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On Saturday, July 16, 1994, the Anna Freud Centre held a workshop at which Mary Main, together with her colleague Erik IIesse, presented an account of their research findings on disorganization in infant behaviour.
This workshop represented a range of ‘firsts’ for the Anna Freud Centre. It was the first time that Professor Mary Main had addressed the Centre and held a London workshop on her unique and central contributions to, and research into, attachment theory. The workshop brought together participants from the Winnicott Research Centre at Cambridge, the Tavistock Clinic, The Development and Integration of Behaviour Sub-Department of Cambridge University, research colleagues from University College London, the British Psycho-Analytical Society, and staff and students from the Anna Freud Centre. This unique combination of clinicians and researchers formed an enthusiastic audience interested in the interplay between psychoanalytic theory, clinical practice and recent work from developmental psychology.
Professor Main began with a reminder of the basic building blocks of attachment research, namely the systematic home observations of mothers and babies conducted by Mary Ainsworth which culminated in the development of the Strange Situation paradigm. This structured laboratory procedure presents one-year-old infants with an opportunity to respond to two brief separations from, and reunions with, the parent. Professor Main went on to explain that the infant's responses to this situation used to be classified in one of three ways: A, B, or C. Group B children are referred to as ‘secure’ in their attachment. They show signs of missing the parent on the parent's departure from the room; they seek proximity upon reunion with the parent, and then return to play.