Attachment styles –JOHN BOWLBY:

JOHN BOWLBY:

John Bowlby says  children learn from their interactions and relationship with their parents and intimate caregivers. During these interactions over time, children form “expectations” about the availability and immediatate helps from them.

 These expectations reflect children's thoughts about themselves and about their caregivers: this confidence on the attachment figure shall turn on two variables which are  complementary and mutually confirming. They are

 1) how the caregiver’s attention is judged based on the protection given.

 2) how the self is judged from the attention given from the care giver.

Children's thoughts about their caregivers, together with thoughts about themselves as deserving good caregivers, form “working models of attachment”.

    Working models help guide behavior by allowing children to anticipate and plan for caregiver responses. Once formed, Bowlby theorized that working models remain relatively stable.

 Children usually interpret experiences in light of their working models rather than change their working models to fit new experiences. Only when experiences cannot be interpreted in light of working models do children modify their working models.

Adults have four attachment styles:

 1.secure,

2. insecure,( 3 sub types)

a)anxious–preoccupied,

b)dismissive–avoidant,

c)fearful–avoidant.

The secure attachment style in adults corresponds to the “secure “ attachment style in children.

              The anxious–preoccupied attachment style in adults corresponds to the “anxious–ambivalent” attachment style in children.

      However, the dismissive–avoidant attachment style and the fearful–avoidant attachment style, which are distinct in adults, correspond to an  “avoidant” attachment style in children.

Secure attachment:

Securely attached people tend to have positive views of themselves and their partners. They also tend to have positive views of their relationships. Often they report greater satisfaction and adjustment in their relationships than people with other attachment styles. Securely attached people feel comfortable both with intimacy and with independence.

Secure attachment and adaptive functioning are promoted by a caregiver who is emotionally available and appropriately responsive to her child’s attachment behavior, as well as capable of regulating both his or her positive and negative emotions.

Insecure attachments:

1.Anxious–preoccupied attachment

People with this style of attachment seek high levels of intimacy, approval, and responsiveness from their partners. They sometimes value intimacy to such an extent that they become overly dependent on their partners.

Compared to securely attached people, people who are anxious or preoccupied with attachment tend to have less positive views about themselves. They often doubt their worth as a partner and blame themselves for their partners' lack of responsiveness. People who are anxious or preoccupied with attachment may exhibit high levels of emotional expressiveness, worry, and impulsiveness in their relationships.

2.Dismissive–avoidant attachment

 People with this attachment style desire a high level of independence. The desire for independence often appears as an attempt to avoid attachment altogether. They view themselves as self-sufficient and invulnerable to feelings associated with being closely attached to others. They often deny needing close relationships.

Some may even view close relationships as relatively unimportant. Not surprisingly, they seek less intimacy with relationship partners, whom they often view less positively than they view themselves. Investigators commonly note the defensive character of this attachment style.

 People with a dismissive–avoidant attachment style tend to suppress and hide their feelings, and they tend to deal with rejection by distancing themselves from the sources of rejection.

3.Fearful–avoidant attachment

 People with this attachment style have mixed feelings about close relationships. On the one hand, they desire to have emotionally close relationships. On the other hand, they tend to feel uncomfortable with emotional closeness.

These mixed feelings are combined with, sometimes unconscious, negative views about themselves and their partners. They commonly view themselves as unworthy of responsiveness from their partners, and they don't trust the intentions of their partners.

Similarly to the dismissive–avoidant attachment style, people with a fearful–avoidant attachment style seek less intimacy from partners and frequently suppress and deny their feelings. Instead, they are much less comfortable initially expressing affection.