Disorganization, Fear and Attachment: Working towards clarification

In 1990, M. Main and J. Solomon introduced the procedures for coding a new “disorganized” infant attachment classification for the Ainsworth Strange Situation procedure (M.D.S. Ainsworth, M. Blehar, E. Waters, & S. Wall, 1978). This classification has received a high degree of interest, both from researchers and from child welfare and clinical practitioners. Disorganized attachment has primarily been understood through the lens of E. Hesse and M. Main's concept of “fright without solution,” taken to mean that an infant experiences a conflict between a desire to approach and flee from a frightening parent when confronted by the Strange Situation. Yet, looking back, it can be observed that the way Hesse and Main's texts were formulated and read has generated confusion; there have been repeated calls in recent years for renewed theory and clarification about the relationship between disorganization and fear. Responding to these calls, this article revisits the texts that introduced the idea of fright without solution, clarifying their claims through articulating more precisely the different meanings of the term fear. This clarified account will then be applied to consideration of pathways to infant disorganized behaviors

Attachment and doubt in the work of Stanley Cavell

In his autobiography, Little Did I Know, the Harvard philosopher Stanley Cavell traces the roots of his philosophical approach to his childhood, examining what he had to learn to make sense of his father’s anger at the world and at him. Cavell describes the huge shadow his father cast over his work, even as Cavell himself achieved success in an academic sphere “quite beyond comprehension” for his uneducated father (Little Did I Know, p.356). This chapter will begin by considering Cavell’s account of his relationship with his father, and what it was that he learnt about doubt and acknowledgement in making sense of his father’s hate. The next section will outline the main current of Cavell’s philosophical work: his thinking about what is at stake in scepticism regarding the pain of others. The powerful implications of his reflections on this issue will then be demonstrated through attention to Cavell’s work on Shakespeare, with particular attention to themes of attachment and doubt in King Lear

“Pulling the world in and pushing it away”: Participating bodies and the concept of coping

In her lead article in this special issue, Monica Greco offers the concept of participating bodies as a “possibility of conceiving bodies themselves – and bodily events such as disease/illness - as expressing values and perhaps even socially meaningful ‘preferences’.” Such a position seeks to avoid capitulation to a) an image of bodily processes as without values or responsiveness, object rather than participant; b) an image of human agents as unitary, self-knowing, sovereign choosers - unless ill. This article will explore this perspective as applied to the idea of coping. The article will explore strategies of everyday living, through particular consideration of Lauren Berlant’s reading of Two Girls, Fat and Thin by Mary Gaitskill. In her interpretation of the novel, Berlant assesses the kinds of problems for subjects and bodies that may be solved or managed through participation in or refraining from participation in thinking, food or sex. The account of coping and embodiment in Berlant’s reflections will then be placed in dialogue with findings by Alexandra Michel, who watched the process of physical burnout in investment banking associates during a thirteen-year cultural ethnography, observing as the bankers heeded or ignored the cues their bodies gave about the limits of feasible demands. The article as a whole offers an illustration of the value of Greco’s reflections for offering a fresh and valuable perspective on the concept of coping.Wellcome Trust - via grant to Goldsmiths University. Contact person at Goldsmiths is: [email protected]

Infant disorganized attachment: Clarifying levels of analysis

Lack of clarity regarding the infant disorganized attachment classification has caused confusion in the clinical, forensic, and research contexts in which it is used. This article offers distinctions to clarify the concept with the goal of increasing understanding and identifying potential misapplications. In particular, attention is drawn to the fact that there are many indices used to code “disorganized attachment,” and that so far they have been validated as a set rather than individually; and it is noted that the construct validation of disorganization in naturalistic settings is partially finished. Clinicians and social workers should be cautious in their interpretations of such behavior.The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Wellcome Trust (Grant: WT103343MA)

A short-term longitudinal study of correlates and sequelae of attachment security in autism

In this short-term longitudinal study, thirty preschool-aged children with autism were first observed in Ainsworth’s Strange Situation procedure and, separately, interacting with the primary caregiver in the home. One year later, each child completed both a developmental assessment and an observational assessment of empathic responding. Behaviors typical for children with autism were distinguished from behaviors suggestive of relationally based attachment disorganization. Forty five percent of the children were classified as securely attached. The secure group demonstrated language skills superior to those of the insecurely attached group, concurrently and during the follow-up. Compared to parents of children who were insecurely attached, parents of securely attached children were rated as more sensitive. Compared to both organized insecure and disorganized children, secure children were rated as more responsive to an examiner’s apparent distress during the follow-up relative to their ratings at intake, whereas empathy ratings of children with insecure classifications did not increase. Importantly, attachment security was associated with empathy above and beyond the contribution of children’s language level. These results indicate that the sequelae of attachment security in autism may be similar to those documented for typically developing children.This work was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, as part of the Collaborative Programs of Excellence in Autism: [Program Project Grant Number HD-DCD35470] and Wellcome Trust: [Grant Number WT103343MA]

Towards an architecture of attachment disorganization: John Bowlby’s published and unpublished reflections

This article examines the construct of disorganized attachment originally proposed by Main and Solomon (1990), developing some new conjectures based on inspiration from a largely-unknown source: John Bowlby’s unpublished texts, housed at the Wellcome Trust Library Archive in London (with permission from the Bowlby family). We explore Bowlby’s discussions of disorganized attachment, which he understood from the perspective of ethological theories of conflict behavior. Bowlby’s reflections regarding differences among the behaviors used to code disorganized attachment will be used to explore distinctions that may underlie the structure of the current coding system. The article closes with an emphasis on the importance Bowlby placed on Popper’s distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification in developmental science.Wellcome Grants WT103343MA and 208155/Z/17/

Disorganized attachment in infancy: a review of the phenomenon and its implications for clinicians and policy-makers

Disorganized/Disoriented (D) attachment has seen widespread interest from policy makers, practitioners, and clinicians in recent years. However, some of this interest seems to have been based on some false assumptions that (1) attachment measures can be used as definitive assessments of the individual in forensic/child protection settings and that disorganized attachment (2) reliably indicates child maltreatment, (3) is a strong predictor of pathology, and (4) represents a fixed or static “trait” of the child, impervious to development or help. This paper summarizes the evidence showing that these four assumptions are false and misleading. The paper reviews what is known about disorganized infant attachment and clarifies the implications of the classification for clinical and welfare practice with children. In particular, the difference between disorganized attachment and attachment disorder is examined, and a strong case is made for the value of attachment theory for supportive work with families and for the development and evaluation of evidence-based caregiving interventions.This work was supported by the Wellcome Trust: [Grant Number WT103343MA] and the writing of this paper was also facilitated by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation (Grant Number 51897) to Pehr Granqvist

Compromised, Valuable Freedom: Flat Affect and Reserve as Psychosocial Strategies

In contemporary scholarship in the social sciences and humanities, as in our lives when we are scared, we are often too quick to divide actions into compliance with or resistance to power. As Sedgwick (2003) has observed, there is a paranoid tendency in critical scholarship. But, in fact, the world is more subtle and compromised than such an account would suggest. There is something heroic and clear-cut about the way this divide between compliance and resistance operates, as what it implies is that when compliance ends the result must be resistance, freedom, agency. Yet this image is an unkind one: it is haughty about those still caught in the web – and manically, cruelly optimistic about everything else. And on which side do we who entertain it imagine ourselves to be? An alternative, more modest yet hopefully deeper perspective would be one which can encompass the unsteady, roiling encounter of subject and world, with its richness of strategies and possible resources out of which some freedom can be built, under conditions not of our own choosing, and in various forms of participation. When the binary between compliance and resistance fragments, specific and concrete strategies come into view, with their possibilities and limitations.Wellcome Trus

John Bowlby and contemporary issues of clinical diagnosis

What might clinicians make of Bowlby’s first patient if he were seen by services today? How might thinking with Bowlby help us critically consider children whose presentations span a number of diagnoses, and children who do not readily fit any existing diagnostic category? We will consider these questions through exploration of Bowlby’s writings, as well as review of the literature on diagnosis, trauma, and caregiving environments. We identify tensions between the three key legacies of Bowlby’s work: the focus on family systems; attachment theory as a theory of individual development; and psychiatric classification of attachment. In doing so, we will use conversation with Bowlby’s ideas as the basis for a consideration of the purpose and function of diagnosisWellcome Trus