Attachment theory and intersubjective consciousness
Explanation
Attachment theory was developed by John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth between the 1950s and 70s. Bowlby, British psychiatrist, integrated ethology, psychoanalysis and cybernetics to explain why young children show specific behaviours toward their caregivers (proximity-seeking, protest at separation, calm in the caregiver's presence) and how these behaviours have adaptive sense: keeping a protective figure close increases the chances of survival in an ancestral environment full of dangers.
Ainsworth developed the Strange Situation procedure to empirically assess attachment styles in infants. Her research identified at least three styles: secure (the child explores with the caregiver present and is comforted after separation), insecure-avoidant (the child minimises the need for closeness) and insecure-ambivalent (the child oscillates between seeking and rejection). Mary Main later added the disorganised style, associated with early trauma.
Longitudinal studies showed that infant attachment styles predict important aspects of subsequent social and emotional functioning: affect regulation, quality of relationships, self-esteem, vulnerability to disorders. During the first years, we internalise internal working models of self and other that guide our relational expectations. One who experiences secure attachment in infancy internalises a model of self as worthy of love and of others as available and trustworthy.
For consciousness, attachment theory is fundamental because it shows that consciousness of self and other is constituted in early interaction. We are not born with a formed self that later enters into relation; the self is formed in and through the primary bond. Emotional regulation, the capacity to think about one's own and others' minds (mentalisation), the sense of inner security, all develop in everyday exchange with attachment figures.
Peter Fonagy and colleagues articulated this link with the notion of mentalisation: the capacity to understand that oneself and others have minds with internal states (desires, beliefs, emotions). This capacity ideally develops in a context of secure attachment where the caregiver mirrors and regulates the infant's states, enabling the construction of coherent representations of one's own mind. Intersubjectivity —feeling and thinking ourselves as minds among minds— depends, structurally, on the fabric of the earliest bonds.
Clinical applications are wide: mentalisation-based therapy (MBT) for borderline personality disorder, the internal-working-models model in couples therapy, early-intervention programmes to strengthen secure attachment in mothers/fathers in at-risk situations. For the theory of consciousness, attachment connects with proposals on the bodily, affective and relational basis of subjectivity, reminding us that the human mind is forged in relation, not in isolation, and that intersubjectivity is prior to, not posterior to, the individual self.
Strengths
- Massive accumulated empirical evidence (strange situation, etc.).
- Integrates psychology, neuroscience, evolution and clinic.
- Documented applications in parenting, therapy and education.
- Highlights the relational nature of consciousness.
Main critiques
- Risk of determinism of early attachment.
- Cultural bias toward the Western nuclear family.
- Some attachment categories with measurement problems.