You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
This volume of fourteen chapters sandwiched between a theoretical introduction and a summarizing epilogue will likely prove heavy
going for most readers, especially those whose interests lie more in the subtleties of clinical intervention than in the intricacies of well- conceived developmental research. One volume in the Series on Mental Health and Development sponsored by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, it is a product of the MacArthur Network on the Transition from Infancy to Early Childhood. Robert Emde—a developmental researcher and theorist in addition to a child psychiatrist and psychoanalyst—was the chair of that Network from 1982 until 1987, and he points out in his Preface to the volume that the studies published here represent the third phase in attachment research.
The first phase of attachment research consisted mainly of the clinical/theoretical work of John Bowlby (who introduced the concept of attachment to psychoanalysts). The second phase of attachment research began when Mary Ainsworth developed the “Strange Situation” as a way of utilizing some of the concepts suggested by Bowlby; this led to two decades of studies built mainly around Ainsworth's paradigm. The third phase—represented by the present volume—goes beyond the previous work both methodologically and developmentally, as researchers have found new ways to “measure” attachment-related phenomena, ways which allow them to move from infancy into the later stages of toddlerhood, latency, and adulthood.
I did not find the excitement in reading this volume that I experienced when I first read Schaffer's Studies in Mother-Infant Interaction1 and Kaye's The Mental and Social Life of Babies.2 Perhaps I've become a bit jaded. Or perhaps the increasing complexity of research designs has begun to overtax my cognitive capacities. A third possibility is that my “nihilist” tendencies have begun to interfere with my appreciation of this kind of research. Is it possible to distill, via