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From an evolutionary perspective, a central mechanism promoting infant survival is the maintenance of proximity to attachment figures. Consequently attachment figure(s) represent the infant's primary solution to experiences of fear. Aspects of the development of the field of attachment are outlined within this context, beginning with Bowlby's ethological/evolutionary theory, and proceeding to Ainsworth's early descriptions of infant-mother interaction in Uganda and Baltimore. Using a laboratory procedure called the strange situation, Ainsworth identified three organized patterns of infant response to separation from and reunion with the parent. Narratives derived from videotaped strange situation behavior of infants in each category (secure, avoidant, and resistant/ambivalent) are provided, together with a discussion of the prototypical sequelae of each category (e.g., school behavior, and separation-related narratives and drawings at age six). The Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) and the move to the level of representation are also described. AAI transcripts are presently analyzed according to the speaker's capacity to adhere to Grice's maxims of rational cooperative discourse, and three organized AAI categories, or states of mind with respect to attachment, have been identified (secure-autonomous, dismissing, and preoccupied). When the interview is administered to parents who have
This paper is dedicated to the memory of Alvin Goren (1927-1996), faculty member at the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute. The author wishes to thank the American Psychoanalytic Foundation, the Kohler-Stiftung Foundation, the Harris Foundation and the Sengstack Foundation for their support. She is grateful to Erik Hesse for critiquing this manuscript, and to Diana Diamond for her efforts in teaching her to write for this new audience.
Based on an introduction to the field presented at the panel on attachment, Fall Meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association, New York, December 20, 1997.
been seen with their infants in the strange situation, each AAI category has repeatedly been found to predict that infant's strange situation response to that parent. Illustrations of the discourse characteristic of each category are provided, and it is noted that individuals with apparently unfavorable life histories are found to have secure offspring, providing that their history is recounted coherently. Like infant strange situation behavior, differences in adult security as identified through discourse patterning are interpreted in terms of attentional flexibility or inflexibility under attachment-related stress.