Outline and evaluate 1 or more explanations (theories) of attachment

Authors Avatar

Outline and evaluate 1 or more explanations (theories) of attachment.

There are many theories that provide feasible explanations for why attachments are formed and maintained.

The psychodynamic approach was first put forward by Sigmund Freud in 1924 and described attachments because babies like being with their mothers because the mothers are their source of food, warmth and comfort.  This is also known as “Cupboard Love.”  The pleasure Freud identified, as “Cupboard Love” is operant conditioning.  According to this theory Freud expanded on it in saying that adult relationships depends on childhood experiences.  He divided childhood into five different stages of psychosexual development.  Stages were the child is biologically driven to seek pleasure.  The first stage being the “Oral,” for example when the child receives oral pleasure through sucking at the mother’s breast.  This then associates the mother with pleasure and this period has a very long lasting effect.  Freud argued that the mother’s status was “established” for a whole lifetime as the first and strongest love-object and as the prototype of all later love-relations, meaning she acts as a model influencing their choice of partners and experiences.  

Join now!

Freud’s theory states attachment behaviour is related to feeding but this is not the whole case.  Harlow’s research with infant monkeys led researchers to believe the need for closeness and affection goes a lot deeper than the need for warmth.  But this research cannot be simply linked to human infants.  The “contact comfort” does not entirely discount Freud’s study that acknowledged erotic pleasure through skin contact though primarily focused on oral.  Shaffer and Emerson in 1964 found that 40% of the infants that the adult who fed, bathed, and changed the infant was not the not the main attachment figure. ...

This is a preview of the whole essay