The Attachment Theory: To Bond or Not to Bond

The Attachment Theory: To Bond or Not to Bond

Introduction

The Attachment Theory describes and integrates scientific need for human beings to form and maintain strong emotional ties to other human beings. This theory was formulated and consolidated by British child psychiatrist John Bowlby and the Canadian psychologist Mary Ainsworth. The main themes of this theory are initiating the changes that occur in individual emotional relationships during life. According to attachment theory, the core of human emotional relationships is early mother-child relationship. The Attachment theory is used to thinking ethology of thinking developmental psychology, the psychoanalytic and systems theory. Bowlby proposed that its main purpose is to establish a scientific standpoint of psychoanalytic object relations theory and verify empirically psychoanalytic hypotheses in this area. During the research, he was removed from psychoanalysis and attachment theory has become a discipline in its own right. Attachment theory is related closely with systems theory and cognitive psychology and a major contribution to family therapy, cognitive therapy and psychoanalysis.

Bowlby refers to Charles Darwin when he says that everyone is endowed with behavioral systems to ensure survival of the species. Of these systems is part and attachment behavior (Van der Horst, 2011). In essence in his theory, Bowlby relates to ethology of Charles Darwin (research compared to the behavior). After the mid-1950s, changes appeared in theory and suggestions were gathered from Konrad Lorenz and Tinbergen Nikolaas, experimenting innate behavior of animals. He refers to research in learning theory that has occurred, for example young rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta). Harry Harlow discovered the following: Baby monkeys seek physical closeness of mother-doll covered in fur but feeds them- while avoiding physical contact of mother-doll wire that feeds them, but it is covered. Acest actually contradicted his view of psychoanalysis.

Thesis Statement

This paper is aimed at analyzing the Attachment theory and its significance by focusing on the existing knowledge base, in addition to answering the question of whether to bond or not.

Discussion

Arietta Slade, an American psychoanalyst and a researcher in the field of attachment theory and therapist for children and adolescents, summarizes the following stages (Slade, 2008):

1.A child has a genetic predisposition to a specific person

2.A child will organize behavior and thinking so that this relationship to be continuously attached, which is essential for physical and psychological survival.

3.Often pays child maintenance and malfunctions continuity attachment to a particular person.

4.Emotional and cognitive disorders have their roots in childhood attachment disorders arise in response to the inability of parents to meet its needs for comfort, safety and emotional tranquility.

Bowlby formulated classical thesis which argued that educational context connection between mother and her baby is due in the first all the latter feeding by the mother. Aceasta was then consigned to the acceptance of such theories (Bowlby, 1973). Bowlby has initiated various speculations in the positive and negative effects that separation from the mother or the group could have on his final individualism. The conclusion reached was that attachment is a learned behavior across ...