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Parenting In Space
A Journey Toward Therapeutic Parenting
“The Legacy of
Attachment”
The Identification and InterGenerational Transmission of
Attachment Patterns
Karen Doyle Buckwalter, MSW, LCSW
Chaddock Quincy, IL
[email protected]
Devotion
• From Michael Trout’s
Baby Verses
• “I figured it out.”
Part I
• Early and recent
history of
Attachment Theory
• Attachment
classifications
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EARLY SCIENTIFIC
DISCOVERIES RELATED TO
ATTACHMENT THEORY
History of Attachment Theory
•
•
•
•
•
•
1939 John Bowlby writes about his views
on early psychological experiences that
lead to psychological disorders (British
Psychoanalytic Society)
1940’s Rene Spitz begins to film
institutionalized infants
1944 Bowlby writes “Forty-Four Juvenile
Thieves: Their Characters and Home-Life”
published in the International Journal of
Psychoanalysis
1948 Mary Ainsworth selected as Bowlby’s
research assistant
1950’s Winnicott, Lornez,
Harlow…Bowlby’s “kindred spirits”
1958 Harry Harlow’s rhesus monkey
experiment
Harry Harlow’s Experiments
Insert Harlow Video
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MODERN ATTACHMENT
THEORY
Attachment Theory Timeline
•
1975 Ed Tronick first presents the “Still Face
Experiment”
•
1977 Alan Sroufe writes Attachment as an
Organization Construct paper the famous
Minnesota Studies follow
•
1980’s Mary Main’s Berkley Studies addition of
Disorganized Attachment Pattern and the Adult
Attachment Interview
•
1994 Allan Schore Affect Regulation and the Origin
of Self
•
1997 Peter Fonagy Crime and Attachment:
Morality, Disruptive Behavior, BPD, Crime and Their
Relationship to Security of Attachment
•
1999 Daniel Siegel The Developing Mind
Attachment and Current Brain Research
Attachment Research demonstrates
that attuned, engaging interaction
between a baby and his/her mother
leads to:
• Secure Attachment
• Positive Internal Working Models (IWM)
of self and the world
• The capacity to regulate emotions and
actions
Still Face Clip and Exercise
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Daniel Siegel, MD
Book: The Developing Mind
•
The brain is experience dependent
•
It is not nature versus nurture but rather
nature needs nurture
•
Secure attachment involves contingent
communication, in which the signals of
one person are directly responded to by
another
•
These patterns of communication
literally shape the structure of the child’s
developing brain
ATTACHMENT
CLASSIFICATIONS
OF PARENTS AND
CHILDREN
Attachment Categories
• Secure Attachment
• Insecure Ambivalent
• Insecure Avoidant
• Disorganized Attachment
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Secure Attachment
• Primary Caregiver is:
– available when child needs her,
effective in meeting the child’s
needs, sensitively attuned,
consistent, encourages mutually
enjoyable interactions, warm and
nurturing
• Child feels:
– secure, confident about self and
that help is accessible, able to
explore. Older child has good
social skills, rapport and empathy
Insecure-Ambivalent
• Primary caregiver is:
– Inconsistently available, not
always effective at meeting
child’s needs, unexpected
changes in sensitivity and
intrusiveness, parent’s own
emotional upheavals dominate
• Child feels:
– Anxiety shown as clingy, angry,
whiney, separation issues. Older
child has anxious and depressive
states
Insecure - Avoidant
• Primary caregiver is:
– Rejecting, rebuffs the child when in
need, emotionally aloof, poor
capacity for co-regulation
• Child feels:
– Emotionally inhibited, learns to
suppress attachment feelings and
behaviors because they trigger
parent’s rejection, insistently
independent does not seek help
when injured or disappointed. Older
child may have addictive behaviors
and covert aggression
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Disorganized Attachment
•
•
Primary Caregiver is:
– Frightening or frightened when the
child is needy, abusive or neglectful,
caregiver usually has own history of
abuse, trauma loss
Child:
– Displays strange out of context
behaviors of freezing, agitation, panic,
rage. Dissociation, child has great
dilemma because attachment figure is
also source of threat and danger. Child
may show compulsive caretaking or
compliance. Older child displays intense
control, aggression and Borderline
symptoms.
The Adult
Attachment Interview
The Adult Attachment Interview
• Series of questions asked to
adult
– Childhood relationship
with parents
– Losses and traumas
• Recorded, transcribed
verbatim and coded
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Link Between the AAI and
the Strange Situation Protocol
• 75% or greater correlation
between AAI and SSP
History of the AAI
• In 1985 monograph written. Main, Kaplan and Cassidy
reported that an interview based method of classifying a
parent’s state of mind with regard to attachment was strongly
associated with the infant's behavior toward them in the
strange situation.
• Previously attachment research had focused almost
exclusively on nonverbal behavior
• The AAI moved this work to the level of representation
“Adult Attachment style refers to particular working
modes or schemas of self and other that are related to
interpersonal and emotional functioning.”
(Doumas, Blasey & Mitchell, 2006)
“Individual differences related to attachment systems are
thought to reflect the degree to which a person has
come to expect warm, responsive, and reliable care
giving in times of need.”
(Main, Kaplan & Cassidy, 1985)
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Adult and Child Attachment Classifications
Adult in AAI
Baby in Strange
Situation
Secure Autonomous
Secure
Dismissing
Avoidant
Preoccupied
Ambivalent
Unresolved
Disorganized
AAI in Non-Clinical Samples
• Ijzendorn and Bakermans-Kranenburg
Combined (meta-analytic) sample 584 mothers
– 58% Secure-Autonomous
– 24% Dismissing
– 18% Preoccupied
• Including unresolved category 487 mothers
– 55% Secure-Autonomous
– 16% Dismissing
– 9% Preoccupied
– 19% Unresolved
What do these statistics tell us?
• Nearly half of parents are
not secure in their adult
attachment classification
• What does this mean for the
field of adoption?
• What does it mean in
working with children with
their own attachment
challenges?
Discussion
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“The best way to
help a child is to take
care of its mother.”
– Selma Fraiberg
Part II
• Case Discussion and
Analysis
Having heard AAI transcript
• What else do you now
know?
• What would you say to
mother about what you
heard?
• What challenge might
she have with her child?
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Hear the story of the parent
“When the mother’s
own cries are heard,
she will hear her child’s
cries.”
-Selma Fraiberg
EXAMINING ONE’S
OWN ATTACHMENT
PATTERN
“Intergenerational Transmission”
IN CHILDHOOD AND PSYCHOTHERAPY
 The parent’s security, insecurity, and/or
trauma are regularly transmitted to the child.
 As therapists, our ability to help generate a
secure attachment relationship with the
patient largely depends on our own
attachment history—and our relationship to
that history.
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You can’t give to children parents
what you yourself don’t have…
• Dozier Studies – Attachment
Patterns of Foster Mothers
• Steele Studies – Attachment
Patterns of Adoptive
Mothers and Bio Mothers
(Bronx mothers)
Overview of the 3 Organized
Categories (Cyraowskit et al. 2002)
• Dismissing
• Preoccupied
• Secure-Autonomous
Dismissing
• Dismissing individuals view self as
worthy, yet others as unreliable or
rejecting. They find it difficult to be close
to others and are seen as defensively
independent, taking a dismissing or
detached attitude toward attachment
relationships.
“Deal and don’t feel”
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Preoccupied Individuals
• Preoccupied individuals view self as unworthy
or unlovable but have positive evaluation of
others. They tend to be preoccupied with
attempts to gain the love, acceptance and
emotional closeness of others, are anxious
about possible abandonment and are often
viewed by others as clingy or demanding.
“Feel and don’t deal”
Secure-Autonomous
• Individuals with a Secure “state of mind”
have a model of others as warm, reliable
and available in time of need and model
of oneself as lovable and worthy of care.
They can be flexible in relating to people
in a variety of ways and have a strong
capacity to mentalize.
CHOOSE WHICH
SELF-DESCRIPTION
FITS YOU MOST CLOSELY…
Break into pairs –Discuss
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I am somewhat uncomfortable being
close to others; I find it difficult to trust
them completely, difficult to allow myself
to depend on them.
I am nervous when anyone gets too close,
and often, love partners want me to be
more intimate than I feel comfortable
being.
I find that others are reluctant to get as
close as I would like. I often worry that my
partner doesn't really love me or won't
stay with me. I want to merge completely
with another person, and this desire
sometimes scares people away.
I find it relatively easy to get close to
others and am comfortable depending
on them and having them depend on
me. I don't often worry about being
abandoned or about someone getting
too close to me.
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Devotion
• From See Me As A
Person by Mary
Koloroutis and
Michael Trout
• “So I Get Tired and I
Forget”
Contact Information:
Karen Doyle Buckwalter, MSW, LCSW
Chaddock
217-222-0034 ext 319
Email: [email protected]
Skype: karen.doyle.buckwalter
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