Attachment Across the Life Cycle

316 Pages·1993·1.72 MB·English

by  Colin Parkes

Attachment Across the Life Cycle
It has long been suspected that many of the common psychiatric and social
problems of adult life have their roots in the early relationship between the
child and its mother. Out of the infant’s first experiences of attachment stem
expectations and assumptions which will colour all subsequent relationships
– for good or ill. To explain this observation, and to examine the part which
patterns of attachment play in the causation of psychiatric and social
problems, a body of knowledge has sprung up which owes much to the
pioneering work of the late John Bowlby.
This volume draws together recent theoretical contributions, research
findings, and clinical data from seventeen psychiatrists, psychologists,
sociologists, and ethologists from four countries. Their work has confirmed
the importance of the earlier work and extended it to look at attachment
throughout the life cycle. New findings add to our understanding of topics as
diverse as agoraphobia, pathological grief, disorders of ‘holding’, family
dynamics, depression, and the special vulnerability of people who grow up in
an ‘enterprise culture’.
Attachment Across the Life Cycle contains a postscript by John Bowlby
and will be of interest to all those fascinated by the psychology of human
relationships and concerned with solving the problems to which they give
rise.
Colin Murray Parkes is a Senior Lecturer in Psychiatry at the London
Hospital Medical College, University of London. Joan Stevenson-Hinde is a
Senior Scientific Officer with the Medical Research Council Group on the
Development and Integration of Behaviour, University of Cambridge. Peter
Marris is Professor of Social Planning at the Graduate School of Architecture
and Urban Planning, University of California.

Attachment Across the Life
Cycle
Edited by
Colin Murray Parkes,
Joan Stevenson-Hinde
and
Peter Marris
London and New York
First published 1991
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London, EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

ISBN 0-203-13247-5 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-18239-1 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-05651-9 (Print Edition)
Contents
List of contributors vii
Introduction 1
Part I The Nature of Attachment
1 The roots and growing points of attachment theory 9
Inge Bretherton
2 Attachments and other affectional bonds across the life cycle 33
Mary D. Salter Ainsworth
3 Perspectives on attachment 52
Robert A. Hinde and Joan Stevenson-Hinde
4 The attachment bond in childhood and adulthood 66
Robert S. Weiss
5 The social construction of uncertainty 77
Peter Marris
Part II Patterns of Attachment
6 Attachment quality as an organizer of emotional and
behavioral responses in a longitudinal perspective 93
Klaus E. Grossmann and Karin Grossmann
7 Attachment patterns in children of depressed mothers 115
Marian Radke-Yarrow
8 Metacognitive knowledge, metacognitive monitoring, and
singular (coherent) vs. multiple (incoherent) model of
attachment: findings and directions for future research 127
Mary Main
vi Contents
9 Effects on infant–mother attachment of mother’s unresolved
loss of an attachment figure, or other traumatic experience 160
Mary D. Salter Ainsworth and Carolyn Eichberg
Part III Clinical Applications
10 Failure of the holding relationship: some effects of physical
rejection on the child’s attachment and inner experience 187
Juliet Hopkins
11 The application of attachment theory to understanding
and treatment in family therapy 199
John Byng-Hall
12 Insecure attachment and agoraphobia 216
Giovanni Liotti
13 Loss of parent in childhood, attachment style, and
depression in adulthood 234
Tirril Harris and Antonia Bifulco
14 Attachment, bonding, and psychiatric problems after
bereavement in adult life 268
Colin Murray Parkes
Postscript by John Bowlby 293
Index 298
Contributors
Ainsworth, Prof. M.D. Salter, Professor Emeritus of Psychology and
Behavioral Medicine and Psychiatry, University of Virginia, USA.
Bifulco, Dr A., Sociologist, Dept of Social Policy & Social Sciences, Royal
Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London, UK.
Bowlby, Dr J., was Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist, Child & Family Dept,
The Tavistock Clinic, London, UK.
Bretherton, Prof. I., Professor of Child & Family Studies, University of
Wisconsin–Madison, USA.
Byng-Hall, Dr J., Consultant Psychiatrist, Child & Family Dept, The
Tavistock Clinic, London, UK.
Eichberg, Dr C.G., Columbia Associates in Psychiatry, USA.
Grossmann, Prof. Dr K.E., Professor of Psychology, University of
Regensburg, FRG.
Grossmann, Dr Karin, Psychologist, University of Regensburg, FRG.
Harris, Mrs T., Sociologist, Dept of Social Policy & Social Sciences, Royal
Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London, UK.
Hinde, Prof. R.A., Royal Society Research Professor & Honorary Director,
Medical Research Council Unit on the Development and Integration of
Behaviour, University of Cambridge, UK.
Hopkins, Mrs J., Psychotherapist, Child & Family Dept, The Tavistock
Clinic, London, UK.
Liotti, Dr G., Psychiatrist, Association for Research on the Psychopathology
of the Attachment System (ARPAS), Rome, Italy.
Main, Prof. M., Professor of Psychology, Dept of Psychology, University of
California at Berkeley, USA.
Marris, Prof. P., Professor of Social Planning, Graduate School of
Architecture & Urban Planning, University of California at Los Angeles,
USA.
Parkes, Dr C.M., Senior Lecturer in Psychiatry, the London Hospital
Medical College, University of London, UK.
Radke-Yarrow, Dr M., Chief of Laboratory of Developmental Psychology,
National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, Md., USA.
viii Contributors
Stevenson-Hinde, Dr J., Senior Scientific Officer, Medical Research Council
Group on the Development and Integration of Behaviour, University of
Cambridge, UK.
Weiss, Prof. R.S., Professor of Sociology, Work & Family Research Unit,
University of Massachusetts, Boston, USA.
Introduction
The human infant’s attachment to its mother (or other primary caregiver) is
a prerequisite for survival and a test-bed for all the other attachments he or
she will make. Out of this first relationship stems a set of expectations and
assumptions which will influence subsequent relationships – and which will
not easily be changed – or so attachment theory and the research which
spawned it implies. If this theory is correct then we can expect it to shed light
not only on the interpersonal problems which can bedevil individual and
family life, but also the very essence of the large scale societies to which we
belong.
In recent years two researchers have done more than anyone else to bring
these issues to our attention and to provide us with the ideas and tools that
we need; they are John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth. The publication of the
three volumes of Bowlby’s impressive work Attachment and Loss (in 1969,
1973, and 1980) and of Ainsworth’s reports of her ‘strange situation’
(Ainsworth and Wittig 1969; Ainsworth et al. 1978) established a new frame
of reference for future work in this field.
Since then other researchers in many parts of the world and from many
disciplines have been encouraged to follow up and develop their approaches.
The result has been an accumulation of knowledge about a range of
phenomena which had not previously been linked. The field enlightens our
thinking about animal behaviour, child development, dynamic psychiatry,
interpersonal psychology, sociology, and other areas.
Several attempts have been made to draw these researchers together,
including two workshops which were hosted by the King Edward VII
Memorial Fund in London during 1981 and 1988. The aims of these
workshops were twofold: to facilitate the interchange of ideas between
researchers and to produce a book which would represent and update the
state of attachment theory and the practice which had arisen out of it. Thus
they are both very much more than a routine report of a conference.
The first volume was entitled The Place of Attachment in Human
Behaviour (eds Parkes and Stevenson-Hinde 1982). It demonstrated clearly