to romantic relationships. They note that research on romantic love has traditionally been descriptive and atheoretical, and argue for an attachment‐based perspective informed by an evolutionary framework. They review a number of remarkable similarities between infant–caregiver attachment and adult romantic love, and apply Ainsworth’s patterns of attachment to adult romantic relationships, describing two of their ground‐breaking studies. Their discussion includes how self‐designated attachment type was associated with participants’ descriptions of their most important love relationship, descriptions of the self and descriptions of their attachment relationships during childhood. They then discuss limitations of their own research, emphasizing the preliminary measures of attachment constructs, and outline future research avenues. Crucially, they draw upon Bowlby’s and Ainsworth’s reasoning and suggest that romantic love relationships should entail an integration of three behavioral systems: attachment, sexuality and caregiving, and discuss the potential dynamics between these systems. Finally, they discuss grief in response to loss of a romantic attachment figure, using attachment theory to explain why loss can be so painful.
In the fifth paper, Alan Sroufe (1989), one of the leaders of the Minnesota longitudinal study of attachment and adaptation, discusses the importance of children’s early attachment experiences and relationships for the development of the self, for social behavior and for relationship functioning. He approaches the topic from an “organizational perspective” and the concept of “dyadic regulation.” Infants are seen as constantly embedded in formative relationships with their caregivers, and the self is seen as a “social creation,” with the experiences that make up infant–caregiver relationships preceding, giving rise to and organizing children’s development. He provides a detailed discussion of different stages in the development of the self and of regulation as going from regulation by the caregiver, via coordinated sequences of behavioral interaction, to increasingly independent self‐regulation. He then draws on Bowlby and describes this organization as manifested in “internal working models” of self and others that are complementary in nature and generalized to subsequent relationships. Finally, drawing on findings from the Minnesota longitudinal study, he discuss secure attachment in relation to the concept of autonomy, potency of self and the feeling of the self as worthy of care.
In the sixth paper, Mary Main and Erik Hesse (1992) discuss theory and research regarding the origins of disorganized/disoriented attachment. They discuss the predicament a child faces when the attachment system and the fear system are simultaneously activated by caregiver behavior, with children both pushed away from frightening stimuli and pulled toward their caregivers. In so doing, they describe disorganized/disoriented attachment and the approach–avoidance conflict that is thought to arise when a caregiver is associated by a child with alarm. They then discuss links between unresolved traumatic experiences, as measured by lapses in monitoring of reasoning and discourse upon discussing traumatic loss and abuse in their interview instrument the “Adult Attachment Interview,” and momentary "frightened” caregiving behavior, focusing on non‐maltreating caregivers. Finally, they discuss adult unresolved/disorganized states of mind, and infant disorganized/disoriented attachment, in relation to a propensity for “dissociation” and “trance‐like states.” This paper is perhaps Main and Hesse’s most detailed account of the psychological mechanisms inferred to underpin disorganized attachment and unresolved states of mind. However it has previously only been published in Italian.
In the seventh paper, Owens and colleagues (1995) present the results of an early empirical study regarding the concordance between adults’ state‐of‐mind regarding attachment to caregivers and attachment quality to romantic partners. They discuss Freud’s “prototype hypothesis,” which Bowlby partly carried forward through his notion of “monotropy,” and which suggests that early working models are to an extent generalized to subsequent relationships. Yet, they also note that Bowlby argued that internal working models are amenable to change following new experiences, and that we tend to have multiple attachment relationships, including more than one parent and romantic partners. They then pose important questions regarding how different working models, from different types of relationships, may be associated with and influence one another. They measure state‐of mind regarding caregivers using the Adult Attachment Interview, and use a similar interview‐based instrument – the Current Relationships Interview – to examine romantic attachment quality. They present and discuss their results, which challenge the prototype hypothesis, and provide a detailed discussion of important future research avenues.
In the eighth paper, Phillip Shaver (2006) discusses theory and research pertaining to the “dynamics of romantic love” and, in doing so, follows up on developments regarding their theory regarding the interplay between attachment, caregiving and sex. He critiques attempts to conceptualize romantic love primarily as affects, feelings and attitudes, and argues for the advantages of their conceptualization in terms of behavioral systems. He then addresses the challenge of how to best integrate the three systems, acknowledging that the theory may have failed to include the exploratory and affiliative systems. Also, he discusses the tendency to bestow loved ones with precious and irreplaceable qualities in relation to the caregiving system. He reviews both research examining associations between the three systems and research using priming. While many of their hypotheses have been corroborated, he argues that much is still uncertain regarding the origins of the interrelations between the systems and their dynamics, and elaborates on future research that may help resolve these issues.
In the ninth paper, Marinus van IJzendoorn and Marian Bakermans‐Kranenburg (2012) discuss attachment theory in relation to temperament theory and emphasize a recent rapprochement, with caregiving acknowledged as influencing children’s temperamental characteristics and temperament as influencing caregiving behavior. They refute an early hypothesis that variations in attachment behavior can be explained by temperamental characteristics and discuss alternative conceptualizations that focus on transactions. They give particular attention to Belsky’s differential susceptibility model, which suggests that some children have a higher constitutional susceptibility to environmental influences than other children. In contrast to the more one‐dimensional stress‐diathesis model, this susceptibility is seen as “for better or worse,” with genetically susceptible children faring worse than other children in suboptimal environments, but better than other children in enriched environments. They also apply the differential susceptibility model to caregiving, and discuss whether differential susceptibility may extend to caregiving practices.
In the tenth paper, Charles Zeanah and Mary Margaret Gleason (2015) review theory and research regarding “attachment disorders.” They describe two distinct disorders: reactive attachment disorder (RAD), in which children display absence of attachment behavior, and disinhibited social engagement disorder (DSED), in which children display a lack of social reticence and show indiscriminate social behavior toward unfamiliar adults. While both disorders arise due to social neglect, they argue that their differentiation is motivated by differences in presentations, courses and correlates, and responsiveness to intervention. They also elaborate on differences between attachment disorders and patterns of attachment and discuss child vulnerability factors, since social neglect alone is not sufficient to explain the development of attachment disorders. They also discuss clinical correlates and co‐morbidity, differentiating RAD from autism spectrum disorder and DSED from ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), and discuss attachment disorders in relation to internalizing and externalizing problems. They also discuss the effects of deprivation on neurobiology, linking deprivation to structural and functional deviations in brain development. Finally, they discuss research on interventions, which have largely focused on adoption, and discuss different responsiveness between RAD and DSED.
In the eleventh paper, Matt Woolgar and Emma Baldock (2015) present the results of a study examining if there is a tendency to overdiagnose “attachment disorders” and “attachment problems” among adopted and looked‐after children. Using one hundred consecutive referrals to a specialist unit in the UK, they examine whether attachment disorders and problems are identified in a higher extent in community‐based referral letters than by specialists, and whether overdiagnosing of attachment disorders and attachment problems is at the expense of diagnosing
