Bowlby - ATTACHMENT AND LOSS

326 Pages·2006·1.63 MB·English

ATTACHMENT AND LOSS

VOLUME I
ATTACHMENT

by
JOHN BOWLBY

Second Edition
Copyright © Tavistock Institute of Human Relations 1969, 1982
Published by Basic Books,
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may
be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the
case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information,
address Basic Books, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022-5299.
Library of Congress Catalog Number: 83-71445
ISBN 0-465-00543-8 (paper)
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To
URSULA

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Contents

Foreword by Allan N. Schore page xi

Preface xxvii

Acknowledgements xxxiii

i. Point of View 3
Some characteristics of the present approach 5

Theories of motivation 13

Note on the concept of feedback in Freud's theorising 22

2. Observations to be Explained 24

3. Instinctive Behaviour: An Alternative Model 37
Introduction 37

Some principles of control systems 41

Control systems and instinctive behaviour 44

Adaptation: system and environment 50

Note on literature 56

4. Man's Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness 58

5. Behavioural Systems Mediating Instinctive Behaviour 65
Types of behavioural system 65

Co-ordination of behavioural systems 74

Higher processes of integration and control 80

6. Causation of Instinctive Behaviour 85
Activation and termination of behavioural systems 85

Incompatible behavioural systems: results of simultaneous activation 97

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Sensory input and its transformation 102

7. Appraising and Selecting: Feeling and Emotion 104
Introduction 104

Philosophical problems 106

Processes that are felt 109

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Is feeling or emotion causative of behaviour? 116

The communicative role of feeling and emotion 120

8. Function of Instinctive Behaviour 124
Functions of behavioural systems and other consequences of their activity 124

Problems of terminology 134

9. Changes in Behaviour during the Life-cycle 141

10. Ontogeny of Instinctive Behaviour 145
Changes that occur during the ontogeny of behavioural systems 145

Restriction of range of effective stimuli 147

Elaboration of primitive behavioural systems and their supersession by sophisticated systems
152

Integration of behavioural systems into functional wholes 157

Sensitive periods of development 161

Imprinting 166

Comparison of old and new theories of instinctive behaviour 172

ii. The Child's Tie to his Mother: Attachment Behaviour 177
Alternative theories 177

Attachment behaviour and its place in nature 180
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Attachment behaviour in non-human primates 184

Attachment behaviour in man 198

12. Nature and Function of Attachment Behaviour 210
The theory of secondary drive: origin and present status 210

The question of imprinting 220

Function of attachment behaviour 223

A note on terminology: 'dependence' 228

Attachment and other systems of social behaviour 230

13. A Control Systems Approach to Attachment Behaviour 235
Introduction 235

The roles of child and of mother in mother-child interaction 236

Forms of behaviour mediating attachment and their organisation 244

Behaviour typical of two-year-olds in different situations 252

Activation and termination of systems mediating attachment behaviour 257

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14. Beginnings of Attachment Behaviour 265
Phases in the development of attachment 265

Behavioural equipment of the human neonate 268

Early responses to people 271

Nature and nurture 296

15. Focusing on a Figure 299
Introduction 299

Patterns of differentially directed behaviour 300

Figures towards whom attachment behaviour is directed 303
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Processes leading to selection of figures 313

Sensitive phases and the fear of strangers 321

Spitz's position: a critique 327

16. Patterns of Attachment and Contributing Conditions 331
Problems to be solved 331

Criteria for describing patterns of attachment 333

Some patterns of attachment seen at the first birthday 335

Conditions of the first year contributing to variation 340

Persistence and stability of patterns 348

17. Developments in the Organisation of Attachment Behaviour 350

18. Stability and Change in Patterns of Attachment 361
Further development of infants assessed as securely or anxiously attached 361

The organisation of attachment: from lability to stability 364

Development of conceptual perspective taking 368

19. Objections, Misconceptions and Clarifications 371
Attachment as an organisational concept 371

Attachment-caregiving: one type of social bond 376

References 379

Author Index 401

Subject Index 407

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Foreword

IN 1969, twenty-nine years after his initial publication of an article in the International
Journal of Psycho-Analysis on how the early environment could influence the development of
character ( 1940), John Bowlby integrated his career-spanning observations and theoretical
conceptualizations into the first of three influential books on Attachment and Loss. The
foundational volume, Attachment, was groundbreaking.
It focused upon one of the major questions of science, specifically, how and why do certain
early ontogenetic events have such an inordinate effect on everything that follows? Bowlby
presented the essential problems in such a way that both a heuristic theoretical perspective
and a testable experimental methodology could be created to observe, measure, and evaluate
certain very specific mechanisms by which the early social environment interacts with the
maturing organism to shape developmental processes.
But perhaps of even more profound significance was his carefully argued proposition that an
interdisciplinary perspective should be applied to the study of developmental phenomena. The
collaborative knowledge bases of a spectrum of sciences would yield the most powerful
models-of both the fundamental ontogenetic processes that mediate the infant's first
attachment to another human being, and the essential psychobiological mechanisms by which
these processes indelibly influence the development of the organism at later points of the life
cycle.
"In effect what Bowlby ... attempted is to update psychoanalytic theory in the light of recent
advances in biology" ( Ainsworth, 1969, p. 998). Bowlby's deep insight into the synergistic
potential of combining what appeared on the surface to be distantly related literatures now
may seem like a brilliant flash of intuition, but it actually represented a natural convergence
of his two most important intellectual influences, Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud. The
interweaving of concepts from ethology (behavioral biology) and psychoanalysis facilitates
description of critical events in both the external and internal world, demonstrating that a
mutually enriching dialogue can be organized between the biological and the psychological
realms (viz., Darwin's The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals and Freud's Project
for a Scientific Psychology).
Whereas both Darwin and Freud primarily (though not exclu
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sively) focused their observational and theoretical lenses on the adaptive and maladaptive
functioning of fully matured adult organisms, Bowlby argues that clinical observers and
experimental scientists should concentrate on still-developing organisms. More specifically,
he calls for deeper exploration of the fundamental ontogenetic mechanisms by which an
immature organism is critically shaped by its primordial relationship with a mature adult
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member of its species-that is, for more extensive studies of how an attachment bond forms
between infant and mother. Bowlby asserts that these developmental processes are the product
of the interaction of a unique genetic endowment with a particular environment, and that the
infant's emerging social, psychological, and biological capacities cannot be understood apart
from its relationship with the mother.
Studies on the Neurobiology of Attachment
According to Ainsworth ( 1967, p. 429), attachment is more than overt behavior, it is internal,
"being built into the nervous system, in the course and as a result of the infant's experience of
his transactions with the mother." Following Bowlby's suggestion, the limbic system has been
posited as the site of developmental changes associated with the rise of attachment behaviors
(Anders and Zeanah, 1984). Indeed, the specific period from seven to fifteen months has been
shown to be critical for the myelination and therefore the maturation of particular rapidly
developing limbic and cortical association areas (Kinney et al., 1998); limbic areas of the
human cerebral cortex show anatomical maturation at fifteen months (Rabinowicz, 1979).
Evidence shows that attachment experiences, face-to-face transactions of affect synchrony
between caregiver and infant, directly influence the imprinting, the circuit wiring of the
orbital prefrontal cortex, a corticolimbic area known to begin a major maturational change at
ten to twelve months and to complete a critical period of growth in the middle to end of the
second year. The time frame for this is identical to Bowlby's for the maturation of an
attachment control system open to the influence of the developmental environment.
The cocreated environment of evolutionary adaptiveness is thus isomorphic to a growth-
facilitating environment for the experience-dependent maturation of a regulatory system in the
orbitofrontal cortex. Indeed, this prefrontal system appraises facial information (Scalaidhe et
al., 1997), and processes responses to pleasant touch, taste, smell (Francis et al., 1999) and
music (Blood et al., 1999) as well as to unpleasant images of angry and sad faces (Blair et al.,
1999). It also modulates the motivational control of goal-directed behavior ( Tremblay and
Schultz,
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Attachment research has exploded over the thirty years since the original publication of this
volume, attesting to its impact, but Bowlby's classic will not be upstaged. On rereading, it
continues to reveal subtle insights into the nature of developmental processes, and to shine
light upon areas of developmental research yet to be explored. In fact, as Bowlby surveys the
uncharted territory of mother(cid:31) infant relationally driven psychobiological processes, he
identifies its essential topographic landmarks—the phenomena central to any overarching
model of how the attachment relationship generates both immediate and enduring effects on
the developing individual.
The quality of the experimental and clinical explorations of attachment theory that have been
undertaken since Bowlby's call for "a far-reaching programme of research into the social
responses of
1999), provides a high level of coding that flexibly coordinates exteroceptive and
interoceptive domains and functions to correct responses as conditions change (Derryberry
and Tucker, 1992), and monitors, adjusts, and corrects emotional responses (Rolls, 1986).
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These functions reflect the unique anatomical properties of this area of the brain. Due to its
location at the ventral and medial hemispheric surfaces, it acts as a convergence zone where
cortex and subcortex meet. It is thus situated at the apogee of the "rostral limbic system,' a
hierarchical sequence of interconnected limbic areas in orbitofrontal cortex, insular cortex,
anterior cingulate, and amygdala (Schore, 1997, in press a, in preparation). The limbic system
is now thought to be centrally involved in the capacity "to adapt to a rapidly changing
environment" and in "the organization of new learning" ( Mesulam, 1998, p. 1028).
Emotionally focused limbic learning underlies the unique and fast-acting processes of
imprinting, the learning mechanism associated with attachment, as this dynamic evolves over
the first and second years. Hinde ( 1990, p. 62 ) points out that "the development of social
behavior can be understood only in terms of a continuing dialectic between an active and
changing organism and an active and changing environment"
But the orbitofrontal system is also deeply connected into the autonomic nervous system and
the arousal-generating reticular formation, and due to the fact that it is the only cortical
structure with such direct connections, it can regulate autonomic responses to social stimuli
(Zald and Kim, 1996) and modulate "instinctual behavior" (Starkstein and Robinson, 1997).
The activity of this frontolimbic system is therefore critical to the modulation of social and
emotional behaviors and the homeostatic regulation of body and motivational states, affect-
regulating functions that are centrally involved in attachment processes. The essential aspect
of this function is highlighted by Westin ( 1997, p. 542),
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man, from the preverbal period of infancy onwards" (p. 174 ), has served as a standard in
psychology, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis generally; its breadth spans developmental
psychology, developmental psychobiology, developmental neurochemistry, infant psychiatry,
and psychoanalysis. What follows not only applies a psychoneurobiological perspective to
Bowlby's work but also measures current investigations against Bowlby's original
prescriptions and isolates for interdisciplinary research certain still uninvestigated areas of the
attachment domain limned in Bowlby's cartography. 1
who asserts that "The attempt to regulate affect—to minimize unpleasant feelings and to
maximize pleasant ones-is the driving force in human motivation."
The orbital prefrontal region is especially expanded in the right hemisphere, and it comes to
act as an executive control function for the entire right brain. This hemisphere, which is
dominant for unconscious processes, computes, on a moment-to-moment basis, the affective
salience of external stimuli. This lateralized system performs a "valence tagging" function
(Schore, 1998a, 1999), in which perceptions receive a positive or negative affective charge, in
accord with a calibration of degrees of pleasure-unpleasure. It also contains a "nonverbal
affect lexicon," a vocabulary for nonverbal affective signals such as facial expressions,
gestures, and prosody (Bowers, Bauer, and Heilman, 1993). Because the right cortical
hemisphere, more than the left, contains extensive reciprocal connections with limbic and
subcortical regions, it is dominant for the processing and expression of emotional information
and for regulating psychobiological states (Schore, 1994, 1998a, 1999; Spence, Shapiro, and
Zaidel, 1996). Thus the right hemisphere is centrally involved in what Bowlby described as
the social and biological functions of the attachment system (Henry, 1993; Schore, 1994;
Shapiro, Jamner, and Spence, 1997; Wang, 1997; Siegel, 1999).
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Confirming this model, Ryan, Kuhl, and Deci ( 1997, p. 719), using EEG and neuroimaging
data, conclude that "The positive emotional exchange resulting from autonomy-supportive
parenting involves participation of right hemispheric cortical and subcortical systems that
participate in global, tonic emotional modulation." And in line with Bowlby's assertion that
attachment behavior is vital to the survival of the species, it is now held that the right
hemisphere is central to the con-
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1 See Attachment Theory: Social, Developmental, and Clinical Perspectives ( 1995), and
Handbook of Attachment: Theory, Research, and Clinical Applications ( 1999) for a broad
overview of the field at the end of the century.
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Most researchers focus on the concepts outlined in the latter two sections of this seminal
volume, where Bowlby expands on his essential contributions on the infant's sequential
responses to separation from the primary attachment figure-protest, despair, and detachment-
and introduces Ainsworth's incrementally stress(cid:31) producing "strange situation," which was
soon to become the major experimental paradigm for attachment research.
Bowlby also addresses what he sees as the fundamental dynamics of the attachment
relationship. In stating that the infant is active
trol of vital functions supporting survival and enabling the organism to cope with stresses and
challenges (Wittling and Schweiger, 1993).
A growing body of studies shows that the infant's early-maturing (Geschwind and Galaburda,
1987) right hemisphere is specifically impacted by early social experiences (Schore, 1994,
1998b). This developmental principle is now supported in a recent single photon emission
computed tomographic (SPECT) study by Chiron et al. ( 1997), which demonstrates that the
right brain hemisphere is dominant in preverbal human infants, and indeed for the first three
years of life. This ontogenetic shift of dominance from the right to left hemisphere at this time
may explicate Bowlby's description of a diminution of the attachment system at the end of the
third year that is due to an "abrupt" passage of a "maturational threshold."
Current neuropsychological studies indicate that "the emotional experience(s) of the infant ...
are disproportionately stored or processed in the right hemisphere during the formative stages
of brain ontogeny" ( Semrud-Clikeman and Hynd, 1990, p. 198 ), that "the infant relies
primarily on its procedural memory systems" during "the first 2-3 years of life" ( Kandel,
1999, p. 513), and that the right brain contains the "cerebral representation of one's own past"
and the substrate of affectively laden autobiographical memory ( Fink et al., 1996, p. 4275).
These findings suggest that early-forming internal working models of the attachment
relationship are processed and stored in implicit-procedural memory systems in the right
hemisphere. In the securely attached individual, these models encode an expectation that
"homeostatic disruptions will be set right" ( Pipp and Harmon, 1987, p. 650).
Such representations are processed by the right orbitofrontal system, which is known to
generate cognitive-emotional interactions (Barbas, 1995) in the form of affect-regulating
strategies for coping with the positive and negative emotional interactions inherent in intimate
contexts. The efficient operations of this regulatory system allow for cortically processed
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