happy, active, and enjoys vocalizing and seeking stimulation), negative affect (the degree to which a child is shy and not easily calmed), and effortful control (the degree to which a child can focus attention, is not easily distracted, and employs planning).
Jerome Kagan and his colleagues (2007) studied the temperamental category of “reactivity” in infants ages 14–21 months. Children with high reactivity experienced intense fear to novel events, and children with low reactivity were minimally fearful. Intervening family experiences were shown to mediate the infants’ “expected profiles” by age five. Those that remained highly reactive at age five, however, were at higher risk for developing anxiety and conduct disorders. Parents and family members who were able to compensate for the child’s initial high or low reactivity allowed for the infant’s innate disposition to change and improve.
Furthermore, Solomon Diamond described temperaments based upon characteristics found in the animal world: fearfulness, aggressiveness, affiliativeness, and impulsiveness. H. Hill Goldsmith and Joseph Campos used emotional characteristics to define temperament, originally analyzing five emotional qualities: motor activity, anger, fearfulness, pleasure/joy, and interest/persistence, but later expanding to include other emotions (Zentner and Bates, 2008).
The ongoing list of theorists and supporting research for temperament speaks to the importance of its acknowledgement and its impact on the bond between mother and child. When mother and child are mismatched in temperament, it can lead to difficulties in attachment and misperceptions of characterological “disturbances” in the child—a mistake, if unchecked, that could lead to actual disturbances, through projected introjects.
For example, if an introverted child is born into an extroverted family, he may be perceived as depressed and withdrawn. Similarly, if an excitable and physically active child is born into a calm and more sedentary family, he or she may be perceived as hyperactive and distractible. If the parents and family members deliver and reinforce (project) either of these depreciative messages (introjects) frequently enough, the child may come to identify with (internalize) these misinterpretations as his own truth. This creates a psychic dissonance between what self psychologists would describe as the “true self” and “false self,” leading to feelings of low self-esteem, anxiety and rigidity, meaninglessness and alienation, what is sometimes called a “narcissistic wound.” Heinz Kohut’s treatment for these early childhood injuries is vicarious introspection, which suggests the only way to truly understand a person is from within his or her subjective experience, via empathy. However, if left untreated, such disturbances can lead to significant obstacles when confronted with the task of grieving later in life, particularly in the realm of relationships (Mitchell and Black, 1995). How can one go about the task of reshaping of one’s perception of reality, in order to integrate one’s self into it, if one does not have an essential sense of self to begin with?
The evolving bond
Styles of attachment
Our style of attaching from an early age impacts our relationships later in life. For example, Allan and Barbara Pease (2009) attribute the adult’s romantic inclinations to his childhood “love map.” A “love map” is a blueprint that contains the things we think are attractive determined by the brain’s hardwiring and a set of criteria formed in childhood. Similarly, Freud believed a child’s amorous interest in his parents fixes his attraction to later lovers. His repressed memories and emotions remain in pristine condition, to be exhumed at a later date, unchanged. Freud wrote, “The unconscious, at all events, knows no time limit” (as quoted in Lewis, Amini, and Lannon, 2000). Indeed, many scientists believe love maps begin forming around age six, and are firmly in place by age 14 (Lewis et al., 2000). For the purposes of this chapter, I will expand the definition of one’s love map to include all attachment relationships, romantic and otherwise.
Mary Ainsworth is best known for devising “the strange situation” to study attachment and separation/reunion behavior between mothers and their infants. Mary Main (Main, Kaplan and Cassidy, 1985) expanded on this work, examining the connections between parenting styles and the resulting attachment styles of their children, in a longitudinal study (Wallin, 2007). The results of Main’s study were categorized into four pairings:
1.Autonomous parenting typically leads to a secure attachment style, in the child. When parents display an autonomous parenting style, they are flexible enough to stand both inside and outside their experiences as they are having them; they are reflective, responsive, thoughtful, and in control of their emotions. Their children, in infancy, demonstrate a flexible balance between seeking comfort in proximity to mother, and exploring on their own. They are warmly welcoming to their mothers in a “strange situation,” and are easily soothed post absence. When Main observed these children at six years of age, she found them to be emotionally open, able to find solutions to scenarios of separation, would create realistic and healthy family drawings (with figures close together and arms outstretched, making contact), and enjoyed looking at a family Polaroid.
2.Dismissive parenting typically leads to an insecure/avoidant attachment style, in the child. The dismissive parent minimizes the importance of love relationships, has a lack of recall of childhood experiences, and idealizes problematic relationships. This parent is typically emotionally constricted and dismissing of feeling states and bids for emotional and/or physical contact.
In infancy, this parent’s child engages in exploration to the exclusion of attachment behaviors, avoids mother to prevent feeling rejected or overwhelmed by intrusive behaviors, emotional expression is limited to investment in play objects, and the child is seemingly oblivious to mother’s return in a “strange situation.” When Main observed a child like this at six years of age, the child appeared emotionally restricted and sullen, and could not find solutions to scenarios of separation. Family drawings had dissociated figures that were far apart with no arms, and/or floating in the air with stereotypical happy faces. The child also refused to look at or engage with a family Polaroid.
3.Preoccupied parenting typically leads to an insecure/ambivalent (sometimes called “insecure-anxious”) attachment style, in the child. Preoccupied parents are deeply concerned about their own attachment relationships, discouraging of independent strivings in the child (to the point of enmeshment), are deeply anxious and fearful of abandonment, and swamped by the effects of their childhood. They are inhibited in their capacity for recall, reflection, and to be fully present. For the child, avoidance is over-regulation of affect, ambivalence is under-regulation, resulting in hyper-reactivity.
In infancy, Main observed the child focuses only on the mother, clinging and angrily resistant one minute, then passively helpless the next. The child is anxiously preoccupied with mother’s whereabouts and inconsolable upon her return, unable to explore. At six years of age, Main observed these children to have intense expressions of need and anger. Solutions to separation scenarios were both rewarding and punishing (e.g. buy the parents flowers, then hide their clothes). Figures in family drawings were very large and very small, very close together, and featuring vulnerable, intimate parts of the body. Reactions to a family Polaroid were deeply absorbed and disturbed, setting off tics, and anxieties about being abandoned.
4.Unresolved parenting typically leads to a disorganized (sometimes called “anxious–avoidant”) attachment style in the child. Unresolved parents have experienced trauma and/or losses that were unresolved. Most important was not the experience they endured, but the way they’d integrated it into their understanding. Notably, the degree to which the experience lay unresolved impacted the degree to which their child became disorganized. In infancy, children of unresolved parents displayed bizarre, overtly conflicted, dissociated, or inexplicable behaviors. This was the result of a breakdown in the attachment system: the child has an inherent push to attach to someone that is simultaneously a threat and frightening.
At six years of age, Main observed these children to be inexplicably afraid and unable to do anything about it. When presented with separation scenarios, they fell silent,
