The Origins of Attachment

Infant Research and Adult Treatment

Beatrice Beebe, Frank M. Lachmann

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781317935599
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Psychologie du développement

The Origins of Attachment: Infant Research and Adult Treatment addresses the origins of attachment in mother-infant face-to-face communication. New patterns of relational disturbance in infancy are described. These aspects of communication are out of conscious awareness. They provide clinicians with new ways of thinking about infancy, and about nonverbal communication in adult treatment.

Utilizing an extraordinarily detailed microanalysis of videotaped mother-infant interactions at 4 months, Beatrice Beebe, Frank Lachmann, and their research collaborators provide a more fine-grained and precise description of the process of attachment transmission. Second-by-second microanalysis operates like a social microscope and reveals more than can be grasped with the naked eye.

The book explores how, alongside linguistic content, the bodily aspect of communication is an essential component of the capacity to communicate and understand emotion. The moment-to-moment self- and interactive processes of relatedness documented in infant research form the bedrock of adult face-to-face communication and provide the background fabric for the verbal narrative in the foreground.

The Origins of Attachment is illustrated throughout with several case vignettes of adult treatment. Discussions by Carolyn Clement, Malcolm Slavin and E. Joyce Klein, Estelle Shane, Alexandra Harrison and Stephen Seligman show how the research can be used by practicing clinicians. This book details aspects of bodily communication between mothers and infants that will provide useful analogies for therapists of adults. It will be essential reading for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and graduate students.

Collaborators Joseph Jaffe, Sara Markese, Karen A. Buck, Henian Chen, Patricia Cohen, Lorraine Bahrick, Howard Andrews, Stanley Feldstein

Discussants Carolyn Clement, Malcolm Slavin, E. Joyce Klein, Estelle Shane, Alexandra Harrison, Stephen Seligman

Part I

MOTHER–INFANT COMMUNICATION AND ADULT TREATMENT

1

THE ORIGINS OF RELATEDNESS

Film Illustrations

In this chapter we invite you into our mother–infant filming lab to “watch” several films of mother–infant face-to-face interaction at 4 months. We describe two mother–infant dyads who will be classified as securely attached at 1 year. One illustrates a pattern of “facial mirroring,” and one a pattern of “disruption and repair.” We then present a pair at 4 months who will be classified as exhibiting disorganized attachment at 1 year. Based on these films and our findings, we infer what mothers and infants might come to expect in their interactions. The expectancies of dyads on the way to secure attachment, compared to disorganized attachment, are strikingly different. In the following chapter we discuss how infants come to represent their social experiences at this early age.

Microanalysis reveals subtle, split-second events that are often not visible with the naked eye in real time. It is this “subterranean” level of communication that our research reveals. This level of detail generated new findings on the origins of communication disturbances in infancy. And it is this split-second level of communication which may powerfully inform adult treatment. These moment-to-moment processes are rapid, subtle, co-created by both mother and infant, and generally out of awareness. Nevertheless they continue to influence how we act and feel, from infancy to adulthood. They profoundly affect moment-to-moment communication and the affective climate, organizing different modes of relating.

The mother–infant “action–dialogue” generates infant and maternal expectancies of how action and interaction sequences unfold from moment-to-moment, within the self, within the partner, and between the self and the partner. The films that we describe illustrate how strikingly different expectancies are created, as these patterns repeat over time and form generalized action-sequence (procedural) memories. These expectancies involve anticipation of what will happen, as well as memories of what has generally happened in the past (Haith, Hazan, & Goodman, 1988). Expectancies refer to the same process that Stern (1985) terms RIGs: representations of interactions generalized, or Bucci (2011) terms emotion schemas.

In our descriptions below we attempt to translate the action–dialogue language into words in an effort to facilitate our understanding of these action sequences. However, we do not imply that as infants develop, these patterns are actually translated into a linguistic format. We assume that early infant expectancies are encoded in a nonverbal, imagistic, acoustic, visceral, or temporal mode of information, and that they may not necessarily be translated into linguistic form (see Bucci, 1985, 1997).

Four-Month Face-to-Face Communication and 12-Month Attachment

In the section below we describe the interactions of two “future” secure dyads and one “future” disorganized attachment dyad. We term them “future” because the 4-month infant cannot be classified for attachment until 12 months. In the Ainsworth separation–reunion paradigm used to assess attachment, infants must be old enough to crawl or walk toward and away from the mother as she leaves and returns (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978). As we look at these dyads at 4 months, we know what the 12-month attachment outcome will be, but that is still in their future.

To understand these films, we first review how we film 4-month face-to-face play, and how the 12-month Ainsworth attachment assessment is conducted. Based on this assessment, infants are classified as secure or insecure (avoidant, resistant, and disorganized). In this chapter we illustrate dyads at 4 months who are on the way to secure, and to disorganized, attachment.

Four-Month Face-to-Face Communication

When infants are 4 months old we invite mothers and infants to our laboratory. We film them as they interact face-to-face. The infant is in an infant seat, and the mother is seated opposite. The mother is instructed to play with her infant as she would at home, but without toys. One camera is focused on the mother’s face and hands, and one camera on the infant’s face and hands. The two cameras generate a split-screen view, so that both partners can be seen at the same time. The mother and the infant are left alone in the filming chamber to play for 5–10 minutes.

We then painstakingly code 2½ minutes of each mother–infant film second-by-second, a “microanalysis.” It took 10 years to obtain the data we used in the research in this book. Twelve devoted doctoral students coded the films across this period (see Acknowledgements).

Face-to-face communication in the early months of life sets the trajectory for patterns of relatedness as they develop over the lifetime. Face-to-face communication elicits the infant’s most advanced communication capacities. Its importance for social and cognitive development is widely recognized (Beebe & Lachmann, 2002; Feldman, 2007; Field, 1995; Jaffe, Beebe, Feldstein, Crown, & Jasnow, 2001; Stern, 1985; Malatesta, Culver, Tesman, & Shepard, 1989; Messinger, 2002; Fogel, 1992; Tronick 1989).

This research has documented that mother–infant interaction is a continuous, reciprocally coordinated process, co-created moment-to-moment by both partners. Each partner affects the behavior of the other, often in split-seconds (Beebe, 1982; Beebe & Stern, 1977; Stern, 1971), but not necessarily in similar, symmetrical, or equal ways. We have termed our approach to mother–infant face-to-face communication a “dyadic systems” approach (Beebe, Jaffe, & Lachmann, 1992; Jaffe et al., 2001; Beebe & Lachmann, 2003; Beebe, Knoblauch, Rustin, & Sorter, 2005).

The dyadic system is defined by the ways that both mother and infant co-create their face-to-face communication. The infant is an active contributor, having a remarkable range of engagement as well as disengagement behaviors (Beebe & Stern, 1977; Brazelton, Koslowski, & Main, 1974; Stern, 1971, 1985; Murray & Trevarthen, 1985). Processes of self-regulation and interactive regulation go on simultaneously within each partner. Each person monitors and coordinates with the partner, and at the same time regulates his or her own inner state. In this view all interactions are a simultaneous product of self- and interactive processes (Gianino & Tronick, 1988; Sander, 1977; Thomas & Martin, 1976; Tronick, 1989). In the process each partner develops expectancies of “how I affect you,” and “how you affect me.” Each also develops expectancies of how one’s own self-regulation processes unfold.

The 4-month face-to-face paradigm is organized around play, with no other goal than mutual enjoyment (Stern, 1985). In contrast, the attachment paradigm taps fear by assessing how the infant manages the threat of separation and the process of reunion (Cassidy, 1994; Sroufe, Egeland, Carlson, & Collins, 2005; Steele & Steele, 2008). Thus we bring together two different research paradigms which assess different motivational systems. Ainsworth herself believed, as do we, that the two research paradigms are likely to inform one another (Blehar, Lieberman, & Ainsworth, 1977).

Attachment Assessed at 12 Months

In our laboratory, at 12 months mothers and infants take part in the Ainsworth separation–reunion paradigm, termed the Strange Situation (Ainsworth et al., 1978). The extent to which the infant uses the parent as a secure base from which to explore, and as a safe haven when distressed, is central to the coding of attachment types.

Mother and infant participate in 3-minute periods of play, separation, and reunion. The sequence is then repeated a second time. In the first separation the infant remains with a “stranger,” a trained graduate student; in the second the infant is alone. These 3-minute separations are cut short if the infant becomes too distressed. Infants are classified as having a secure or insecure (avoidant, resistant, or disorganized) attachment style based on the infant’s reactions in the reunion episodes.

In the reunion episodes the secure infant can easily be comforted, using the mother as a secure base, and then return to play. The insecure-avoidant infant shows little distress at separation, avoids the mother at reunion, and continues to play on his own. The insecure-resistant infant is very distressed at separation, but cannot be comforted by the mother’s return and does not easily return to play.

In the reunion episodes, the disorganized infant simultaneously approaches and avoids the mother. For example the infant may open the door for her but then sharply ignore her. Disorganized infants may show incomplete movements and expressions, simultaneous displays of contradictory approach and avoidance patterns, confusion and apprehension, and momentary behavioral stilling. For example, these infants may reach their hands out toward the mother as she enters, but at the same time back up. Or the infant may cling to the mother, but cry with face averted.

These behaviors of infant disorganized attachment reflect a breakdown in behavioral organization under the stress of the heightened activation of the attachment system following separation (Main & Solomon, 1990; Solomon & George, 1999). The child does not have a coherent strategy for dealing with the stress of the separation. Threat and distress do not subside once the mother returns. Unlike the secure infant, the disorganized infant does not return to exploring the environment and the toys. Studies of the mothers of disorganized infants have revealed that these mothers usually have a history of unresolved loss, mourning, or abuse (Lyons-Ruth, Bronfman, & Parsons, 1999; Main & Hesse, 1990). Thus, in the film description below of the 4-month “future” disorganized attachment dyad, although it is easier to feel for the infant, it is important to have empathy for the mother as well.

Using global assessments and clinical ratings, over 60 studies have shown that the security of the child’s attachment to the parent is dependent on maternal emotional sensitivity (De Wolff & van Ijzendoorn, 1997). Sensitivity involves alertness to infant signals, appropriateness and promptness of response, and capacity to negotiate conflicting goals (Ainsworth et al., 1978). Such maternal sensitivity tends to promote a secure relationship in which the infant can use the mother as a base both for protection and nurturance as well as for exploration of the environment. The insecurely attached infant, on the other hand, spends either too much or too little time in proximity to the mother or in exploring the environment. The balance between attachment and exploration is thereby upset.

However, as important as parental sensitivity is, it does not robustly predict disorganized attachment. Our detailed second-by-second microanalysis of mother–infant communication at four months reported in this book contributes to filling this gap. Far fewer studies have examined the origins of attachment with microanalytic methods (see Beebe et al., 2010, for a review).

Descriptions of Films of 4-Month Mother–Infant Interactions: “Future” Secure and “Future” Disorganized Dyads

We now turn to descriptions of several mother–infant interactions at 4 months. The microanalyses enable us to see the subtle and rapid details of these interactions. As you “view” the films, keep in mind that the infant is developing “expectancies” of these action and interaction sequences (see Chapter 2). As these microprocesses are repeated over and over, the infant develops an anticipation of how the pattern will proceed. The examples of two future secure attachment dyads, compared to a future disorganized attachment dyad, illustrate how strikingly different patterns of infant expectancies are created.

The recurrent nature of the infant’s experiences generates expectancies of how each individual’s behaviors affect the partner’s behaviors, as well as affect his or her own behaviors, across time. This procedural dimension of face-to-face communication is also known as “implicit relational knowing” (Lyons-Ruth, 1999), “emotion schemas” (Bucci, 1997, 2011), and “working models” by attachment researchers. These self- and interactive processes generate patterns that the infant comes to recognize, remember, and expect. They organize procedural, presymbolic representations of self and others that influence the trajectory of the infant’s emotional experiences throughout development (see Chapter 2).

Attachment researchers argue that these representations or models provide one process by which patterns of intimate relating and attachment are constructed. Lyons-Ruth (1999, 2008) proposes that patterns of knowing the partner, and being known by the partner, are constructed through expectancies of how these early interactions go. As we will see in Chapter 4, for infants on the way to disorganized attachment, these expectancies of how early interactions go generate a trajectory in development that predicts young adult outcomes including dissociation. In the adult treatment situation, these expectancies may be in the background as “shadows” of early communication disturbances.

However, we still do not understand the details of these representations in infancy, how they are mutually constructed by mother and infant, and how they predict attachment outcomes. Despite many studies of maternal “sensitivity,” very little work has attempted detailed second-by-second study of these early patterns. That is, what are the interactive details of “maternal sensitivity”? And what is the infant’s role? This was a key motivation for our study.

In our descriptions of the films below, we first provide a description of a section of the film based on viewing it in real time. This description might fit what you, as the viewer, would see while watching the film with the naked eye.

We then provide a second-by-second microanalysis of this same section of the film. This process slows down the communication into Stern’s “split-second world” (1971, 1977; Beebe, 1982; Beebe & Stern, 1977). This level of viewing reveals what is lost to the naked eye in real time. It reveals the moment-by-moment negotiation of attention, emotion, orientation, and touch. It reveals the subtle “mis-steps” in the dance, momentary expressions of sadness or disappointment in the mother’s face, or a subtle infant grimace. It also reveals moments of mother and infant simultaneously rising into joyous smiles, or repair moments when the hands of both mother and infant reach for the other in the same instant. The microanalysis generates the data of our study. Because of this microanalysis, we are seeing aspects of interactions that have not been documented before. This is one of the key new features of our study.

Microanalysis is performed by shifting back and forth across 2 seconds. Thus it becomes possible to see the movement and change from one second to the next. In the microanalysis sections we annotate the second by a change from one second to the next. For example, “second 33 to 34,” indicates that we are describing any changes that begin in second 33, that are now visible in second 34. We note that the vocal channel is lost when examining the film second-by-second.

“Facial Mirroring:” Film Illustration of a Future Secure Dyad at 4 Months

To illustrate examples of secure attachment, we describe brief sections of two films of 4-month mother–infant interactions where the infants were classified as securely attached at 12 months: “facial mirroring” and “disruption and repair.”

Real-Time Video Description of Facial Mirroring: 18 seconds

This film illustrates a sensitive mutual “facial mirroring” process. Because we describe the minute details of the interaction, this description will take some time.

The film section opens with the mother and her infant gazing at each other, as the mother swings her infant’s right-hand fingers with her left hand, and says enthusiastically, “We’re going to sing, right?” The infant holds mother’s swinging finger with his right hand, while his left hand moves slightly in rhythm with his mother’s finger. As the mother begins to sing, the infant smiles and briefly vocalizes. The infant continues to smile as mother sings; the infant’s feet move slightly. Mother moves her head forward and back, and then forward at the end of the song.

At this moment the infant’s smile sobers to a closed mouth, his head moves down, and he looks down, breaking...