architect of at- #((!"(*#)& seminal volumes contain the theory that tachment theory, A still from ‘A two year old goes to hospital’ formed his lifetime project. encouraged research based on closely observed Proximity mother-infant relationships to inform our under- standing of child development. Basing his ideas on observation, Bowlby pro- posed that attachment behaviour was an in- nate system switched on by threat. Threat drove children (and indeed adults,’though this was Safe Haven Secure Base not Bowlby’s primary concern) towards those they could trust for protection and comfort. Physical closeness, and the quality of the re- sponse received from (usually) a mother, were seen as the key mechanisms for reducing fear and anxiety in young children. By assuaging such painful feelings mothers enable the at- Protest tachment system to be switched off. Repeated experiences of a parent figure being available in this way establishes an emotional bond be- tween them, which is described (from the in- fant’s perspective) as attachment. Secure attachment to parent figures in the early years of life lay the foundations for resilience in Bowlby’s theory was initially controversial, and remains so in those quarters where he is believed later life. Older children, and adults, are then to have argued that women should stay at home to bring up their children rather than going out to The scientific method that Bowlby believed in able to draw on their own resources when fac- above all others was that of observation. ing stressful situations (what Bowlby described work. This portrayal of attachment theory distorts Bowlby’s ideas, and those of other attachment Following his appointment as Deputy Director as secure internal working models of self pioneers who have followed him. Yet the message that the foundations of adult security are laid in of the Tavistock Clinic he recruited James- and others), as well as feeling confident about childhood, and especially in the first two to three years of life, remains a challenging one for today’s Robertson, a boilerman working at Anna Freud’s turning to others for help. parents and those who work with them . 2 3 A "*#)& Mary Ainsworth was responsible for intro- anxious-ambivalent. Faced with the anxi- Zizzi, an attractive young woman, established an immediate appearance of inti- ducing the term ‘secure base’ into the lan- ety of being separated from mother some in- guage of attachment theory. She and her fants appeared unconcerned and precociously macy with people she met for the first time. Her relationships with men quickly colleagues provided arresting visual evi- self-reliant. They were described as became sexual, and she would then become possessive and jealous of them. dence of how infants between 12 and 18 avoidantly attached. They would occupy She had a series of such relationships, all of which ended when the men in her months of age used their mothers as a themselves with the toys in the room and secure base to explore the world around appear to show little interest in their life rejected her, extricating themselves, as they would say, from her clutches. them. Through the Strange Situation mother’s comings and goings, maybe look- Piotr was different. A big bear of a man who normally kept himself to himself, Procedure (SSP) she and her co-researchers ing up to check on what was happening, but observed how this age group of children making few if any demands on her or the he was attracted by Zizzi’s liveliness and emotional intensity. More important, behaved when they were separated from stranger for comfort or reassurance. While he wasn’t put off by her tendency to blow hot and cold. He provided a rock that their mothers (their primary caregiver in all they appeared calm on the surface, their she could cling to and batter, while she provided the excitement and spontaneity cases) and left in a room on their own or body responses (for example, heart rate and with a stranger, and how they behaved when cortisol levels) told a different story. Their that he had missed out on and craved. their mothers returned. agitation was evident in their body if not in their behaviour. It is important remember that patterns of at- are in a push-pull kind of dance, one push- tachment are not measures of personality. ing away if the other pulls in and then re- In around two thirds of the infants they ob- In contrast, those infants who were They are more fluid than that, and vitally af- versing the roles. served the response to being separated from anxious-ambivalently attached protested fected by relationships. The Strange Situa- and reunited with mother was predictable. a great deal when their mothers left the tion Procedure has shown that the same They were distressed and cried when she It takes only a small step of imagination to room.
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