Attachment Figure

Throughout adult life the availability of a responsive attachment figure remains the source of a person’s feeling secure. All of us, from the cradle to the grave, are happiest when life is organized as a series of excursions, long or short, from the secure base provided by our attachment figure(s).

Bowlby argues that the attachment figure serves as a lifelong secure base, and that psychological wellbeing across the entire lifespan depends on that figure’s perceived availability and responsiveness.

Bowlby, John, A Secure Base: Clinical Applications of Attachment Theory, 1988thesis

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When the attachment figure is also a threat to the child, two systems with conflicting goals are activated simultaneously or sequentially: the attachment system, whose goal is to seek proximity, and the defense systems, whose goal is to protect.

Ogden identifies the catastrophic developmental consequence of an attachment figure who is simultaneously a source of danger, producing irresolvable system conflict and disorganized attachment.

Ogden, Pat, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Interventions for Trauma and, 2015thesis

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a single figure, most usually the mother – has profound implications for psychological development and psychopathology throughout the life cycle… there is nothing in the theory to suggest that fathers are not equally likely to become principal attachment figures if they happen to provide most of the child care.

Holmes’s exposition of Bowlby establishes monotropy — the primacy of a single attachment figure — while critically noting that the designation is functional rather than sex-determined.

Bowlby, John, John Bowlby and Attachment Theory (Makers of Modern, 2014thesis

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The goal of attachment behaviour is to maintain certain degrees of proximity to, or of communication with, the discriminated attachment figure(s). Whereas an attachment bond endures, the various forms of attachment behaviour that contribute to it are active when required.

Flores, drawing directly on Bowlby, defines the attachment figure as the goal-object of a goal-corrected behavioural system, distinguishing the enduring bond from the episodic activation of proximity-seeking behaviours.

Flores, Philip J., Addiction as an Attachment Disorder, 2004thesis

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If the attachment figure is unreliable, the proximity-seeking behaviors may become overactive. If the attachment figure is neglectful, unavailable, or punishing in the face of need and vulnerability, the proximity-seeking behaviors may become underactive.

Ogden demonstrates that the quality of the attachment figure’s responsiveness directly calibrates the child’s proximity-seeking system, laying the somatic groundwork for later relational patterns.

Ogden, Pat, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Interventions for Trauma and, 2015thesis

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an enduring attachment, or attachment bond, is confined to very few. Should a child fail to show such clear discrimination, it is likely he is severely disturbed.

Bowlby distinguishes episodic attachment behaviour shown toward many individuals from the enduring attachment bond that is selectively reserved for a very small number of discriminated figures.

Bowlby, John, A Secure Base: Clinical Applications of Attachment Theory, 1988thesis

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Confidence that an attachment figure is, apart from being accessible, likely to be responsive can be seen to turn on at least two variables; (a) whether or not the attachment figure is judged to be the sort of person who in general responds to calls for support and protection; [and] (b) whether or not the self is judged to be the sort of person towards whom anyone, and the attachment figure in particular, is likely to respond in a helpful way.

Flores articulates Bowlby’s two-variable model of attachment confidence, showing how the internal working model encodes both the figure’s perceived responsiveness and the self’s perceived worthiness of care.

Flores, Philip J., Addiction as an Attachment Disorder, 2004thesis

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Secure attachment provides a positive ‘primary’ defence; ‘secondary’, pathological defences are methods of retaining proximity to rejecting or unreliable attachment figures.

Holmes reframes Bowlby’s concept of defence in relational terms, arguing that pathological defences are strategies for maintaining proximity to an unresponsive or rejecting attachment figure rather than purely intrapsychic mechanisms.

Bowlby, John, John Bowlby and Attachment Theory (Makers of Modern, 2014thesis

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In the case of loss of a loved one, especially an attachment figure, the mind is forced to alter the structure of its internal working models to adjust to the painful reality that the self can no longer seek proximity and gain comfort from the caregiver.

Siegel frames grief as the cognitive-affective labour of restructuring internal working models when an attachment figure is permanently lost, connecting Bowlby’s theory to developmental neuroscience.

Siegel, Daniel J., The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are, 2020supporting

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Only when children are securely attached to the attachment figure can they turn away from him or her. This principle has important implications for treatment. Just as securely attached children will move farther away from the attachment figure and take more risks in exploring their external world, so too will securely attached patients take more risks in their exploration of their inner world.

Flores extends the secure-base principle to clinical treatment, arguing that the therapist as attachment figure enables patients to take exploratory risks in their inner worlds analogous to those taken by securely attached children.

Flores, Philip J., Addiction as an Attachment Disorder, 2004supporting

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if the child forms different attachment patterns with each attachment figure, those patterns that are not primary may be also be triggered by similar situations or relationships in the future.

Ogden notes that multiple, figure-specific attachment patterns are encoded procedurally and can be selectively reactivated by situational cues throughout life, complicating the notion of a single dominant attachment style.

Ogden, Pat, Trauma and the Body: A Sensorimotor Approach to Psychotherapy, 2006supporting

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The securely attached individual when reunited with an attachment figure clings to them for a few minutes and then, in a state of assuagement, can get on with exploratory activity. If the attachment figure is unable to tolerate attachment behaviour or is unavailable, this produces a state of dis-assuagement of attachment needs.

Holmes defines assuagement and dis-assuagement as the experiential outcomes of reunion with an available versus an unavailable attachment figure, linking figure responsiveness directly to the capacity for exploration.

Bowlby, John, John Bowlby and Attachment Theory (Makers of Modern, 2014supporting

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A securely attached child will store an internal working model of a responsive, loving, reliable care-giver, and of a self that is worthy of love and attention, and will bring these assumptions to bear on all other relationships.

Holmes articulates how the quality of the early attachment figure becomes internalized as an internal working model that generalizes to all subsequent relational expectations.

Bowlby, John, John Bowlby and Attachment Theory (Makers of Modern, 2014supporting

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appraisal of the threat; availability of attachment figures (or their internal representation) to help with affect regulation; if unavailable, defensive strategies – hyper-activating (corresponding to resistant attachment) or deactivating (the avoidance analogue) to compensate for lack of security.

Holmes summarizes the adult attachment regulatory algorithm, in which the perceived availability of the attachment figure — or its internalized representation — determines whether affect is regulated through proximity-seeking or defensive deactivation.

Bowlby, John, John Bowlby and Attachment Theory (Makers of Modern, 2014supporting

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her defense system mobilized, with its accompanying action tendencies, each time an individual’s attempts at closeness activated her attachment system. Over time, this pattern of response not only resulted in chronic relational problems but also interfered with the elaboration and maturation

Ogden illustrates how traumatic experience with an abusive attachment figure creates chronic somatic conflict between closeness-seeking and defensive mobilization in adult relationships.

Ogden, Pat, Trauma and the Body: A Sensorimotor Approach to Psychotherapy, 2006supporting

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Bowlby’s thesis is that these attachments come from a need for security and safety; they develop early in life, are usually directed toward a few specific individuals, and tend to endure throughout a large part of the life cycle.

Worden distills Bowlby’s core claim that attachment figures are few, selectively chosen, and retained across the lifespan, grounding grief theory in the primacy of the bond’s loss.

J William Worden, ABPP, Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy A Handbook for the, 2018supporting

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The mechanism explains why a child parted from his or her mother becomes frantic, searches wildly, or cries uncontrollably until he or she reestablishes contact with her. These reactions are coined protest behavior, and we all still exhibit them as grown-ups.

Levine and Heller extend the protest behavior elicited by separation from an attachment figure to adult romantic relationships, arguing for the evolutionary continuity of the attachment system.

Levine, Amir; Heller, Rachel, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love, 2010supporting

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the most significant object that can be lost is not the breast but the mother herself (and sometimes the father), that the vulnerable period is not confined to the first year but extends over a number of years of childhood… and that loss of a parent gives rise not only to separation anxiety and grief but to processes of mourning.

Bowlby revises Kleinian theory by repositioning the person of the attachment figure — not the breast as part-object — as the central lost object, and extending developmental vulnerability well beyond infancy.

Bowlby, John, Loss: Sadness and Depression (Attachment and Loss, Volume III), 1980supporting

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Crying, screaming, shouting, biting, kicking – this ‘bad’ behaviour is the normal response to the threat to an attachment bond, and presumably has the function of trying to restore it, and, by ‘punishing’ the care-giver, of preventing further separation.

Holmes frames separation protest as a normative, biologically functional response to threatened loss of the attachment figure, rehabilitating behaviours often pathologized by clinicians.

Bowlby, John, John Bowlby and Attachment Theory (Makers of Modern, 2014supporting

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The need for attachment and selfobject responsiveness is a lifelong process, not just phase specific. Attachment of child to parent is different from attachment of parent to child. When parents (or therapists) use children (or patients) to meet their own unmet attachment needs, psychology results.

Flores underscores the asymmetric and lifelong nature of attachment needs, warning that the figure’s use of the attached person to meet their own needs constitutes a pathogenic reversal.

Flores, Philip J., Addiction as an Attachment Disorder, 2004supporting

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This behavior was quite distinct from her secure attachment to her mother, in which she sought proximity and then was easily soothed and returned to exploration in the room.

Siegel illustrates through clinical observation that different attachment figures elicit distinct and figure-specific patterns of proximity-seeking and affect regulation in the same child.

Siegel, Daniel J., The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are, 2020supporting

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An interactive matrix is established, felt as a mutual ‘knowing’ of each other that is the hallmark of a secure mother–infant relationship.

Holmes describes the early dyadic regulation between infant and attachment figure as a co-constructed homeostatic matrix that forms the experiential substrate of security.

Bowlby, John, John Bowlby and Attachment Theory (Makers of Modern, 2014supporting

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The sensitive therapist, like the good-enough parent, is always alert to the patient’s need for security in the face of painful affect on the one hand, and, on the other, their wish to explore in a playful, humorous or companionable way.

Holmes frames the therapeutic relationship as a structural analogue of the attachment figure relationship, with the clinician modulating between providing security and enabling exploration.

Bowlby, John, John Bowlby and Attachment Theory (Makers of Modern, 2014supporting

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The client’s attachment movement sequences are observed and explored, often in the context of the client’s developing attachment to the therapist, so that attachment behaviors are not confused with, overwhelmed by, or lost to defensive tendencies.

Ogden applies sensorimotor methodology to the therapeutic relationship as an attachment context, using embodied movement sequences to differentiate proximity-seeking from defensive action tendencies.

Ogden, Pat, Trauma and the Body: A Sensorimotor Approach to Psychotherapy, 2006supporting

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Like Winnicott, Bowlby is insistent in his opposition to the notion, prevalent in the 1950s and today making something of a comeback, that children can be ‘spoilt’ by too much love.

Holmes notes Bowlby’s polemical insistence that responsive availability to the attachment figure cannot be excessive, situating attachment theory against cultural norms that pathologize dependence.

Bowlby, John, John Bowlby and Attachment Theory (Makers of Modern, 2014aside

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The ambivalent individual—this is typical of insecure women—is attached but cannot be intimate. She longs for autonomy, assertion, and independence, but is fearful that if she strikes out on her own she will lose her secure base forever.

Flores maps the ambivalent attachment pattern onto adult relational dynamics, characterizing it as a failure to sustain both proximity to the attachment figure and autonomous self-development simultaneously.

Flores, Philip J., Addiction as an Attachment Disorder, 2004aside

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During the second month, however, his social smile acts strongly to encourage his mother in her ministrations and his repertoire of emotional communications rapidly extends.

Bowlby traces the earliest phase-specific communicative behaviours by which the infant progressively recruits and consolidates the responsiveness of the emerging attachment figure.

Bowlby, John, A Secure Base: Clinical Applications of Attachment Theory, 1988aside

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