Internal Working Models (IWMs) occupy a structural position in the depth-psychology corpus as the cognitive-affective scaffolding through which early relational experience is encoded, carried forward, and expressed in subsequent intimate life. Bowlby's own formulations — drawn from cognitive psychology's notion of representational maps (Craik, 1943) and refined through ethological systems thinking — posit two interlocking models: an 'environmental' model of the world and an 'organismal' model of self-in-relation. The corpus amplifies this foundation in several directions. Schore grounds IWMs neurobiologically, locating their formation in the orbitofrontal cortex through experience-dependent socioaffective transactions between caregiver and infant, arguing that these models are not merely cognitive but are physiologically encoded expectancy structures. Siegel extends this into interpersonal neurobiology, treating IWMs as implicit memory schemas that shape both neural integration and the capacity for narrative coherence. Ogden and the body-oriented clinicians emphasize IWMs as action-shaping anticipatory structures that reach into somatic response tendencies. A key tension runs throughout: the degree to which IWMs are revocable versus constitutionally entrenched — a debate crystallized in Bowlby's own observation that early models remain 'relatively impervious to subsequent experience, however disconfirmatory.' The clinical stakes are high: IWMs underlie transference, attachment classification continuity across generations, and the targets of therapeutic revision.
In the library
13 substantive passages
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.
This passage delivers Bowlby's canonical formulation of IWMs as complementary representational models of caregiver and self that generalize across relational life, with insecure variants producing defensive and self-defeating relational expectations.
Bowlby, John, John Bowlby and Attachment Theory (Makers of Modern, 2014thesis
Bowlby saw higher animals as needing a map or model of the world in the brain... humans have two such models, an 'environmental' model, telling us about the world, and an 'organismal' model, telling us about ourselves in relation to the world.
This glossary entry articulates the cognitive-psychological basis of IWMs in Bowlby's framework, clarifying their dual structure and noting their applicability to affective as well as cognitive dimensions of experience.
Bowlby, John, John Bowlby and Attachment Theory (Makers of Modern, 2014thesis
The term internal working models refers to the complex systems of beliefs we have developed about our attachment figures, beginning as infants and very young children, in response to repeated experience.
Ogden integrates IWMs into a sensorimotor framework, positioning them as anticipatory belief-action systems that not only encode relational history but actively direct future embodied behavior.
Ogden, Pat, Trauma and the Body: A Sensorimotor Approach to Psychotherapy, 2006thesis
Main saw these differences as reflecting underlying differences in internal working models (IWMs) of attachment, that is, representational models built up as the result of actual experience.
Main's extension of IWM theory into the Adult Attachment Interview paradigm is presented here, establishing the transgenerational transmission of attachment classifications through parental IWMs.
Bowlby, John, John Bowlby and Attachment Theory (Makers of Modern, 2014thesis
An 'internal working model of attachment' is a form of mental model or schema... the formation of mental models is a fundamental way in which implicit memory allows the mind to create generalizations and summaries of past experiences.
Siegel situates IWMs within the neuroscience of implicit memory, arguing they function as generalized relational scripts encoded nonconsciously and operative in the patterning of interpersonal expectation.
Siegel, Daniel J., The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are, 2020thesis
The core of the earliest indelible internalized models of the self in relationship with an emotionally significant other... contains an expectation, a bias, that the primary attachment object will or will not remain available and accessible at times of hypo- or hyperstimulating affective stress.
Schore recasts IWMs as neurobiologically encoded expectancy structures within the developing right-hemisphere orbitofrontal system, grounding their affect-regulatory function in physiological rather than purely cognitive terms.
Schore, Allan N., Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self: The Neurobiology of Emotional Development, 1994thesis
The Regulatory Function of Early Internal Working Models... The Affect Regulating Functions of Inceptive Right Hemisphere Internal Working Models
The chapter structure of Schore's text reveals IWMs as a central organizing concept for his neurobiological account, linking their formation to right-hemisphere limbic circuitry and their function to the regulation of affect.
Schore, Allan N., Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self: The Neurobiology of Emotional Development, 1994supporting
Into this the patient will import all those perceptions, constructions, and expectations of how an attachment figure is likely to feel and behave towards him that his working models of parents and self dictate.
Bowlby articulates the clinical significance of IWMs as the operative substrate of transference, directing the patient's perceptions and expectations of the therapist in ways that require explicit therapeutic examination.
Bowlby, John, A Secure Base: Clinical Applications of Attachment Theory, 1988supporting
'Working model' is a phrase that describes our basic belief system when it comes to romantic relationships — what gets you going, what shuts you down, your attitudes and expectations.
Levine translates the IWM construct into applied adult attachment research, framing working models as the modifiable belief systems that govern romantic behavior and constituting the target of therapeutic reshaping.
Levine, Amir; Heller, Rachel, Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love, 2010supporting
Attachment, anxiety, internal working models... Around 7 months the baby will begin to show 'stranger anxiety', becoming silent and clingy in the presence of an unknown person.
This developmental passage situates the emergence of IWMs within a specific ontogenetic window coinciding with locomotion and stranger anxiety, contextualizing their formation as a milestone of attachment proper.
Bowlby, John, John Bowlby and Attachment Theory (Makers of Modern, 2014supporting
Representations, see also Internal working models, Mental images, and Schemas... adaptive regulatory functions of... affective and cognitive components of... encoding expectations
Schore's index cross-references IWMs with representations, mental images, and schemas, underscoring their integration into a broader neuropsychoanalytic account of expectancy encoding and affect regulation.
Schore, Allan N., Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self: The Neurobiology of Emotional Development, 1994supporting
when a woman manages either to retain or to regain access to such unhappy memories and reprocess them in such a way that she can come to terms with them, she is found to be no less able to respond to her child's attachment behaviour
Bowlby demonstrates that IWMs are revisable through reflective reprocessing of adverse early experience, with therapeutic implications for the intergenerational transmission of attachment security.
Bowlby, John, A Secure Base: Clinical Applications of Attachment Theory, 1988supporting
Are we seeing in these insecure children the roots of adult personality difficulty and disturbance? If so, what can we learn about the psychological mechanisms that may underlie these disorders?
This passage raises the clinical question of whether insecure IWMs, as observed in childhood, constitute precursors to adult psychopathology, linking the IWM framework to a developmental psychopathology perspective.
Bowlby, John, John Bowlby and Attachment Theory (Makers of Modern, 2014aside