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This study examined the relationships between work-role attachment variables (job involvement, affective organizational commitment, and career identification) and intention to retire. Results indicated that organizational commitment was negatively related to retirement intent. Contrary to expectations, job involvement displayed a positive relationship and career identification had no relationship to retirement intent.
This study on children with a Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD; N = 32), children with developmental language disorder (N = 22), and normally developing children (N = 28) sought to answer questions concerning attachment and autistic behaviour. We could replicate the finding that children with a PDD are able to develop secure attachment relationships to their primary caregiver. Children with PDD who had an insecure attachment showed fewer social initiatives and responses than children with PDD who had a secure attachment, even when the insecurely and securely attached PDD children were matched on chronological and mental age. Children with both a PDD and mental retardation were more often classified as disorganised. Three findings suggested that a disorganised attachment does not merely reflect the presence of "autistic" behaviour: (1) children with PDD did not reveal higher rates of a disorganised attachment than matched comparison children; (2) having a PDD diagnosis and having a disorganised attachment were found to be associated with opposite effects on an ethological measure of level of behavioural organisation; and (3) a disorganised attachment but not a PDD diagnosis was associated with an increase in heart rate during parting with the caregiver and a decrease in heart rate during reunion.
When the social environment does not change to meet an adolescent's needs for independence, self-determination, and participation in decision making, a developmental mismatch may occur. The interactive model of synchrony studied extensively in early parent-child relationships has suggested that a mutual and responsive interaction between the child and the caretaker is essential to the child's development of secure attachment, sense of autonomy, and social competence. A life-span view of development allows the concept of synchrony to be extended to the stage of adolescence, providing clues to how developmental mismatches occur between adolescents, teachers, and parents as well as useful guidelines for the prevention and remediation of such mismatches.
The Maternal Attachment Inventory (MAI) was developed and tested to provide a practical measure of maternal affectionate attachment. MAI items were identified from the literature, and their construct validity was assessed by experts who numerically rated them for relevance. The MAI, two other indicators of maternal attachment, and a measure of maternal adjustment were completed by 196 women approximately 1 month after the birth of their infants. Two subgroups of women completed the research instruments when their infants were 4 (Group A) or 8 (Group B) months old. The MAI demonstrated evidence of validity through significant correlations with other indicators of maternal attachment (the How I Feel About the Baby Now Scale and the Maternal Separation Anxiety Scale) at all time points and a correlation with maternal adjustment as measured by the Maternal Attitudes and Maternal Adjustment Scale. The MAI also demonstrated evidence of acceptable internal consistency reliability at all three time points.
Attachment theory is frequently invoked to account for patterns of adaptation within relationships. West and Sheldon derived a measure of dysfunctional adult attachment from Bowlby's theory. Four patterns are identified: compulsive self-reliance; caregiving; care-seeking; and angry withdrawal. The aim of this study was to assess the psychometric properties of this promising measure, and to assess its ability to predict symptomatology relative to measures of attachment style. Participants included 209 late adolescents who were involved in committed relationships. They responded to categorical and continuous measures of attachment style and various measures of symptomatology and college adjustment. The four dimensions of pathological attachment showed strong internal consistency and few gender differences. Compulsive care-seeking, angry withdrawal and compulsive self-reliance were particularly strong predictors of psychiatric symptomatology and insecure attachment style. Attachment pathology and insecure attachment style predicted symptomatology similarly, though variations were evident depending on how style was assessed. This study is the first to provide evidence of convergent, discriminant and predictive validity for this measure. Directions for future research are noted.
In the light of the attachment theory and research outlines the authors develop the concept that addiction is a delayed maladaptive attachment transition in young adults. They look into the relevance of this theoretical framework for therapy in adulthood, especially addiction therapy, connect it with an approach, that understands addiction as fear of intimacy and discuss the clinical implications of therapeutic bonding as a specialized approach for this condition.
This study assesses the implications a miscarriage history has on women's pregnancy-specific anxiety and feelings of prenatal maternal-fetal attachment during the 1st and 3rd trimesters of a subsequent pregnancy. Thirty-five pregnant women (N = 10 with a history of miscarriage) volunteered participation completing the Pregnancy Outcome Questionnaire (POQ), the Maternal Antenatal Attachment Scale (MAAS and a demographic/reproductive history questionnaire during the first trimester of pregnancy. Of these, 24 participants completed the measures again during the third trimester of pregnancy. Women with a miscarriage history reported significantly higher pregnancy-specific anxiety at trimester 1 than women with no miscarriage history; even when the effects of parity were controlled. All expectant mothers, irrespective of miscarriage history, scored similarly at trimester 1 on the MAAS scales. By the 3rd trimester, pregnancy-specific anxiety had significantly decreased for women with a miscarriage history whose mean scores on the POQ were now similar to women with no history of miscarriage. Maternal-fetal attachment had significantly risen by the 3rd trimester for all women. These findings suggest that having a miscarriage history may not have a long-lasting adverse effect on woman's psychological adaptation during the course of a subsequent pregnancy.
The birth of a very small preterm infant (< or = 1500 grams) can be a traumatizing experience for many parents. A developmental risk model is presented that is the background to an early attachment-oriented preventive psychotherapeutic intervention. This comprehensive parent-centered intervention program is composed of supportive group psychotherapy, attachment-oriented focal individual psychotherapy, a home visit and video-based sensitivity training. The intervention aims at improving parental coping, the process of attachment and parent-infant interaction. In a prospective longitudinal design mothers were randomly assigned to a control (N = 44) and an intervention group (N = 43) after preterm delivery. Results show that the percentage of secure (control vs. intervention group: 77.8% vs. 59.4%) and insecure (control vs. intervention group: 8.3% vs. 31.3% avoidant, 13.9% vs. 9.4% ambivalent) attachment quality in high-risk preterm infants is comparable to results from studies with term infants. There was no significant statistical difference in terms of quality of attachment of the preterm infants between the control group and the intervention group. However, only in the control group, impaired neurological development corresponded significantly with an insecure quality of attachment, but not in the intervention group, although there were significantly more neurologically impaired infants in the intervention group. This result is discussed as an effect of the intervention program.
The value of cognitive science as a means of investigating psychodynamic theory and practice is discussed and the limitations of this approach are described. Research findings from cognitive science are drawn on to clarify the nature of memory, which is seen to be a mixture of reproduction and reconstruction and the concepts of true and false memory are explored in this light. The part played by implicit memory and internal working models in producing transference is also examined. New ways of conceptualizing fantasy, which describes it as another facet of internal working models, and the role of transgenerational transmission of attachment patterns in creating internal working models are explored. The nature of archetypes is considered in the light of cognitive science research and a minimalist model is proposed, in which they can be likened to image schemas, that is, primitive conceptual structures that exist in a form which can never be experienced directly or indirectly.
Employing a quasi-experimental design, this study explored the long-term effects of different childrearing ecological contexts. Participants were 131 adolescents (aged 16-18) from four groups: some who lived in a city, some from a kibbutz familial setting, some from a kibbutz communal setting, and a transitional group that included adolescents raised in a communal setting as young children who moved to a familial sleeping arrangement before the age of six. Adolescents' state of mind with regard to attachment and representations regarding separation were examined. Participants were administered the Adult Attachment Interview, the Separation Anxiety Test, and background questionnaires. The group raised in a communal setting in the kibbutz showed a higher incidence of nonautonomous attachment representations and less competent coping with imagined separations than did the other groups. By contrast, the transitional group was comparable to the city and the kibbutz familial groups. These results are discussed in light of the plasticity and adaptability of children to changed circumstances.
The development of fear, anger, and joy was examined in 112 children using a longitudinal design. Children were observed at 9, 14, 22, and 33 months in standard laboratory episodes designed to elicit fear, anger, or joy. At 14 months, mother-child attachment was assessed in the Strange Situation. The attachment groups (avoidant, secure, resistant, and disorganized/unclassifiable) differed in the trajectories of emotional development, with the differences first apparent at 14 months of age. Resistant children were the most fearful and least joyful, and fear was their strongest emotion. More than secure children, they responded with distress even in episodes designed to elicit joy. When examined longitudinally, over the second and third years, secure children became significantly less angry. In contrast, insecure children's negative emotions increased: Avoidant children became more fearful, resistant children became less joyful, and disorganized/unclassifiable children became more angry. Higher attachment security uniquely predicted that at 33 months, children would show less fear and anger in episodes designed to elicit fear and anger, and less distress in episodes designed to elicit joy, even in conservative regression analyses controlling for all the earlier emotion scores.
We examined the impact of parental marital quality, both before marriage and after the birth of a child, on child attachment and related constructs. 39 parents (20 families) with children between the ages of 1-3 years completed measures of marital satisfaction, conflict, and communication at 2 time periods (premarriage and postbirth, 3-5 years later). Parents also completed Q-sort descriptions of their child at postbirth, yielding scores for security of attachment, sociability, and dependency. Results indicated that both premarital and postbirth indices of the parent's marital relationship were related to child functioning. For mothers, high satisfaction, low conflict, and high communication quality (rated by fathers) were related to child security of attachment and dependency. For fathers, higher levels of premarital conflict and lower levels of communication quality were positively related to dependency. These findings indicate that the quality of the parents' relationship before marriage as well as after the child is born is related to child functioning.
The aim of the study was to investigate family functioning and the psychological development of children raised in fatherless families from their first year of life. Thirty lesbian mother families and 42 families headed by a single heterosexual mother were compared with 41 two-parent heterosexual families using standardised interview and questionnaire measures of the quality of parenting and the socioemotional development of the child. The results show that children raised in fatherless families from infancy experienced greater warmth and interaction with their mother, and were more securely attached to her, although they perceived themselves to be less cognitively and physically competent than their peers from father-present families. No differences were identified between families headed by lesbian and single heterosexual mothers, except for greater mother-child interaction in lesbian mother families.
This paper reviews neuroscientific advances across the therapeutic disciplines and outlines new potential insights into understanding the biology of the psychotherapeutic processes. In a quest to understand the modus operandi of psychotherapy, the author reviews the evolution of the biology of psychotherapy. The mechanisms involved in learning processes, such as memory and priming, attachment, and long-term consequences of early life trauma, demonstrate how brain structures can be affected by environmental changes. Finally, the author proposes that verbal and non-verbal aspects of the psychotherapeutic process mediate their therapeutic effects through biological changes as they work on primitive emotional reflexes and stimulate mentalization processes.
The purpose of the present study was to investigate attachment and fear of intimacy among rape survivors. As previous research has documented that several domains of functioning are affected by the experience of rape, it was hypothesized that the survivors may have difficulties with attachment and intimacy. Subjects were selected from an undergraduate general psychology class on the basis of responses to a questionnaire on sexual experiences. All of the subjects were female and included 44 rape survivors and 57 controls. As predicted, rape survivors reported greater fear surrounding intimacy. Survivors also differed from the controls on all of the attachment dimensions. They reported less confidence in others' dependability, less comfort with closeness, and more fear of abandonment. Trait anxiety was also controlled in the analyses, and except for fear of abandonment, it attenuated the differences between the groups such that they were no longer significantly different.
In a study of a total high-school population, 2300 students aged 16-17 years were screened for depression (BDI, CES-DC). Those with a self-evaluation indicating depression, together with controls matched for sex, age, and class were interviewed (DICA-R-A). The 177 pairs, where both individuals were interviewed and the control had no lifetime diagnosis of depression, were analysed in the form of paired differences for psychosocial factors and compared within diagnostic groups. The psychosocial factors were measured with the ISSI subscales and six attitude questions about family climate (KSP). Adolescents with an episode of major depression during part of the last year did not differ from their controls. Those with long-lasting depressive symptoms, i.e. dysthymia with or without episodes of major depression, had a more limited social interaction and were not satisfied with it. They also evaluated their family climate and attachment network as being more inadequate than did their controls. Depressed adolescents with comorbid conduct disorder had a more negative evaluation of availability and adequacy of both social interaction and attachment network than their controls. This group had a very negative view of their family climate. Since this is a case-control study conclusions cannot be drawn about cause and effect.
BACKGROUND: Mothers are offered skin-to-skin contact with their preterm infants with the intention to promote bonding. But it is not known if the mother of a very immature fragile infant perceives skin-to-skin contact as a helpful intervention or a stressful situation. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Mothers of singleton preterm infants (gestational age 27-30 weeks) began skin-to-skin contact as soon as the infant was breathing spontaneously. They prospectively documented frequency and duration of skin-to-skin contact, they rated their anxiety or confidence and their attachment to the infant and described their observations of the infant daily for 14 days in a semi-structured questionnaire. RESULTS: 17 of 25 mother-infant-pairs in the observation period fulfilled the entry criteria, 14 questionnaires about 196 skin-to-skin periods could be analyzed (median gestational age 27.5 weeks (27-30), median birth weight 1130 g (695-1300). Skin-to-skin contact began at a median age of 3 days [2-7]. The median duration of the skin-to-skin periods was increased at maternal request from 60 to 120 minutes between day 1 and 14 (p = 0.004). Even then 21% of the mothers wanted a still longer duration of skin-to-skin contact. Mothers reported anxiety only 5 times. 82% of the mothers reported positive own feelings during skin-to-skin contact and 78% felt that skin-to-skin contact increased their attachment to their infant. CONCLUSION: The mothers studied perceived skin-to-skin contact with their very immature infants as a positive and helpful intervention. Skin-to-skin contact took place regularly and for increasing periods of time.
Somatoform disorders occur frequently. The patients complain about numerous physical problems and/or pain for which, as a rule, an organic pathological cause cannot be not found. They are not willing to or cannot accept psychosomatic explanations. The real cause is faulty stress processing due to earlier biographical factors, for example, an early attachment disorder. A behavioral therapy could help the patient cope with the everyday routine; it influences the symptoms and signs, but does not fundamentally change them. Psychodynamic approaches are very promising. For comorbidity with anxiety or a depressive disorder as well as certain forms of fibromyalgia, psychopharmaceutical drugs should be additionally given.