Stability and change in attachment
representations from
expectant motherhood to six years later
Howard Steele, PhD Professor of Psychology
New School for Social Research, New York
www.attachmentresearch.com
www.seasinternational.org
www.iac2015.com
Salt Lake City, Thursday Feb 5th, 2015
Thoughts on the transition to
motherhood
• “It seems that the event of a daughter’s
becoming a parent — as it releases her
from her infantile bondage to her own
mother — also changes the nature of her
mother’s relationship to her: from a still
prevalently mother-child configuration to
one between two women as partners and
coequals” (Bibring, Dwyer, Huntington &
Valenstein, Psychoanalytic Study of the
Child, 1961, p. 21)
Gold Standard Methods in attachment research:
(thanks to Mary Ainsworth & Mary Main)
• Adult Attachment Interview (AAI)
• Strange Situation Procedure (SSP)
• Activate the exploration (play/learning) system
• Activate the attachment (love) system
• See if the infant/adult can maintain balance, focus and
hope
• In the AAI, can the adult remain coherent and show a
valuing of attachment? Acknowledge conflict?
Understand it? Locate it in the past, or inner world, and
NOT let it adversely effect parenting behavior?
Ainsworth’s Strange Situation
• Activate the
attachment system
via separation
• Activate the
exploration system
via novel playroom
• Observe the child’s
strategy upon reunion
• Secure (65%)
• Avoidant (20%)
• Resistant (10%)
• Disorganized (5-10% in
non-clinical populations
but up to 80% of
maltreated infants)
The London Parent-Child Project
Miriam and Howard Steele
• An urban, non-clinical, 70% university educated,
middle class sample of 100 couples expecting
their first child
• Assessed during pregnancy, 12 months, 18
months, 5, 6,11 and 16 years
• And introducing Harry
e
AAI
s
Adult Attachment Interiew
bee
(George,Kaplan & Main, 1985)
n
rep
ote
d in
• What happened?
pri
★ What do you make of
• 5-adjectives for early
it?
relationship w/mother
★ Why do you think your
and w/father
parents behaved the
• Emotionally upset?
way they did?
• Physically hurt?
★ Has childhood
• Separated? Rejected?
influenced the kind of
• Abuse? Loss?
person you are today?
Judging conversational
strengths
• Grice’s (1975, 1989) maxims of coherent
conversation
-truth
-relation
-economy
-manner
The AAI rating system (see Main, Goldwyn & Hesse, 2008, In H.
Steele & M. Steele (Eds). Clinical Applications of the AAI
Probable Past Experience
(rated for experience with
mother, father, other)
loving
rejecting
neglecting
role reversing
pressuring to achieve
Final classifications:
Dismissing
Preoccupied
Autonomous-Secure
Unresolved/CC
Current State of Mind
idealization
derogation
involving anger
insists on inablity to recall
passive speech
fear of loss
coherence of transcript
coherence of mind
metacognition
unresolved mourning
Intergenerational patterns of
attachment
• Dismissing
(minimizing)
• Autonomous
(balanced and
valuing)
• Preoccupied
(maximizing)
• Unresolved re past
loss or trauma
(absorption in grief)
• Avoidant
• Secure
• Resistant
• Disorganized
Secure/autonomous AAIs: variations on the
theme
•
F1: some setting aside of attachment linked to (a) re-evaluation and
redirection of personal life as the successor to harsh childhood; or (b)
limited involvement with attachment, often as an apparent
consequence of a background featuring little time for or attention to
attachment relationships (e.g. owing to poverty and hard work)
•
F2: somewhat dismissing or restricting of attachment (e.g.
‘bluffing,….(or) ….defensive joking that gives way to an underlying
affection or admission of concern’.
•
F3: secure/autonomous owing to (a) continuous security or (b) earned
security
•
F4: valuing of relationships but some preoccupation re attachment
figures, or past trauma revealed in (a) sentimental accounts of an adult
who perhaps wished to please the parents (and often did) or (b)
accounts of unfortunate or potentially traumatic experiences (e.g. loss
of a parent, or major separation)
•
F5: somewhat resentful/conflicted while accepting continuing
involvement
10
Dismissing of attachment: variations on the
theme
•
Ds1: dismissing of attachment, where normalized or idealizing
memories pervade the narrative
•
Ds2: devaluing of attachment, with high scores for derogation of one
or both parents
•
Ds3: restricted in feeling, with a cognitive account of good enough or
adverse parenting that rarely moves to ‘the psychological/emotional
level’
•
Ds4: fear of loss of actual or imagined child is a pervasive theme, cutoff from the source
11
Preoccupied with or by early attachment:
variations on the theme
•
E1: passive, with high scores for passive speech
•
E2: angry/conflicted, with high scores for involving anger with one or
both parents
•
E3: fearfully preoccupied by traumatic events, where speaker is
overwhelmed, flustered, confused by traumatic experiences and this
pervades the narrative
•
Note 1: Where interviews are judged E3, the interview is often but
not always assigned to the U-Loss or U-trauma category for
unresolved morning re past loss or trauma, noted by strong evidence
of lapses in the monitoring of reasoning and discourse
•
Note 2: Where an AAI is judged U, it is also assigned to its bestfitting, Ds, E or F alternate, and may also be assigned to the CC (can’t
classify singularly) group. CC/U interviews are typically grouped
together in statistical analyses and are highly common in clinical
sample esp. where trauma is common
12
Stability of AAI classifications
• Sagi et al (1994): reported 90% stability 3-way, Ds/E/F over 3 months
for a sample of 59 young adults in Israel; also no interview effects, and
discriminant validity shown re non-attachment memory and IQ
• Benoit & Parker (1994) reported 90% stability 3-way over 12-months
from pregnancy (N=96 Canadian mothers)
• Crowell et al (2002) reported on 157 couples (N=314) 78% stability 3way over 21-months, 3-months prior to marriage and 18 months into
marriage. Only 46% of those AAIs initially judged unresolved remained
so. Stability of the U classification was liked to stressful life events and
relationships aggression.
13
Changes in discourse patterns over the
five years?
• With stability observed at the overall level
of classification (88%) provided by
independent groups of reliable raters, the
first group (HS, MS, PF, AH) completing
their ratings circa 1989, the second group
(AP, FS) circa 2005, might there be change
observed in the interval ratings assigned to
AAIs?
14
Significant decreases in the recall of
adversity during childhood
-less rejection from mother and father
-less neglect from mother and father
-less role reversal with mother
-less pressure to achieve from mother and
father
15
Significant decreases in defensiveness,
and dysregulated affect re parents
-less
idealization of mother and father
-less involving anger re mother
-less derogation of mother and father
Significant increases in adherence to
Grice’s maxims and in emotional
presence
-more coherence of mind and transcript
-differing thresholds adhered to by independent
groups of reliable trained raters?
-or actual shifts arising from the transition to
motherhood?
Bibring et al (1961)
• “Once an adolescent you cannot
become a child again; once menopausal
you cannot bear children again; and
once a mother you cannot be a single
unit again” (p. 13)
18