Bowlby proposed that an internal working model (IWM) developed in childhood will determine or affect later adult relationships and how successful they are. Ainsworth’s strange situation helped develop three main types of attachment: secure, resistant and avoidant. Secure children develop a positive model of themselves and relationships as their primary caregiver was sensitive, emotionally responsive and supportive. Resistant children have parents who were inconsistent in their care giving, resulting in the child having a negative image of themself - often seeking attention but not finding comfort when they receive it. Avoidant children often have rejecting parents, which leads to them developing an internal model which makes them think they are unacceptable and unworthy.
In terms of similarities they noted that proximity-seeking and contact maintaining behaviour intensified during separation and when the stranger appeared whereas resisting and avoiding behaviours occurred rarely towards the caregiver prior to separation. In terms of differences they found and categorized it into three different types of attachment; secure attachment, insecure-avoidant attachment and insecure-resistant attachment. Secure attachment is when an infant has a strong contended bond with their caregiver. They show distress at separation but are easily comforted when reunited with their caregiver. They found that it was the most popular form of attachment and is related to healthy development as the infants use the caregiver as a secure base form to explore and to function independently in the future.
At this point, the caregivers left the room and the child's reaction of fear and crying, clearly stressed them even more. The stranger had no success in comforting the child. Mom returned to the room, picked up the child, and the reaction of the child showed immediate calming. By involving these different case scenarios with different children, Mary Ainsworth is seeking out Social Referencing regarding the different levels of attachment, in this case, particularly interested in the return of the caregiver to the room and the child's immediate calming, avoidance behavior and/or how resistant or fearful children became. She used the stranger situation experiment to study distress and difference of behavior in children when their security blanket (caregiver) is not present.
When the stranger comforts the infant after being left alone, the infant calmed down unlike in type B. Type C is the ‘insecure – anxious resistant’ category. A child who falls into this category is anxious of exploration and of strangers, even when the mother is present. When the mother leaves the infant gets extremely distressed. When the mother returns, the infant gives mixed signals.
Lynch and Richards (2010) stated, “He has added significantly to our understanding of clinical and theoretical issues and provided us with wise input on complex group, organizational, and political dilemmas” (p. 1). Within this article, the importance of psychoanalysis is highlighted as well as the reasoning behind Rangell’s interest within psychology. Rangell was fascinated with Freud’s findings, especially taking interest in the study of anxiety, and went beyond Freud’s research to satisfy his own curiosities. The article informs the reader of Rangell’s journey, what he discovered, and the major influence he was to psychoanalysis. Moreira (2012) stated, “Humanistic-phenomenological psychotherapy is a contemporary development of person-centered therapy” (p. 3).
Infants in biologically organize their attachment behaviors around the availability of their caregivers. When infants find caregivers to be available in times of need, they tend to develop expectations that caregivers will be there in the future of times needed in the future. Behaviorally, these infants then seek out the comfort they need (Sroufe, 1989) from caregivers with confident expectations that they will be soothed. Such infants are categorized as having secure attachments to caregivers. When caregivers are not responsive to infants’ needs or there are many different caregivers in an infants’ life, infants can develop an insecurity to bond because they cannot identify who the main caregiver is supposed
When an infant has had an attachment and it has been broken. There is research done into deprivation by Bowlby. This is his Maternal deprivation hypothesis, which stated the belief that if an infant was unable to build a "warm, intimate, continuous relationship with its mother", it would then result in having difficulties building relationships with other people and also the risk of behavioural disorders. This hypothesis says that relationships that are discontinuous or where there are separations becomes unstable which causes the development of the relationship to be disrupted. It focuses on how important an relationship between a mother and child is.
Bowlby put forward the principle of monotropy, believing that the infant displays a strong innate tendency to form an attachment with one significant person, not necessarily, but usually the mother. (Gross, R. 2005). This was criticised by Rutter (1981), who claimed that the mother is not special in the way that the infant shows its attachment, as children will show a whole range of attachment behaviours towards a variety of people. Bowlby (1969), cited in Martin et al 2007 p. 546) claimed that the most important attachment behaviours are sucking, cuddling, looking, smiling and crying. According to Freud the newborn infant lives in a solipsistic world of ‘primary narcissism’ and experiences a build-up of tension with the need to suck the breast as an expression of his infantile sexuality.
If secured the child will receive ample attention and have basic needs met. However, if unsecured may result in an impaired social and emotional development (Peterson, 2004). In attempts to distinguish between the associated attachment behaviours observed in infant-caregiver interaction, Mary Ainsworth patented the strange situation test; subsequent findings resulted in three categories of infant attachment style; A: insecure avoidant, B: secure and C: insecure resistant (Ainsworth, et al. 1978). This model was later applied to adult romantic relationships and adapted to form theories of adult
John Bowlby was the first exponent of the theory. He brought to bear both a very original mind and an interdisciplinary perspective to the study of children and their emotional development. The intellectual flowering of his work was the basic formulation of what is now called “attachment theory” (Howe, 1995: 45). Bowlby’s thinking has roots in psychoanalytic thought, particularly in the emphasis on the significance of the earliest relationship between parent figure and child. However, he adds important evolutionary and ethological concepts.