In fact attachment theory and research has become both more complicated and much more diverse over time, when compared with the original formulations of Bowlby and Ainsworth. For instance, Ainsworth’s model with three patterns of attachment has been expanded to include a fourth category of attachment termed “disorganized/disoriented attachment” (Main & Solomon, 1986), as well as other characterizations in terms of dimensions (e.g. Fraley & Spieker 2003), additional categories (Landini et al., 2015), or scripts (Waters & Roisman, 2019). An “attachment disorder” category has also emerged within psychiatric nosology (Zeanah et al., 2016). Attachment measures have also been developed for children of various ages, for adolescents, and for adults, enabling research on attachment across the life span. Research on caregiver behavior thought important for children’s attachment quality has also expanded to include various behaviors beyond sensitivity, including attention to the role of alarming caregiver behaviors (see Madigan et al. 2006). There has also been growing concern with the relationship between child attachment and child temperament (e.g. Belsky & Rovine, 1987). Attachment theory and research have also expanded from an initial focus on one “primary caregiver”, to an interest in children’s often multiple attachment relationships and their respective importance for child development (see Dagan & Sagi‐Schwartz 2018). The initial emphasis on child–caregiver relationships has also expanded to include attachment relationships between romantic partners, and a variety of attachment‐based interventions have been developed (see Mikulincer & Shaver 2018).
Over the decades the volume of empirical research has grown too large to be easily captured, in part due to the various developments and extensions of the theory, as well as the accumulation of empirical studies (Verhage et al., 2020). The Handbook of Attachment, edited by Jude Cassidy and Phil Shaver (2016), is a landmark attempt at integrating the current status of attachment theory and research, but the book stands at over a thousand pages, illustrating the challenge. Jeremy Holmes’ and Arietta Slade’s (2013) Attachment Theory also provides quite a comprehensive picture, but in the form of six edited volumes, it comes at a cost that renders it out of reach except for those with access to university libraries. Robbie Duschinsky’s (2020) Cornerstones of Attachment (free to download from the Oxford University Press website) characterizes some of the key elements of attachment theory and research through a study of five nodal research groups, but is by no means a comprehensive survey.
For a variety of reasons then, over time the positions of classic and contemporary attachment researchers in their diversity and depth seem to have become lost in the public reception of the paradigm. Whilst there is much consensus, there are also relevant differences between researchers on several grounds, including but not limited to the following:
What is attachment and how it should be conceptualized?
How shall attachment be measured and are assessments valid across cultures?
How does a child develop attachment relationships with various caregivers?
What caregiver behaviors are important for child attachment?
Are ideas about temperament compatible with attachment theory?
To what extent do attachment experiences contribute to later development?
What is the standing of the attachment disorder diagnosis?
What are the implications of attachment theory and research for interventions?
Our intention with this book has been twofold. First, we wanted to provide a book that is sufficiently short and accessible, but which nonetheless gives an interesting introduction to the main tenets of attachment theory and its developments and diversity. Second, we wanted to increase the accessibility of some important but relatively inaccessible texts in attachment theory and research. We hope that this Reader offers some access to the richness and excitement of attachment theory and research, as well as to its diversity and current limitations. There is of course no way that a single volume can capture all that it should. Our selections have ultimately been oriented by three principles:
1 The first and most important principle has been to select important papers “off the beaten track.” This includes papers never published in English, that are out of print or that are otherwise especially difficult to find. We have not included works already reprinted in other anthologies, or readily available for free online.
2 A second principle has been to select papers that offer something surprising that runs against common assumptions about attachment theory and research.
3 A third principle has been that in each chapter there should be something that will surprise or intrigue even a specialist.
Attachment Theory & Research: A Reader is intended as both a reference point and as an invitation to further exploration, with potential relevance for diverse readers including students, clinicians and other professionals, policy‐makers and other interested individuals. Access to previously inaccessible and unpublished work should also make it relevant to researchers in developmental and social psychology. The book comprises fifteen papers and includes, for instance, an unpublished paper by John Bowlby, an unknown paper by Mary Ainsworth, and an important paper by Mary Main and Erik Hesse on disorganized attachment that has previously only been published in Italian. We have placed the papers in chronological order, largely coinciding with a progression from main tenets and classic attachment theory towards later research and selected applications and extensions.
In the first paper, John Bowlby (1960) discusses the concept of “separation anxiety” and lays out some of the theoretical proposals that would take center stage in his canonical trilogy Attachment and Loss (1969/1980). He takes as his starting point the anxiety that almost all children, from a certain age, show upon separation from their caregivers. He critiques contemporary views in which attachment and separation anxiety were seen as “secondary” to a child’s concerns about being fed, or a consequence of distortions of “psychic energies.” He then draws primarily on ethology to argue that attachment and separation anxiety are important “primary” phenomena that humans share with other animals, and which are mediated by “instinctual response systems” that have been retained in evolution due to their survival value. He also elaborates on the “protest‐despair‐detachment” sequence of behavior that he and his colleagues observed in response to being separated from caregivers and cared for by unfamiliar nurses on shift duty, and describes separation anxiety as a normative and inescapable corollary of attachment. He then critically discusses psychoanalytic theories of separation anxiety contesting the idea that children may be spoilt by excessive love and gratification. He argues that fear of separations and withdrawal of love can lead to problems with hostility and anxiety.
In the second paper, John Bowlby discusses the concepts of “anxiety,” “stress,” and “homeostasis,” structured around the premise that we must consider basic biological principles in order to understand conditions that elicit anxiety and fear. He discusses both the nature of states held relatively stable by living organisms (“homeostasis”), and the nature of stable pathways along which development proceeds (“homeorhesis”), and argues that anxiety and fear are experienced when stable states are threatened by instability. Drawing from dynamic systems theory he elaborates on five types of homeostasis and homeorhesis, including three that are presumed to be older from an evolutionary perspective (physiological, morphological, ecological homeostasis) and two that he argues are more recent (representational, and person–environmental homeostasis). He then discusses the role of disturbance of representational and personal–environmental homeostasis in psychological growth as well as ill health. To this end, he discusses the concepts of “stress,” “stressors” and “trauma,” and emphasizes the importance of processes designed to restore homeostasis and homeorhesis. Finally, he elucidates similarities and differences between the concepts of “anxiety” and “fear,” and the terms “security” and “safety,” and discusses conscious and unconscious anxiety and fear. Given the longstanding interest in the link between caregiving, attachment quality, and child development, we believe that this paper is important