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Parenting In Space A Journey Toward Therapeutic Parenting

Karen Doyle Buckwalter, MSW, LCSW

Chaddock Quincy, IL

kbuckwalter@chaddock.org

“The Legacy of Attachment”

The Identification and Inter-Generational Transmission of

Attachment Patterns

Devotion

• From Michael Trout’s Baby Verses

• “I figured it out.”

Part I

• Early and recent history of Attachment Theory

• Attachment classifications

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EARLY SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERIES RELATED TO

ATTACHMENT THEORY

History of Attachment Theory • 1939 John Bowlby writes about his views

on early psychological experiences that lead to psychological disorders (British Psychoanalytic Society)

• 1940’s Rene Spitz begins to film institutionalized infants

• 1944 Bowlby writes “Forty-Four Juvenile Thieves: Their Characters and Home-Life” published in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis

• 1948 Mary Ainsworth selected as Bowlby’s research assistant

• 1950’s Winnicott, Lornez, Harlow…Bowlby’s “kindred spirits”

• 1958 Harry Harlow’s rhesus monkey experiment

Harry Harlow’s Experiments

Insert Harlow Video

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MODERN ATTACHMENT THEORY

Attachment Theory Timeline

• 1975 Ed Tronick first presents the “Still Face Experiment”

• 1977 Alan Sroufe writes Attachment as an Organization Construct paper the famous Minnesota Studies follow

• 1980’s Mary Main’s Berkley Studies addition of Disorganized Attachment Pattern and the Adult Attachment Interview

• 1994 Allan Schore Affect Regulation and the Origin of Self

• 1997 Peter Fonagy Crime and Attachment: Morality, Disruptive Behavior, BPD, Crime and Their Relationship to Security of Attachment

• 1999 Daniel Siegel The Developing Mind

Attachment and Current Brain Research

Attachment Research demonstrates that attuned, engaging interaction between a baby and his/her mother leads to:

• Secure Attachment

• Positive Internal Working Models (IWM) of self and the world

• The capacity to regulate emotions and actions

Still Face Clip and Exercise

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Daniel Siegel, MD Book: The Developing Mind

• The brain is experience dependent

• It is not nature versus nurture but rather nature needs nurture

• Secure attachment involves contingent communication, in which the signals of one person are directly responded to by another

• These patterns of communication literally shape the structure of the child’s developing brain

ATTACHMENT CLASSIFICATIONS OF PARENTS AND

CHILDREN

Attachment Categories

• Secure Attachment

• Insecure Ambivalent

• Insecure Avoidant

• Disorganized Attachment

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Secure Attachment • Primary Caregiver is:

– available when child needs her, effective in meeting the child’s needs, sensitively attuned, consistent, encourages mutually enjoyable interactions, warm and nurturing

• Child feels:

– secure, confident about self and that help is accessible, able to explore. Older child has good social skills, rapport and empathy

Insecure-Ambivalent

• Primary caregiver is:

– Inconsistently available, not always effective at meeting child’s needs, unexpected changes in sensitivity and intrusiveness, parent’s own emotional upheavals dominate

• Child feels:

– Anxiety shown as clingy, angry, whiney, separation issues. Older child has anxious and depressive states

Insecure - Avoidant • Primary caregiver is:

– Rejecting, rebuffs the child when in need, emotionally aloof, poor capacity for co-regulation

• Child feels:

– Emotionally inhibited, learns to suppress attachment feelings and behaviors because they trigger parent’s rejection, insistently independent does not seek help when injured or disappointed. Older child may have addictive behaviors and covert aggression

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Disorganized Attachment • Primary Caregiver is:

– Frightening or frightened when the child is needy, abusive or neglectful, caregiver usually has own history of abuse, trauma loss

• Child:

– Displays strange out of context behaviors of freezing, agitation, panic, rage. Dissociation, child has great dilemma because attachment figure is also source of threat and danger. Child may show compulsive caretaking or compliance. Older child displays intense control, aggression and Borderline symptoms.

The Adult

Attachment Interview

The Adult Attachment Interview

• Series of questions asked to adult

– Childhood relationship with parents

– Losses and traumas

• Recorded, transcribed verbatim and coded

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Link Between the AAI and

the Strange Situation Protocol

• 75% or greater correlation between AAI and SSP

History of the AAI

• In 1985 monograph written. Main, Kaplan and Cassidy reported that an interview based method of classifying a parent’s state of mind with regard to attachment was strongly associated with the infant's behavior toward them in the strange situation.

• Previously attachment research had focused almost exclusively on nonverbal behavior

• The AAI moved this work to the level of representation

“Adult Attachment style refers to particular working modes or schemas of self and other that are related to interpersonal and emotional functioning.” (Doumas, Blasey & Mitchell, 2006)

“Individual differences related to attachment systems are thought to reflect the degree to which a person has come to expect warm, responsive, and reliable care giving in times of need.” (Main, Kaplan & Cassidy, 1985)

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Adult and Child Attachment Classifications

Adult in AAI Baby in Strange

Situation

Secure Autonomous Secure

Dismissing Avoidant

Preoccupied Ambivalent

Unresolved Disorganized

AAI in Non-Clinical Samples • Ijzendorn and Bakermans-Kranenburg

Combined (meta-analytic) sample 584 mothers

– 58% Secure-Autonomous

– 24% Dismissing

– 18% Preoccupied

• Including unresolved category 487 mothers

– 55% Secure-Autonomous

– 16% Dismissing

– 9% Preoccupied

– 19% Unresolved

What do these statistics tell us? • Nearly half of parents are

not secure in their adult attachment classification

• What does this mean for the field of adoption?

• What does it mean in working with children with their own attachment challenges?

Discussion

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“The best way to help a child is to take care of its mother.” – Selma Fraiberg

Part II

• Case Discussion and Analysis

Having heard AAI transcript • What else do you now

know?

• What would you say to mother about what you heard?

• What challenge might she have with her child?

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Hear the story of the parent

“When the mother’s own cries are heard, she will hear her child’s cries.”

-Selma Fraiberg

EXAMINING ONE’S OWN ATTACHMENT

PATTERN

“Intergenerational Transmission”

IN CHILDHOOD AND PSYCHOTHERAPY

The parent’s security, insecurity, and/or trauma are regularly transmitted to the child.

As therapists, our ability to help generate a secure attachment relationship with the patient largely depends on our own attachment history—and our relationship to that history.

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You can’t give to children parents what you yourself don’t have…

• Dozier Studies – Attachment Patterns of Foster Mothers

• Steele Studies – Attachment Patterns of Adoptive Mothers and Bio Mothers (Bronx mothers)

Overview of the 3 Organized

Categories (Cyraowskit et al. 2002)

• Dismissing

• Preoccupied

• Secure-Autonomous

Dismissing

• Dismissing individuals view self as worthy, yet others as unreliable or rejecting. They find it difficult to be close to others and are seen as defensively independent, taking a dismissing or detached attitude toward attachment relationships. “Deal and don’t feel”

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Preoccupied Individuals

• Preoccupied individuals view self as unworthy or unlovable but have positive evaluation of others. They tend to be preoccupied with attempts to gain the love, acceptance and emotional closeness of others, are anxious about possible abandonment and are often viewed by others as clingy or demanding. “Feel and don’t deal”

Secure-Autonomous

• Individuals with a Secure “state of mind” have a model of others as warm, reliable and available in time of need and model of oneself as lovable and worthy of care. They can be flexible in relating to people in a variety of ways and have a strong capacity to mentalize.

CHOOSE WHICH

SELF-DESCRIPTION

FITS YOU MOST CLOSELY…

Break into pairs –Discuss

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I am somewhat uncomfortable being

close to others; I find it difficult to trust

them completely, difficult to allow myself

to depend on them.

I am nervous when anyone gets too close,

and often, love partners want me to be

more intimate than I feel comfortable

being.

I find that others are reluctant to get as

close as I would like. I often worry that my

partner doesn't really love me or won't

stay with me. I want to merge completely

with another person, and this desire

sometimes scares people away.

I find it relatively easy to get close to

others and am comfortable depending

on them and having them depend on

me. I don't often worry about being

abandoned or about someone getting

too close to me.

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Devotion

• From See Me As A Person by Mary Koloroutis and Michael Trout

• “So I Get Tired and I Forget”

Contact Information:

Karen Doyle Buckwalter, MSW, LCSW

Chaddock

217-222-0034 ext 319

Email: kbuckwalter@chaddock.org

Skype: karen.doyle.buckwalter