Attachment

Running head: ATTACHMENT THEORY

Sabina Yeasmin

Central High School

May 19, 2009

Attachment Theory of John Bowlby and Harry Harlow

“Attachment is a special emotional relationship that involves an exchange of comfort, care, and pleasure.” There are a few theories out there, dealing with attachment in human beings. But two in particular stand out. One theory is called the theory of attachment as an innate process; a theory made by John Bowlby. Another theory, made by Harry Harlow, is called the theory of attachment as “contact comfort”.

            John Bowlby, considered the father of the attachment theory, did extensive research in this area. He came up with this concept of this attachment after testing the relation between children in hospitals and their mothers. Bowlby explained this attachment of child to caregiver as a “lasting psychological connectedness between human beings.”  He also said that early childhood experiences of attachment greatly influence the development and behavior later in life. Bowlby’s (1951) main part of the theory was that the mother-child attachment has an evolutionary basis, an innate process that helped the child’s survival by increasing mother-child proximity or closeness, especially when the child is fearful, or stressful, such as in the case of child meeting stranger. Bowlby explained the theory of attachment in four characteristics. The first is proximity maintenance, which is the desire to be near the people we are attached to; the caregiver. The next characteristic is returning to the attachment figure for comfort and safety (safe haven) in the face of fear or threat. Another characteristic is that the child takes the attachment figure, or the caregiver, as a secure base from which the child can explore the surrounding environment. The fourth and final characteristic is called separation distress, where anxiety occurs in the absence of the attachment figure. These four characteristics were part of his theory of attachment as an innate process. This attachment he believed was “The propensity to make strong emotional bonds to particular individuals [is] a basic component of human nature.”

Join now!

        Then came Harry Harlow, with his theory of attachment as “contact comfort.” Harlow was most famous for his wire-mother experiment (Harlow, 1958). Through this experiment he “revealed the importance of a mother's love for healthy childhood development.”  Taking just born rhesus monkeys away from their mother’s to a lab surrogate mothers, the monkeys were observed to see which surrogate they would pick, the wire monkey with a feeding bottle (providing nutrition) or the soft terry cloth mother (physical contact).  In the end the monkeys chose the terry cloth mother as their secure mother even though extending them selves to reach ...

This is a preview of the whole essay