0.4 Neo-freudian perspectives on personality  (Page 22/28)

There is something about this world in our experience that does lift us up beyond the simplicity of an individual existence, that lifts us into something higher, enduring, or, as I would rather say, timeless. (pg. 332; quoted in Strozier, 2001)

Connections Across Cultures: Cultural Perspectives

on Parent-Child Attachment

This is a true story. I was at our local gym while my older son was at gymnastics practice. There were some children attending a party at the gym, including a little boy about 2 years old who was running around on one of the gymnastics floors. He fell down and hurt himself, and he started crying. A couple of the coaches walked over to help him, but he just cried louder and roughly turned away from them. Then he heard his mother calling him. He ran over to his mother, crying all the way, and she scooped him up into her arms. Almost immediately he stopped crying, started squirming around, and when she put him down he raced back onto the floor and started running wildly in circles and yelling for joy! This is a marvelous example of what psychologists call a secure attachment.

Attachment theory was developed by John Bowlby and advanced by Mary Ainsworth (see Jarvis, 2004; Mitchell&Black, 1995; Rothbaum, Weisz, Pott, Miyake,&Morelli, 2000). Bowlby considered attachment theory to fit within an object relations approach to psychodynamic theory, but it was largely rejected by the psychodynamic community. He proposed an evolutionary basis for attachment, a basis that serves the species by aiding in the survival of the infant. In other words, the attachment between an infant and its primary caregivers helps to ensure both that the infant stays close to the parents (the objects, if we consider object relations theory) and the parents respond quickly and appropriately to the needs of the infant. Ainsworth studied the attachment styles of children using a technique called the strange situation . In the strange situation, one of the caregivers (let’s say the mother) takes a child into an unfamiliar playroom, and allows the child to explore. A stranger enters, interacts with the mother, and then tries to interact with the child. The mother leaves, then returns, the stranger leaves, and then the mother leaves again. The stranger then returns, then leaves, and finally the mother returns. Throughout all of these events, the child is observed for evidence of having a secure base (feeling comfortable enough to explore the unfamiliar room), separation anxiety (due to the absence of the mother), stranger anxiety (due to the presence of the stranger), and, finally, for its attachment to its mother (when the mother returns at the end of the experiment) (Jarvis, 2004). A securely attached child, as in the story above, will feel free to explore a new environment. When hurt or frightened, however, the child will seek its mother for protection and comfort. Having found that comfort, having affirmed its secure base, the child will then venture out again. But is this true for children in all cultures?