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27 Madigan, S., Bakermans‐Kranenburg, M. J., Van Ijzendoorn, M. H., Moran, G., Pederson, D. R., & Benoit, D. (2006). Unresolved states of mind, anomalous parental behavior, and disorganized attachment: A review and meta‐analysis of a transmission gap. Attachment & human development, 8(2), 89–111.
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1 Separation Anxiety1
John Bowlby
Observations of Young Children
Since 1948 the Tavistock Child Development Research Unit has been concerned with recording the manifest responses which commonly occur when children between the ages of about 12 months and 4 years are removed from the mother figures 2 to whom they are attached and remain with strangers. Preliminary papers and a scientific film have been published (Robertson & Bowlby, 1952; Robertson, 1953a, 1953b; Bowlby, 1953, 1954) and a comprehensive report by James Robertson and the writer is in preparation. In it we shall draw not only on Robertson’s own observations and those of other workers reported in the scientific literature, notably those of Burlingham and Freud (1942, 1944), and Heinicke (1956), but also on reports given us by mothers and nurses with first‐hand experience of the problem. Since there is a high consensus in these reports we regard it as firmly established empirically that all children of this age, except those who have already suffered considerable deprivation of maternal care or are seriously ill, react to the experience with shock and anxiety. Our confidence in the validity of these observations is something we wish to emphasize since it is not uncommon for those whose theories lead to expectations of a different kind to cast doubt on them. In our view it is the theories which are mistaken, not the observations, and it is with the theoretical issues raised by these data that this paper is concerned.
It is evident, however, that the nature and dynamics of the responses to the rupture of a social bond cannot be understood until there is some understanding of the nature and dynamics of the bond itself. It was because of this that in a recently published paper (Bowlby, 1958) I discussed how best the nature of the young child’s tie to his mother could be conceptualized. In it I advanced the view that instead of the tie being motivated by a secondary drive or one wholly based on orality, which are the most commonly held views today, it may be mediated by a number of instinctual response systems which are partially independent of one another and which wax and wane in activity at different periods of the infant’s and young child’s life. I suggested that much psycho‐analytic theory, by concentrating attention too narrowly either on the meeting of ‘physiological’ needs (e.g. for food and warmth) or on orality, may have led to the picture as a whole being seen out of perspective; and that other responses, particularly clinging and following which seem to reach their zenith in the second and third years, require far more attention than they have yet been given.
The reasons leading me to advance these views are clinical: traditional theory has seemed to me to account neither for the intense attachment of child to mother‐figure which is so conspicuous in the later months of the first year and throughout the second and third years of life, nor for the dramatic responses to separation from her which are the rule in these years. A formulation, based on a theoretical framework stemming from modern instinct theory, has seemed to me more promising. It is the line of thought begun in the previous paper that I shall pursue further in this one.
First let us consider the data.
Our observations3 concern healthy children of 15 to 30 months admitted to a hospital, perhaps for investigation or elective surgery, or to some other residential institution and there cared for in traditional ways. By traditional ways we mean that the child is handled by a succession of strange nurses, mainly students, who will variously bathe, feed, and change him. The nurses will be on shift duty, and often within a few weeks most will have moved to other departments. No matter how kind each may be in her fragment of care, there will be no nurse whom he can come to know or with whom he can enter into a stable relationship. He may see his mother for a short time each day, but it may be less often. In this context a child of 15 to 30 months who has had a normal relationship to his mother and has not previously been parted from her will commonly show a predictable sequence of behaviour. This sequence can usefully be broken into three phases according to what attitude to his mother is dominant. We describe these phases as those of protest, despair, and detachment.4 Though in presenting them it is convenient to differentiate them sharply, it is to