23rd November 2023

Attachment Theory

Melanie Klein

In order to fully understand John Bowlby’s work, we have to first look at Melanie Klein’s object relations theory.

To understand that, we need to revisit some of Freud’s work very briefly here.

Freud felt that people have innate drives as part of their id. He described two drives: the life instinct (aka as the libido to Freudian therapists – not necessarily sexual!) and the death instinct. The life instinct/libido is aimed at survival and propelling us through life. The death instinct is about self-destructive aggression. The exact difference here is not especially important. The key part is that it’s not conscious; it’s biological and innate. Freudian theory says that we infuse everything and everyone around us with this psychic energy or tension, especially those we consider emotionally important. The theory goes that it is uncomfortable when this tension accumulates, so much so that the discharge of this tension is felt to be pleasurable. We have an innate tendency to seek pleasure and avoid pain – so we seek to discharge this tension via an object.

However, Klein believed that we direct our drives at specific objects for specific reasons, rather than Freud’s more undifferentiated, chaotic view of this discharge of tension.

Melanie Klein believed that we are born with an internal world that is affected by our unconscious phantasy – that is, our mental representation of everything that happens around us. These phantasies will, in turn, affect our experience of the external world. She said that for an infant, objects are not recognisable as another human with an alternative internal world of their own – that’s much too complicated! The infant can only think as far as ‘this object is good’, aka when this thing/person/feeling is around, I like this, and I feel pleasure. Or, much more distressingly, ‘this object is bad,’ aka when this thing/person/feeling is around, I hate this, and I feel pain.

The example which is used, and you’ll probably have read about, is of breasts. The theory goes like this: to an infant, the mother is a pair of breasts who is sometimes there and sometimes not.

When the object, the mother, is there with her part-object, her breasts, and is feeding the hungry infant, the infant experiences a discharge of that unpleasant hungry feeling; they feel the love of their caregiver and the safety of being in their arms. In these times, the mother is seen as the owner of the good breast.

Now, say the hungry baby is crying, distressed by their experience of an empty stomach, and feeling neglected. They might be feeling frustrated and angry, and this is directed to the bad breast.

The infant can’t understand that the mother, the object, can be the owner of both the good breast and the bad breast, so they split them into these two part-objects. This is called the paranoid-schizoid position. This is the state of the infant for the first six months of life.

In the second six months of life, the infant starts to realise that the good and the bad objects are part of the same whole. The infant then feels guilt, sadness and regret for directing so much hate at the bad breast and internalises this. At the same time, the infant is experiencing a loss of the breast as weaning starts. The infant is described as being in a depressive position.

The infant has to work through the depressive position. Otherwise, they will interpret all future frustrations as some form of punishment for their past destructive aggression whilst in the paranoid-schizoid position.

Importantly, these are positions and not stages – we can switch between them throughout our lives.

John Bowlby

Whereas Freud and Klein talked about attachment in terms of these chaotic biological drives which must be satisfied and complex phantasies which seem advanced for an infant… John Bowlby focussed on the real experiences of children, observing them during WWII as part of his research. He emphasised the importance of a healthy relationship for both the primary caregiver and the child and how this supports a child to explore and develop.

‘The infant and young child should experience a warm, intimate, and continuous relationship with his mother (or permanent mother substitute) in which both find satisfaction and enjoyment… If a community values its children, it must cherish their parents.’ – John Bowlby

Ultimately, he formed the basis of attachment theory as we think of it today, and this was further expanded by some of his colleagues, as we’ll talk about later.

Attachment behaviours

For lots of animals, the young need their caregivers to provide them with food and comfort. They will survive by following the mother around, calling out to her, or just clinging on to her. Harry Harlow noted this ‘clinging’ in rhesus monkeys – demonstrating experimentally that they preferred to cling to something comfortable and not necessarily the thing that feeds them. So it isn’t just about survival but also their social and emotional development.

Bowlby felt that young human children do the same. Whilst they aren’t physically capable of following the caregiver around, they display behaviours that maintain proximity to a parent. These are called attachment behaviours.

Bowlby’s stages of attachment

Over the development of an infant, the attachment behaviours that predominate will change.

Phase 1: Social gestures with limited selectivity	Birth to 3 months	The infant tracks faces and, from this, learns to social smile (from 6 weeks). The child shows a preference for their primary caregiver but is still okay with unfamiliar people. Both smiling and crying result in the proximity of the caregiver – it makes them want to stay with the child! They also have two ‘holding on’ reflexes – the grasp reflex and the Moro reflex. Bowlby suggested that rooting and sucking reflexes also bring the child in contact with the mother.
Phase 2: Focusing on familiar people	3 to 6 months	Primitive reflexes drop out. Social smiles and babbling are more limited to people they know, and they are less well soothed by strangers. However, they start actively reaching out and grasping people they know. Monotropy begins to form – preference for one adult caregiver (usually Mum).
Phase 3: Intense attachment and active proximity-seeking	6 months to 3 years	Infants cry out when the mother figure leaves the room – separation anxiety. Both mother and child express joy at the reunion. Stranger anxiety also develops to varying degrees of intensity. The child can now crawl and will follow the caregiver if they leave. Equally, they can start to use the mother as a secure base from which to explore, checking their proximity periodically and still requiring significant comfort if something scares/hurts them. Bowlby described this as the ‘critical period’ for developing an ability to relate to others, and a disruption in attachment at this period can have consequences for attachment throughout life (covered in more detail later in the chapter!)
Phase 4: Partnership behaviour	3 years to end of childhood	The child begins to understand that the caregiver will leave and still return, so separation anxiety lessens. They are also more able to consider the caregiver’s needs.

Just to note, these aren’t clear-cut stages to memorise, but the general themes and key terms, which are in bold, are important!

References

Bretherton, I. (1992). ‘The origins of attachment theory: John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth’. Developmental Psychology. 28:5. 759-775.
Crain, W. (2016). Theories of Development: Concepts and Applications 6e. Routledge.
Gomez, L. (1997). An Introduction to Object Relations. Free Association Books.
Johnstone, E et al. (2010). Companion to psychiatric studies 8e. Elsevier.
Lemma, A. (2016). Introduction to the practice of psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Wiley Blackwell.
Van der Horst, F.C.P., LeRoy, H.A., Van der Veer, R. (2008). ‘“When Strangers Meet”: John Bowlby and Harry Harlow on Attachment Behavior’. Integr Psych Behav. 42:370–388.