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Effects on Interruptions in Attachment on Children INTRODUCTION Affective refers to feelings or emotions. Affective mechanisms include responses to others, feelings about self, feelings about others, attitudes and values. Affect emerges from person-to-person interaction, which leads to attachment. The molding of the child, whether intentional or unintentional, is accomplished through person-to-person interaction. When people are attached one another, they interact often. Attachment is an affectional tie that one person forms to another specific person, binding them together in space and enduring over time (Ainsworth, 1973, p. 1).
Socialization begins with personal attachment (Elkin & Handel, 1989). The human infant is born helpless, requiring care. In the process of caring for the infant, the parents or caregivers hold, play with and talk to the child. They respond to the feelings in them evoked by the child.
This caregiving is the foundation for social interaction, and it is this interaction that characterizes the molding of the child (Bowlby, 1988). This caregiving is the foundation for social interaction, and it is this interaction that characterizes the molding of the child (Bowlby, 1988). 1) Temporary loss like having a caregiver or parent in the military. Infants who are responded to when they cry, who are fed, geld, and spoken to, will develop a secure attachment and a sense of trust toward the world. On the other hand, infants who receive minimal or inconsistent care will develop an insecure attachment, and a sense of mistrust (Erikson, 1963). Our first human relationship, then, provides the basis for our later expectations regarding other relationships. An outcome of attachment, other than feelings of trust or mistrust for future social interactions, is the feeling of competence.
Paradoxically, the more securely attached children are to a nurturing adult, the safer they feel to explore the environment. On the other hand, the more insecurely attached they are, the less likely they are to leave their caregivers and try out new things. (Ainsworth, 1973). Follow-up observations in pres-school showed that children who are judged to be securely attached at age one and a half were more enthusiastic, sympathetic to others, cooperative, independent and competent than those who displayed insecure attachment at that age (Sroufe, 1978). Several studies have found insecurely attached children to exhibit disruptive, hostile or aggressive behavior in preschool (Waters, et al, 1993). Attachment to the primary caregiver is the first of many important emotional relationships with significant others that the child will form in the future. These significant others may include relatives, teachers, friends and coaches.
Because each of these others is unique and because each situation the child encounters with these others is unique, each will contribute in a different way to the childs socialization. When the child is attached to a caregiver, socialization takes place in many ways. Some of these result from the childs action; some of them result from the childs modeling; some of them result from the childs thinking; some of them result from the childs inherited traditions and some of them result from guided participation. Children who have traumatic separations from their parents can also possess low self-esteem. They may also distrust others. Cognitively, there are some who try to review in this kind of set up but cognitive and language delays are also highly correlated with early traumatic separations from their parents. 2) Permanent loss like a parent who is deceased.
Psychoanalytic theorists (Erikson, 1963; Freud, 1905 / 1930) and ethologist (Bowlby, 1969) believe that the feelings of warmth, trust and security characterize what infants feel from secure attachments. This sets the stage for healthy psychological development later on in life. This viewpoint states that secure attachments may forecast less-than-optimal developmental outcomes in the years ahead. It seems that infants who have established secure primary attachments are likely to display more favorable developmental outcomes. For example, babies who were securely attached at age 12 to 18 months are better problem solvers as two year olds. (Frankel and Bates 1990). Bowlby maintains that as infants continue to interact with primary caregivers, they develop cognitive internal working models.
Children are able to make representations of themselves and other people. These are used to interpret events and to form expectations about the character of human relationships. Sensitive, responsive caregiving should lead the child to conclude that people are dependable (positive working model of others) whereas insensitive, neglectful or abusive caregiving may lead to insecurity and a lack of trust. (negative working model of others). Permanent loss of a caregiver or a parent can be particularly upsetting psycho-social transition because it usually involves multiple, drastic changes in the life space: loss of a significant other, or others; probable economic loss; often a change in the routines of living; often a change in ones home; loss of the role of wife or husband. An individuals entire life style is thus undercut, and the grief and disorganization may be extreme until a reorganization takes place. Among all the difficult changes, it is a loss in the human environment that is generally experienced as most painful.
Many theorists have pointed to this area as the best explanation for the intense distress of the marital separation experience. (Frankel and Bates 1990). The teenagers major emotions are apt to be intense grief, guilt, anger, and fear of abandonment. The expression of these universal emotions will vary with the age and personality of the teen. All children are expected to suffer from transient situational disorders, manifest in sleeping and eating problems, over activity, some developmental regressions and various somatic disorders. Sometimes, in a desperate attempt to ward off anxiety and please an adult, a teen may assume inappropriate maturity or over compliance.
A preoccupation with parental reconciliation is almost always present (Sherkow et al). Mahler's theory of separation-individuation provides an important contribution in the understanding of attachment in children especially the first three years of life (pre-oedipal period) pointing to more effects in later years. There is more clarity when it comes to the realm of affective experience as an ingredient in psychic organization, structure formation, and a motivating source. In effect, the separation-individuation theory views this intra-psychic from an inter-personal perspective and at the same time expounding on the inter-personal in intra-psychic terms. Thus, it looks into the inter-subjective approach to development and therapeutic process since it is based on the ego-psychological terms. It is also compatible with and complementary to theories of attachment and self-psychology.
This is especially useful in the references to issues dealing with the more disturbed patients as well as the normal neurotic and those in analytic treatment. Margaret Mahler zeroes in on this phase as the symbiotic phase which gives way to separation-individuation and its sub-phases. The infant is able to establish this symbiotic phase when a childs internal resources are assembled and coordinated as well as autonomy can be clearly seen. He is seen to manifest confident expectation and the beginnings of his own individual resources. It just goes to show that the mothers libidinal availability to her infant that gives life and motivation to the childs environment. It is critical here to show that when the mothers responsiveness and pleasure with the presence of her baby is disrupted, there are some pathological development that can occur and mar the proper development especially the childs sense of confident expectation (Etezady).
If children feel themselves to be emotionally exploited by warring parents, they will in turn fight for their own emotional survival by playing parents against each other. These teener's are thus forced to develop manipulative and exploitative tendencies as adaptive mechanisms. There is also a tendency among teener's to split parents between good and bad figures, with the caretaking disciplining parent receiving all the anger, while the distant parent becomes loved and idealized. The visiting parent may purposefully or unconsciously play into this through a tendency to avoid discipline during his or her contact with the children. Bergman and colleagues maintain that in cases of children with autism, the child comes out of her autistic shell and attaches and begins to relate in a different manner.
It is important that the child relates to the outside world. (Sherkow et al from Margaret Mahler Foundation website). By adolescence, most children had developed enough independent resources to proceed on their own developmental course without major deviation (Anthony, 1974). This was not true for adolescents with a history of long-standing difficulties, whose problematic behavior became exacerbated by the parental turmoil. These latter adolescents were particularly vulnerable to their parents tendencies to cross generational boundaries.
Those adolescents who were able and permitted to maintain some emotional distance from the parental crisis, managed best, both in terms of their own developmental needs, and in terms of their eventual relationship to their parents (Frankel and Bates 1990). There is considerable controversy throughout the literature on the long-range damage of separation on children. On the one hand, it is suggested that a grossly conflicted home environment can be more destructive than a divorce. On the other hand, those researchers who have been most intimately involved with children take a strong position that divorce is always an emotional disaster for children (Gardner, 1976). A recent epidemiological study of children referred for out-patient psychiatric evaluation found that children of divorce appeared at nearly twice the rate of their occurrence in the general population. (Kate, 1977). However, no attempt was made in that study to determine the percentage of disturbed children who were living in unhappy, intact homes.
Links between parental familial vulnerability and family environment were examined. Questionnaires were obtained from 1, 294 parents of 1, 818 adolescent offspring. Results showed that the odds of severe adolescent depressive symptoms increased by a factor of 1. 5 per standard deviation increase in parental familial vulnerability to depression (odds ratio [OR] = 1. 50). Parental BMI (OR = 1. 05) and educational level (OR = 2. 60) had significant influences independent of parental vulnerability. The analyses revealed a significant interaction such that those with high parental familial vulnerability, whose parents also had no qualifications, had a threefold risk of severe depressive symptoms. The study concluded that indeed, adolescents with a family history of depression whose parents also lack qualifications may be a target for intervention (Sroufe, 1978).
In many other studies which have been conducted, researchers have suggested that family cohesion is related to several psychological outcomes, including depressive symptoms (Sroufe, 1978). Depressed adolescents seem to have a more negative thinking of their families than the other adolescents. The more depressed the young person, the more negative are his perceptions of the way in which his family functions. One can just imagine if divorce was the issue in that family.
Specifically, depressed adolescents describe their parents as distant, un supportive and emotionally unavailable (Sroufe, 1978). The evaluation revealed that adolescents could profit from a series of counseling sessions which would be more or less extensive depending on the degree of the childs disturbance, the intensity of his or her suffering, and the emotional accessibility of the child. These counseling sessions are all geared to reduce the childs suffering as expressed in anxiety, fearfulness, guilt, depression, anger, and longing. Other goals were reduction in cognitive confusion; increase in psychological distance between the child and the divorce situation; and the resolution of various idiosyncratic issues. With children who had difficulty expressing their feelings, they tended to use divorce monologues, a method of universalizing the childs feelings for him or her. Older children profited most from an opportunity to receive consensual validation for their perception and to discuss their own plans with an objective adult.
Human beings are born helpless and totally dependent for survival on the nurturance of others. During these early years, strong bonds of love and hate toward other human beings, ones caretakers, are formed. It then becomes part of the human condition to attempt top reproduce such bonds all through life. The ambivalent struggle between love and hate is reproduced in later relationships, especially in marriage.
When hate and / or disappointment wins out, men and women may choose to separate, but the disruption of bonds is apt to reproduce the separation anxiety of early childhood, as well as foster the emergence of formerly suppressed positive feelings, the other side of the ambivalence. Counselors who are faced with a relationship that seems to have foundered must make the difficult decision between trying to rescue the relationship at all cost, versus helping to sever those sinuous bonds and help bury the relationship. Counselors should face their own convictions on value-laden issues with honesty since they will influence the counseling process. However, regardless of whether the decision to separate is created by false hopes and illusions or by desperation, it will evoke anxiety, disequilibrium and emotional vulnerability. Divorce often produced complete changes in the peoples material and emotional life space and calls for drastic revision of ones assumptive world. Men and women at this time reach out for and are open to support and understanding.
It is a time when counseling intervention can be of maximum effectiveness. REFERENCES Ainsworth, (1973), The development of infant-mother attachment. In B. M. Caldwell and H. N.
Ricciuti (eds). Review of child development research. Bowlby, J. (1988). A secure base: Parent-child attachment and healthy human development. New York: Basic Books. Erikson, E.
H. (1963). Childhood and Society. New York: Norton. Elkin, F. & Handel G. (1989); The child and society, 5 th ed. New York. Random House.
Etezady, Hossein. An intergenerational legacy: a discussion of Anni Bergman's paper, to be published in S. Akhtar, ed. Affect Development and Regulation During Separation-Individuation. As cited in Clinical Implications of Separation-Individuation Theory in Brief.
Retrieved Aug. 12, 2007 at: web Margaret Mahler Foundation. Accessed Aug. 12, 2007 at: web Sherkow, S. Singletary, W. and Bergman, Anni.
Psychoanalytic Approaches to Working with Children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder: The Work of Dr. Anni Bergman with Child Treatment and Adult Follow-Up Videos Accessed Aug. 12, 2007 at: web Sroufe, L. (1978). Attachment and the roots of confidence... Human Nature 1, 50 - 57.
Waters, E. et al (1993). Is attachment theory ready to contribute to our understanding of disruptive behavior problems. Development and Psychopatholoy.
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