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Disorganized Infant, Child, and Adult Attachment: Collapse in Behavioral and Attentional Strategies

University of California at Berkeley, Adjunct Scientist at Leiden University

Mary Main

University of California at Berkeley

This presentation focuses on the disorganized/disoriented (Group D) categories of infant, child, and adult attachment. The infant D category is assigned on the basis of interruptions and anomalies in organization and orientation observed during Ainsworth's strange situation procedure. In neurologically normal low-risk samples, D attachment is not substantially related to descriptions of infant temperament, and usually appears with respect to only one parent. At six, former D infants are often found to be role-inverting (D-Controlling) towards the parent, while drawings and separation-related narratives (D-Fearful) suggest continuing states of fear and disorganization. In adults, marked lapses in reasoning and discourse surrounding the discussion of loss or abuse during the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) causes a transcript to be assigned to Unresolved/disorganized (U/d) adult attachment status, which predicts infant D attachment. Bowlby's theory is extended, with the proposal that certain forms of frightening parental behavior will arouse contradictory biologically channeled propensities to approach and to take flight from the parent. Maltreated infants are therefore highly likely to be disorganized. Also identified are subtler forms of frightening parental behavior (including dissociative behavior and anomalous forms of frightened behavior) that appear to lead to infant disorganization. This suggests that infant D attachment may at times represent a second-generation effect of the parent's own continuing unresolved responses to trauma. Infant D attachment predicts disruptive/aggressive and dissociative disorders in childhood and adolescence, while U/d adult attachment appears frequently in psychiatric and criminal populations. Clinical implications are discussed.

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