Anxious Attachment and the ‘Phobias’ of Childhood

Often and often afterwards, the beloved Aunt would ask me why I had never told any one how I was being treated. Children tell little more than animals, for what comes to them they accept as eternally established.

It is argued earlier (Chapter 14) that an individual's susceptibility to respond with fear whenever he meets a potentially alarming situation is determined in very large part by the type of forecast he makes of the probable availability of attachment figures, and that these forecasts derive from the structure of the working models of attachment figures and of self with which he is operating. In the same chapter it is argued, further, that these models are probably built up throughout the years of childhood and adolescence and that they tend thereafter to remain comparatively stable; and, finally, that the particular forms that a person's working models take are a fair reflection of the types of experience he has had in his relationships with attachment figures during those years, and may perhaps be having still. Evidence regarding the nature of the experiences that lead to increased susceptibility to fear is considered in Chapters 15 and 16.

In this chapter and the next the potential usefulness of the theory is illustrated by applying it to certain clinical syndromes in which overt anxiety and fear are prominent. The conditions selected are those commonly grouped under the label ‘phobia’, a label which, as currently used by psychiatrists and psychologists (e.g. Andrews 1966; Marks 1969), includes a broad range of conditions in which anxiety and fear are the main symptoms. Principal instances to be examined are ‘school phobia’ and ‘agoraphobia’.

Although when the condition is of recent onset some patients