“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]

Adult attachment and birth experience: importance of a secure base and safe haven during childbirth.

OBJECTIVE: Examine connections between mothers' adult attachment and subjective birth experience in the context of parity and mode of delivery. BACKGROUND: Research has established a clear connection between adult attachment and birth experience. This study extended previous research with an in-depth self-report attachment measure examining different dimensions of mothers' attachment representations and their relation to subjective birth experience.  Interactions between mode of delivery and parity were also considered. Method: Participants were 257 mothers who gave birth 4 days to 12 months prior to the study. Mothers' mean age was 30.5 years, 61% primiparas, and 26% delivered by caesarean.  Participants completed an online survey with the Birth Experience Questionnaire, the Reciprocal Attachment Questionnaire, and demographic information. RESULTS: Hierarchical moderated regression analyses showed direct effects from adult attachment dimensions to mothers' subjective birth experiences, specifically perceived availability, feared loss, separation protest, angry withdrawal, and compulsive careseeking. Interactions emerged for parity and/or mode of delivery for overall subjective birth experience, perceived control, perceived social support, and satisfaction. CONCLUSION: Adult attachment representations related to subjective birth experience, indicating that attachment figures serve as secure bases and safe havens for mothers during childbirth. These results have implications for practitioners and provide direction for future research.This research was supported by a Medical Humanities New Investigator 17 Award from the Wellcome Trust (Grant WT103343MA

Fathers' attachment representations and infant feeding practices.

This study examined how fathers' adult attachment representations, assessed before the birth of their first child, predict feeding practices with their 8-month-old infants. Fathers have been underrepresented in child feeding research, particularly in longitudinal and observational studies. Feeding is a key parenting task of infancy and a growing number of studies have begun to explore the connection between attachment and parental feeding practices and behavior, revealing a clear link between mothers' adult attachment and how they feed their children. This is the first longitudinal examination of attachment as a prenatal predictor of fathers' infant feeding behavior. Participants were 118 first-time fathers and their infants. Adult Attachment Interviews were conducted in the third trimester of pregnancy, and father-infant feeding interactions were observed at home when the infant was 8-months-old. Videotaped feedings were coded using Chatoor's Feeding Scale (1997). Compared to other fathers, (1) those with secure attachment representations were more attuned to their infants during feeding, (2) those with dismissing representations were less attuned, and (3) those with unresolved trauma displayed more controlling behaviors. Fathers were more controlling with their sons than their daughters across all attachment representations. Study results suggest that father's infant feeding behaviors may influence by their own attachment representations. The links to fathers' controlling feeding practices are noteworthy because of the negative implications controlling parental feeding practices can have on child outcomes. The prediction of paternal feeding behaviors from assessments conducted prenatally has important intervention implications

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

Stability and change of attachment representations across the transition to motherhood

This dissertation investigated changes in attachment representations across the transition to parenthood, a normative life transition that is related to attachment. A handful of studies have used the Adult Attachment Interview (George et al., 1985), which is the gold standard of adult attachment measures, at two time points, but none have explicitly examined the transition to parenthood (Bakersman-Kranenburg & van IJzendoorn, 1993; Benoit & Parker, 1994; Crowell, 2002; Sagi et al., 1994; Speiker et al., 2011). To date, no study has specifically examined the stability of attachment representations with one’s own parents over the transition to motherhood. The present sample consisted of 93 mothers who participated in the Adult Attachment Interview (George et al., 1985) at two time points. The first assessment was conducted when the mothers were in their third trimester of pregnancy and the second when their child was 24 months. Representational change has been linked to therapy (Taylor et al., 2015) and negative life events (Crowell et al., 2002), so these were examined as possible correlates of change. Overall, results showed that organized attachment showed stability over time, while unresolved attachment was not stable. However, each subgroup showed different patterns of change. Preoccupied was the most stable organized category, followed by autonomous, with dismissing being the least likely to remain stable and most likely to become autonomous. Unresolved loss was unstable while unresolved abuse showed higher than expected stability. Therapy was significantly related to representational change, though not in the expected direction, while negative life events were not significantly related, but descriptively showed promise for future inquiry. An informal review of the interviews of those who changed afforded insights into possible mechanisms for future study. These possible mechanisms included participants’ ongoing relationship with their parent(s) and how their parent functioned in the grandparent role, their experience of being a mother and their relationship with their infant, and their relationship with their partner. These findings have meaningful implications for clinicians working with mothers of infants and young children, as well as for researchers seeking to understand the processes by which humans change over time.Human Development and Family Science

Digital Audio Effects on Mobile Platforms

This paper discusses the development of digital audio effect applications in mobile platforms. It introduces the Mobile Csound Platform (MCP) as an agile development kit for audio programming in such environments. The paper starts by exploring the basic technology employed: the Csound Application Programming Interface (API), the target systems (iOS and Android) and their support for realtime audio. CsoundObj, the fundamental class in the MCP toolkit is introduced and explored in some detail. This is followed by a discussion of its implementation in Objective-C for iOS and Java for Android. A number of application scenarios are explored and the paper concludes with a general discussion of the technology and its potential impact for audio effects development

Disorganized attachment and defense: exploring John Bowlby’s unpublished reflections

Main and Solomon were the first to create a formal infant Strange Situation classification of attachment disorganization. Bowlby's reflections on the underlying psychological processes of such behaviors, however, began early in his career, including the term "disorganization." Most of these remained unpublished but are available through the John Bowlby Archive. Bowlby saw affective experiences as the source of the attachment behavioral system's organization and regulation, and he introduced the term "effector equipment" to describe the emergent organization of attention, expectation, affect, and behavior to orchestrate responses to the environment. In his thinking, disorganization results from threat conflict, safe haven ambiguity, and/or activation without assuagement, which interfere with coordination and integration across a behavioral system. Bowlby's unpublished writings also amplify his published work on segregated systems and defensive exclusion. Bowlby's insights are relevant today and can provide greater background and clarity to current work, as researchers and clinicians consider the origins, manifestations, and meaning of disorganization