Attachment theory seeks to understand the importance of relationships between humans, in particular the early bonds between a child and their primary caregivers, usually their mum and dad. Then looking at how those bonds influence the child’s future relationships with other adults and their own children. It was first pioneered by John Bowlby a British Psychoanalyst and documented in the Attachment and Loss book series1.
Others continued his work, one of these was Dr Patricia Crittenden, an American Psychologist who is the lead creator of the Dynamic Maturational Model of Attachment and Adaptation (DMM)2 and author of Raising Parents: Attachment, representation, and treatment3.
Attachment is a lifelong inter-personal strategy to respond to threat/danger which reflects an intra-personal strategy for processing information. Attachment is a theory about danger and how we organise in the face of it.4
As infants we are powerless to take care of ourselves and need an adult to meet all our needs, including but not limited to feeding us, cleaning us, soothing us when we are distressed, clothing us etc. We are born with our own temperament but it is how key adults provide care that help us develop physically, emotionally and psychologically. We are motivated to bond to our key caregivers in order to ensure we get protection and nurture. Over time children develop strategies or patterns in response to their environment, to influence the care they get from their caregivers. Children can develop different strategies for different caregivers.
The image below shows the basic DMM strategies. The model considers attachment adaptive because our strategies can change as we get older, develop new skills that take us out into the world, to school or work where we meet new people and events happen in our lives.
Attachment strategies are formed through the type of information we find useful to get our needs met by caregivers. Over time individuals develop a pattern to prioritise, omit, distort or deny different types of information. Attachment strategies are considered either “secure” or “insecure.” Secure strategies are generally associated with receiving consistent and sensitive care in childhood. Insecure strategies with less sensitive and or inconsistent care. Children need to feel safe and feel loved. If they sense danger they will adapt their strategy to deal with it. The more severely they adapt their strategy the, more likely it will impact their emotional and psychological development. This might result in behaviours which do not seem to be in line with the persons age (appearing older or younger), and this may also impact their future outcomes.
The strategies that we develop in our early years may be our strength, they kept us alive and get our needs met (adaptive), but they may be a weakness if what worked well with our key caregivers doesn’t work well with new situations and new people (maladaptive).
Basic Attachment Strategies
There are 3 basic attachment strategies:
- A considered Insecure – Cognitive
- C considered Insecure – Affective
- B considered Secure
A Insecure – Cognitive
In the A,B,C +D model of attachment this was considered Avoidant/Dismissive5. Those using an insecure cognitive attachment style usually had parents who consistently did not meet the child’s needs and were predictable in the type of insensitive and misattuned care they gave. Children who develop an A style over prioritise cognitive information learning to rely on ‘facts’ to build rules about how to behave based on what happened before e.g. who, did what, to whom, when and what was the result?
They also omit/distort/deny information relating to how their body feels/emotions, particularly negative emotions, because that information doesn’t help them to get the care they need. For example, they may smile when they are in a lot of pain after being beaten (an example of false positive affect), or they may deny their anger, sadness or pain when a parent has sexually abused them (an example of denied negative affect). In worst cases they may experience delusions.
C Insecure – Affective
In the A,B,C +D model, this was considered Resistant/Ambivalent. Those using insecure affective attachment styles omit/distort/deny cognitive information. For example, they may falsely blame others for something that happened and make false claims of their own innocence when they were guilty or display seductive behaviours to get a person to do something for them out of a perceived level of bond/feeling that is not there (false cognition), and they may experience delusions.
Those using a C strategy over prioritise information coming from their body/how they feel. It is likely a person using a C strategy received unpredictable and variably sensitive/misattuned parenting.
B Secure
In the A,B,C +D model, this was considered Balanced. Those using secure attachment styles are able to integrate both affective and cognitive information. It is likely they consistently received predictable and attuned parenting. Whist having a secure attachment style is idealised in the modern western world, in some dangerous scenario’s using, a B strategy may not serve you well e.g. in a war zone where people have no intention of meeting your needs.
What is Your Basic Attachment Strategy?
If you’re new to attachment theory, it is usually at this stage people become interested in understanding what their own attachment strategy is. Depending on the situation and how mature we are, we can use different strategies in different situations to keep ourselves safe or alert to others that our needs are not being met. However, it is usually under stressful situations that our primary attachment strategy is revealed. Attachment strategies can only be accurately determined through appropriate assessment6:
- Adults are assessed using an Adult Attachment Interview (AAI)*
- Children 6 months – 2 years, using the Strange Situation Procedure (SSP)*
- Children 2 – 5, using the Preschool Assessment of Attachment (PAA)
- Children 6 – 13, through a School Age Assessment of Attachment (SAA) and
- 16 – 25 years olds, through a Transition to Adult Attachment Interview (TAAI)
* approved in the UK under National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines7.
Clark Baim is a Psychotherapist who is trained in assessing attachment strategies for adults and children. He presented Assessing Adult Attachment8 to the Humber Social Work Teaching Partnership and between 25:45 to 32:00 minutes into the video he conducted an exercise to help people get an idea of what their basic attachment style might be. N.B. This is not an accurate assessment tool and shouldn’t be used as such, it has only been provided for information. In reality, the basic styles can be broken further down into more detailed attachment strategies which this short video cannot fully cover.
How Might Attachment Strategies Cause Us Difficulty?
When faced with a situation, the brain uses information we stored from the past, to create shortcuts that helps us make decisions about how to behave. In the DMM these shortcuts are called “Dispositional Representations” (DR). For example, if a child was often slapped across the face by their mother, one of their DR’s may be that all women slap children and so the child may be wary when they come across a woman they haven’t met before. This is a very complex area, where even the most subtle signs can become transformed into DR’s and cause us to be hypertensive to, or even overlook information. This may mean we are more vulnerable to certain risks.
The brain can process information and formulate a reaction in milliseconds. In times of stress our response may not be what we would otherwise like it to be. It is important to remember, the response is our DR which has been influenced over the course of our development. In addition, a person can have multiple DR’s that are triggered at once in a given situation and some of them may be in conflict with each other.
Unresolved trauma can cause individuals to tie feelings experienced in the present, to bad things that happened in the past, as if the bad thing is happening now. They may employ self-protective behaviours, but they may not work in the new situation and therefore, their primary attachment strategy fails them.
In later articles we will look at the DMM model in more detail and how our attachment strategies may impact parenting and how we can change them.
References:
- John Bowlby Attachment and Loss Trilogy
- DMM Model – Family Relations Institute
- Raising Parents: Attachment, Representation and Treatment
- Crittenden, P. and Claussen, A. (Eds.) (2000). The Organization of Attachment Relationships: Maturation, culture and context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Attachment pattern comparison: DMM and ABC+D (Berkeley) – Conflict Science Institute
- Forensic Services – Family Relations Institute:
- Overview | Children’s attachment: attachment in children and young people who are adopted from care, in care or at high risk of going into care | Guidance | NICE
- Assessing Adult Attachment