7.1 - From dependence to attachment
Relationships are the heart of being human. We can’t exist or survive without them.
Our life is conceived in another’s womb. For years after birth, we completely depend on
others to live. We vitally need others not only physically but also psychologically. As
much as a baby’s need is for food and physical safety, so is his psychological need for
safety and connection. When a baby’s emotional needs are neglected, he is at risk of
failing to thrive, a condition that stunts both physical and psychological growth. In
severe cases, a baby can die from this relational neglect. Our physical and
psychological worlds are together composed in relationships
Sigmund Freud called the infant’s relationship with the mother/caretaker a dependency.
The infant needs his mother to protect and nurture. As he matures, he becomes more
independent of others and lives by his inner world that is populated by relationships he
internalized. Many believed his approach did not adequately appreciate the presence of
others and how they influence the quality of life from birth to death. One of those critics
was John Bowlby, who thought Freud’s perspective on relationships was too narrow and
negative. He didn’t like calling them a dependency because of the word’s “pejorative
flavor” (p.27), as if they were a kind of weakness we should outgrow. Instead, he called
them attachments, a term he borrowed from the science of animal behavior. Bowlby
was especially influenced by the work of Konrad Lorenz, an ethologist who studied
attachment behaviors of animals and their offspring (p. 25). Lorenz called the bond
between mother and offspring an instinct, a biological need to attach. Duckings, for
example, instinctively attach by imprinting or following their mother soon after birth
Bowlby believed that for both humans and animals, relationships are as basic and
necessary for protection as sex is for procreation and food is for sustenance, that our
need for relationships is vital to our existence and will never be outgrown. This
understanding of the basic and positive need for relationships is generally accepted
today in psychology and is validated in both research and treatment. Attachments are
vital for living and are distinct from our vital needs for food and sex
Human attachment for Bowlby is an immutable law of life. It is in the nature of our
biology. He defines human nature by the laws of evolutionary biology that is based on
Darwin’s theory of evolution with its laws of variety and natural selection (p. 66). The
process of evolution is the living organism’s evolving relationship with its environment,
the interaction between the organism’s biological ability to adapt and its environment’s
ability to support and facilitate growth. Some environments enable growth and thriving
while others restrict, stunt or kill. Human relationships are essential to a person’s
environment. When the child’s relationships correspond well with his nature and
potential, his attachments are secure. Insecure attachments are mismatches between
organism and environment that are sometimes so incompatible, they cannot be survived
much less enable growth. Whether attachments are secure or insecure, they are
always present. The quality of a life, then, depends on how well it adapts to its
environment that must always have attachments for survival (p. 10)
Bowlby focused on the attachment between mother and child, which he called a safe
base. The child’s relationship with his mother needs to provide both physical and
psychological safety. Physically, the mother protects and provides for tangible needs.
Psychologically, the mother protects from perceived threats of danger. The child learns
to trust his mother is available when needed. As he matures, he learns to trust his
mother is available even when she is not immediately present. Trust develops a
psychological freedom for the child to venture out on his own into the world, trusting his
mother will be waiting for him when he returns. The caretaker as a safe base
encourages her child’s age-appropriate exploring so he can mature as a secure person
with other secure relationships in his evolving life. Trusting that his mother is available
to protect him, whether she is present or not, is essential to the child’s maturing process
As we more deeply enter the realm of psychological needs, we learn more about the
nature and value of a safe base. A child senses he is being accurately heard and that
his mother understands what he is expressing, doing and feeling. A maternal response
that is attuned to her child and resonates with his emotional state is said to be mirroring
her child. Mirroring was not a term Bowlby used but it is a phenomenon he described
(p. 130-1). His mother’s understanding and validation is the seed for self understanding
to grow. We can almost say that without good enough mirroring, the child cannot know
or be who he is nor can his potential develop
The process of communicating and mirroring elicits more from the child, stimulating
growth. Such open interaction creates an emotional environment that enables the child
to identify and own his internal being. Our psychological world needs the grounding of
secure relationships as much as we physically need solid ground to stand on, so we
don’t sink into the earth and disappear. To be mirrored gives the necessary permission
to experience and feel what we are experiencing and feeling. It is as if we cannot
apprehend and internalize what we know without someone else acknowledging our
knowing with us
We grow up internalizing the mirroring we experience and build on it so that we can
mirror our self and others. When mirroring informs our attachments, we develop
internal adaptive working models (p.129) by which we can form other safe attachments.
We gain this capacity for healthy relationships by no other way. A great part of
psychotherapy’s work relies on a safe therapeutic relationship where the client becomes
willing to explore internal places that had previously been forbidden. Some of those
places would not dare to be acknowledged, much less known and valued. In a safe
therapy relationship, the client is free to recognize thoughts, feelings and experiences
she previously believed were not permitted to be known as her own. With opportunity in
therapy to safely know and value her experiences, she becomes more available to
herself and to others. She is increasingly aware of personal resources for healing and
growth. When therapist and client together explore and integrate previously forbidden
areas, the client can grow with an integrity that is no longer dominated by the fracturing
and distorting of past insecure relationships
For Bowlby, human relationships are a biological mandate. When they are securely
organized, they are best positioned to fulfill the biological call to survive as both an
individual and a species. Secure relationships are internalized as a safe base that
becomes a pivotal resource for developing other secure relationships. They create
internal room for exploring and integrating one’s psyche as the child trusts exploring
farther and wider, expanding one’s world and increasing opportunities. Those children,
however, with insecure attachments are left with varying combinations of ambivalence
and confusion in their patterns of relating. How we do and don’t attach vitally impacts
how we do and don’t experience life as a whole