Attachment Theory - What’s the Big Deal?
It has been a few months since we started the podcast, and I’d like to take a moment to reflect on the episodes here staring with the very first one, Attachment Theory I: The First Bond.
When we feel helpless and hopeless, we may come up with the question: what’s the point? Why do we create goals, work hard, and keep going only to end up feeling unfulfilled and repeating it all over again? What exactly is the point of living?
The easy answer is, nobody can answer that question except you. The harder answer is, we can try to figure it out together. Maybe it’s finding happiness, ending suffering, helping others, leaving a legacy, etc. I think the point of attachment theory is that there is another person walking this path of uncertainty with you.
The importance of this bond starts at birth. We have no way of surviving without the help of another, usually a parent. John Bowlby in the 1950s began to talk about the importance of the first bond the baby has with a parent as its own driving force for survival. The need for bonding is dependent on and irrespective of biological needs. This is nicely portrayed in the idea of imprinting: the baby duck will “imprint” or attach onto the first caregiving figure it encounters, whether a mama duck or a human. Now the way we attach gets complicated in the human condition, because we have all kinds of… let’s call it baggage.
Before John Bowlby’s ideas were published, there was not much emphasis on the parent-child bond. But researchers like Mary Ainsworth, Peter Fonagy, Mary Main, Dan Siegel and many others gathered evidence to support the impact of the first human bond the child has with another. This was not to negate the works of psychoanalysts, who initially focused mainly on the child’s internal world. We can clearly see that the works of Anna Freud, Melanie Klein, and of course, D.W. Winnicot influencing the way we approach child and adult psychology. The difference with attachment theory is that it can apply to how we experience life from any angle.
For example, if you are purely looking at a biological basis of how the mind works, the discovery of mirror neurons dramatically changed the way we look at learning and motivation. The existence of mirror neurons tell us that we value imitating and attuning to the mind of another person. If you’re coming from a behavioral perspective, consistent therapy with someone who believes in you is the only way we really make behavioral changes. If you are thinking psychoanalytic, the persistent examining of symbols, metaphors, representations, how the external world interacts with the internal world, and meaning-finding helps you accept your own strengths and flaws as they are, just as your psychonalyst does. Even in religion, your relationship with “God” or a conceptualization of a higher state of being allows you to keep hope in moments of helplessness.
Attachment theory is beautifully related to the Middle Path and the Wise Mind in dialectical behavioral therapy. Secure attachment is refraining from the all-or-nothing, black and white, nihilistic, extremist thinking, and finding peace in the balance of the good, the bad and the ugly in the human condition. Attachment-focused relationship work is rooted in this too; you are trying to understand each other without judgment. Like Viktor Frankl said, in any situation no matter how dark, we can find meaning found in our ability to make a choice.
Anyway, that is how I try to understand this. Much more to learn of course, and I hope your curiosity guides you too.
References:
Bretherton, I. (1992). The origins of attachment theory: John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth. Developmental Psychology, 28(5), 759–775. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.28.5.759
Frankl, Viktor E. (Viktor Emil), 1905-1997, author. (1962). Man's search for meaning: an introduction to logotherapy. Boston :Beacon Press.
Sapolsky, R. M. (2017). Behave: The biology of humans at our best and worst. Penguin Books.
van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Viking.
Wallin, D. J. (2007). Attachment in Psychotherapy. New York: Guilford Press.
