The word ‘safe’ refers to absence of injury. As such it is appropriately used to describe a situation in which injury is highly improbable. The word ‘security’, on the other hand, has a very different origin. It incorporates the Latin se and cura and refers to a feeling of not being burdened by cares or grief. As such it is appropriately used to denote a feeling of being unthreatened.20
Now it is already evident that to feel fear or anxiety is only indirectly correlated with actual danger. In the same way, to feel secure is only indirectly correlated with actual safety. Thus members of a family may feel relatively secure when they are together, even if danger threatens; whilst conversely, each one alone might feel anxious even in the absence of any danger. Loneliness, like ‘conscience doth make cowards of us all’.21
It is now possible, perhaps, to see some of the pitfalls that beset anyone in trying to formulate theories concerning fear (or alarm), anxiety, and feelings of security and of the situations that give rise to such feelings. First, there is a problem of distinguishing between avoiding a disturbance to homeostasis, on the one hand, and restoring homeostasis after it has been disturbed, on the other. Secondly, there is the fact that fear (or alarm) is frequently elicited, not by actual danger but by indicators only loosely correlated with actual danger. Thirdly, there is the fact that two of the most basic variables that determine whether fear or anxiety is experienced, and if so how intensely, namely strangeness versus familiarity and isolation versus companionship, tend to be highly idiosyncratic for each individual. So long as threats are public and common to all – an earthquake, a bellowing bull, a rifle pointed at someone – it is easy to classify them as ‘real’, evident, and verifiable. When, by contrast, there is threat or disturbance to someone’s personal environment and to his stability within it – isolation, the possibility of home being demolished, uncertainty whether parents will remain together – the fear and anxiety generated are not to be regarded as ‘unreal’ or unverifiable or at the least exaggerated. What naturally engender fear or anxiety, does not always fall within what is conventionally regarded as ‘reasonable’.
In the usage proposed, which is only tentative, the term ‘ecology’ refers to those characteristics of the environment to which all members of a species (or at least of one sex) respond more or less similarly, e.g. air or water, gradients of temperature and light. By contrast, the term ‘personal environment’ refers to those special characteristics of the ecologically preferred environment to which members of a species respond in distinctive ways, notably other individuals of the species and home‐ranges, such as [illeg.]
(As a term, personal environment is cumbersome and will probably need to be replaced. We might consider ‘wicology’ for the science, which would give wicological homeostasis. This derives from a root giving a number of words in the northern European languages (Wic, Wik, Wijk) and of which ‘bailiwick’ is an derivative. They all refer to a [illeg.] or a district and are usually equivalent to a home‐range. It is of some interest that both ‘eco’ as in ecology and ‘wico’ as suggested here are related to the Greek oikos (= house).
[Bowlby’s pagination suggests that three manuscript pages are missing, or were not written]
It is when he feels secure that he can explore the merits of alternative working models and compare the extent to which these models fit with his experience and the models he has been using hitherto.
Whereas the revision of working models tends always to be resisted and therefore to be achieved only with difficulty, their conscious elaboration may be accepted fairly readily. Science is a social process whereby extensions of working models can come to be agreed; whilst in a scientific community an agreed change of working model can occur, it usually entails long and often heated debate.
Two sciences have been concerned with the phenomena of personal environmental homeostasis: they are ethology, notably the work on imprinting, and the objects‐relations approach within psychoanalysis, notably the views advanced by Fairbairn. In neither case, however, have workers invoked homeostatic principles to interpret the phenomena studied.
Fear and Anxiety, Conscious and Unconscious
In the account of fear and anxiety sketched several elements are distinguished. They can be arranged in two sequences according to whether disturbance of homeostasis is appraised as actual or only threatened. Because threats of disturbance are much commoner than actual disturbance, and also as a rule precede actual disturbance, the sequence resulting from threat is presented first.
1 Disturbance appraised as threatened
1 Statistical likelihood of disturbance occurring in any of several categories of homeostasis, the likelihood in each case being detectable either from stimuli arising from the actual presence of a potential stressor or from stimuli arising from an indicator correlated with a probable presence of a potential stressor;
2 Appraisal of such stimuli as warning signals or signals of threat;
3 Preparatory responses that have the effect of preparing an individual to take any of a great variety of actions, including those preventive or corrective of disturbance;
4 Avoiding actions that commonly have the effect of preventing actual disturbance, but that may fail;
5 Continuous monitoring both of threat and of any changes occurring in its degree of imminence, and also of the effects of preventive actions;
6 Continuous estimating of the degree of success in preventing disturbance likely to be achieved by preventive actions, or by plans for preventive action;
7 In the light of such estimates, the revision, if necessary repeated, of plans for preventive action.
1 Disturbance appraised as actual
1 Actual disturbance occurring in any of several categories of homeostasis, the disturbance in each case being caused by the action of a stressor and itself constituting a stress of some kind and degree;
2 Indicators of disturbance (stress), some of which act automatically in eliciting preparatory and/or corrective actions and some of which come into being as indicators only after ‘raw’ stimuli have been appraised as indicative of stress;
3 Preparatory responses that have the effect of preparing an individual to take any of great variety of actions, including corrective actions;
4 Corrective actions that usually have the effect of cancelling disturbance and restoring homeostasis, but that may fail;
5 Continuous monitoring both of disturbance and of any changes occurring in it and also of the effects of corrective actions;
6 Continuous estimating of the degree of success in restoring homeostasis likely to be achieved by corrective actions, or by plans for corrective actions;
7 In the light of such estimates, the revision, if necessary repeated, of plans for corrective actions.
It is probably wise to assume that any of the components in either sequence, when present, can either be conscious and felt or can remain unconscious and unfelt. What this statement implies is that every element in a sequence may be conscious and felt, or that no element in a sequence may be conscious and felt, or that any one or more elements may be conscious and felt and that others remain unconscious and unfelt.
To illustrate some of the clinical conditions that call for explanation it may be useful to give a few typical examples of people responding to disturbance, or threat of disturbance, without being fully aware of what is going on. A number of different patterns are well known to occur in