CHILD ATTACHMENT IN DIVORCED FAMILIES AND IN FAMILIES WITH A POTENTIAL FOR CONFLICT
CHILD ATTACHMENT IN DIVORCED FAMILIES AND IN FAMILIES WITH A POTENTIAL FOR CONFLICT

Summary/Abstract: The attachment theory is focused on the man's need to establish positive and intense emotional relationships with the others, in this way ensuring his own safety. During his entire lifetime, these relationships are influenced by the nature, force and meaning of the emotional relationships which he developed with his mother (or his caregivers) in his childhood years. J. Bowlby, the founder of the attachment theory, considered attachment as a primal relationship, a behavior learned throughout the species evolution, meant to secure and protect the human being from dangerous factors (the animal baby defends itself from predators). According to J. Bowlby, attachment involves three fundamental features: it is primal, it has a role of physical, biological and psychic protection and it influences all experiences. The attachment theorists consider that the nature of the emotional bond between a human infant and his mother, starting from his very first year of life, has an impact on his own development, particularly on his psychic development and it ultimately ensures his mental health. The psychopathology of an individual, especially a child or an adolescent, originates from the dysfunctions of the emotional relationship between him and his mother or a reference person. Based on its early experiences, an infant develops an internalized mode of representation, a psychic matrix which will last for his entire life. There have been identified and described several types of attachment (first the secure attachment, then the insecure-avoidant attachment, the insecure ambivalent attachment and finally the disorganized-disoriented attachment), as well as the stages of attachment (pre-attachment, attachment-in-the-making, clear-cut attachment, goal-corrected partnership).

• Details
• Contents