Attachment - Definition and attachment theories

Attachment means "the strongest affective bonding that the human being feels towards such similar ones producing pleasure when interactions is carried out and seeking the closeness of the person in moments of anxiety and insecurity. It is the strongest affective side that we establish the Human beings with our peers: First, she is the mother, the relationship with brothers, friends, boyfriends, etc. Responds to one of the most basic and fundamental needs experienced by the human being: the need to feel protected, safe and helped.

The attachment along with the search for a network of social relations and the need to maintain sexual activity linked to desire and crush suppose the most important needs, subjectively felt, which favor and encourage survival, not only of the individual but of the species. Throughout life, different and different emotional ties are maintained. It is instinctive that human beings seek these affective ties for optimal personality development.

1. Attachment theories
2. Factors that affect attachment development
3. Parent's attachment

Attachment theories

Behavioral theories

Impulse reduction model: vital importance is given to the role of food in the interaction established between mother and child. Dependency behaviors are due to a secondary impulse learned as a result of a repeated association between the presence of the mother and the satisfaction of satisfying hung beings who have not intervened in their diet at no time.

Operating Conditioning Model

Children look, smile and look for maternal proximity due to the response they receive from these-reference. The observations indicate that battered children are still looking for physical contact with their parents. These models do not explain why and in what way the ties established from childhood last through the life cycle even when the attachment figure is absent, and therefore, the primary impulses cannot satisfy or provide any type of social reinforcement. Behaviors would say that the attachment relationship would be extinguished gradually and obviously the experience tells us that this is not so.

Hypothesis proposed by psychoanalysts

Model (in general) that defends that the quality of the mother-child interaction produces: a crucial effect on the subsequent development of the personality of the subject, and the emotional security necessary for the exploration of the environment and a cognitive domain.

Sigmund Freud. : "Inhibition, symptom and anguish" essay in which he does not manifest any predisposition to accept the existence of primary follow -up responses that were likely to establish a link to enter the mother and he drinks. The child attaches to the mother because she feeds her and also stimulates her erogenous zones (secondary impulse theory). Subsequently, he states that the phylogenetic bases have a primacy such that it does not matter if the child has been breastfeeding or has been fed with a bottle and has not enjoyed the tenderness of maternal care.

Anna Freud: From its first theoretical exhibitions a defense of the "secondary impulse theory" follows, but from his studies an approach to the "primary instinctive behaviors" is seen: only to the second year of life the attachment that arises from the child towards the mother It reaches their full development children even adhere to mothers who are continuously in a bad mood and sometimes behave cruelly with them. The child's attachment potential feels present and when he feels the lack of an object, he will quickly look at any other.

Melanie Klein: it states that the relationship "goes beyond mere satisfaction of physiological needs", but in its last publications (1975) it is undecided: it emphasizes the primacy of the chest and orality. He expresses that the child from the beginning is aware that there is "something else" (theory of a primary desire to return to the mother's womb. It highlights the importance of the non -oral component of the relationship that originates in the primary desire just mentioned.

Spitz: that Freud's thesis is adhered to the secondary impulse theory, defends that the authentic object relationships arise from the need for food. Most of them are dissatisfied with the secondary impulse theory, but they do not feel able to replace it with another thesis. It has been the members of the Hungarian School of Psychoanalysis and the Ethologists who have defended the existence of primary monitoring responses to the mother.

Bowlby Ethological Theory: His theory is today, the most accepted approach when explaining attachment relationships. Inspired by imprint studies, it is a phenomenon thanks to which the young manage to be fed and, at the same time, be protected from their possible predators. Critical period: limited time of life in which the organism is biologically prepared to acquire certain behaviors, all on condition that it receives an appropriate stimulation of the environment.

The importance of this concept is that many psychologists have tried to find out if the "acquisition of the complex social and cognitive behaviors of the human being takes place in a very determined period of time". Bowlby defends that "the baby's innate trends make adults close to help survive". Adults are prepared for evolution to respond to the baby's signals, providing them with the necessary care and providing them with the opportunity of social interaction. It is considered that the scientific application of the ethological model to child development begins in 1969, date on which Bowlby the first of its three books dedicated in this regard. This British psychiatrist and psychoanalyst observe the emotional problems of children who were raised in institutions and found that they had great difficulty in training and maintaining close relationships. His interest led him to give a "theological explanation of how and why the link between mother and son" is established ".

Bowlby theory reiterates the fundamental principle of classical ethology that defends that the establishment of a strong mother/child link is vital for baby survival. This attachment link develops easily for a critical or sensitive period. After this time it can become impossible to form a true intimate and emotional relationship.

Factors that affect attachment development

Studies show us that babies who have safe attach. However, insecure children are children of mothers who lack all or any of these qualities.

Maternal deprivation and institutionalization: Spitz institutionalized children who had been abandoned by their mothers: 3 months and 1 year: they showed an extreme sensitivity to infections, as well as a marked delay in development (cubiles, without stimulation and a caregiver for 7 or 8 children). (very prolonged maternal separation)

Anachlitic depression: They are asylum, lose weight, cry and suffer insomnia. (Irreversible depression).

Bowlby or Spitz They stated that all institutions were harmful, nor that babies separated from their mothers suffered irreparable damage. The damage is important, but not irreversible. These babies who have lived in painful conditions in the institutions of their countries of origin, come to our society with a great delay in relation to children of their age. But, if the socio-affective-cultural level of the family that adopts is high enough to offer these children the emotional and cognitive stimuli of those who have lacked, it is very possible that the delay is disappearing and that they equal Children of your age. The acceptance of the children adopted by the rest of the extensive family is fundamental at the time of a prompt recovery and adaptation to the new family environment. The aging conditions in the reception centers play a crucial role.

Parenting quality:

• Safe attachment: parents sensitive to demands and needs (crying), who tried to adapt their behavior to that of their child.
• Insegurous attachment: avoidant, resistant or disorganized/disoriented. Mothers who avoided physical contact and behaved routinely in baby care interactions.

Child characteristics: There are studies that relate complicated births, premature children, diseases in the first months and even the child's temperament with problems in the establishment of the affective bond. A difficult child's difficult temperament can cause an anxiety that makes the affective bond complicated. If parents have affective, social and cognitive resources to handle it, these problems are avoided.

Parent's attachment

When an adult has his first child he has in his large number of attachment experiences: with his father, brothers, boyfriends, ..

Main et al: "Adult attachment interview". Feelings of attachment that parents had in childhood and how they perceived relationships.

Autonomous: Safe attachment. Value and recognize the influence of attachment relationships. They talk about them with objectivity.

Uneven: Avoid attachment. They despise attachment relationships and idealize their parents without providing examples that support them.

Worried: Resistant attachment. Emotional, they cannot speak with objectivity of their attachment relationships.Worried.

Resolution pending. They have not reconciled their past attachment relations with the present. Sometimes, they are still reconciling with the loss of their parents and experiences related to it. Studies indicate that these types of attachment in adults are closely related to the type of attachment they establish with their children.

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