Discuss the application of psychological
DISCUSS THE APPLICATION OF PSYCHOLOGICAL
THEORY TO SOCIAL WORK PRACTICE
Theory: - A set of ideas formulated to explain something (Oxford Dictionary 1995:333). That is the dictionary definition of the word "Theory". Therefore, in layman's terms a psychological theory can be interpreted as a way of collating and examining differing forms of behaviour and using them to help analyse behavioural patterns and make predictions about future patterns of behaviour.
This essay will attempt to highlight some of the key areas pertaining to the Attachment Theory. Using relevant examples from my own experience, it will attempt to demonstrate the relationship between Attachment Theories and their relevance to the social work profession, and highlight the difficulties that can occur when using this theory to interpret human behaviour. In order to protect the confidentiality of any persons involved in the examples, I have changed the identifying names and places of all those involved.
According to Kagan et al. (1978) (cited in Gross, 2001:460), an attachment is: "...an intense emotional relationship that is specific to two people, that endures over time, and in which prolonged separation from the partner is accompanied by stress and sorrow." Whilst this definition can be used to identify any or all of our attachments formed at any point during our lives, it is accepted that our primary attachment will act as a model for all future relationships. It is also widely accepted that the most crucial first attachment is usually taken to be with the mother or mother figure within the first 12 months of life. Helen Bee gives us another insight into the definitions of attachment when she writes about Ainsworth's attachment definitions. Bee (1998:128) defines the child-parent attachment bond as an in-equal one, using Ainsworth's (Ainsworth et al, 1978) definitions of affectional bonds and attachment behaviours. Ainsworth defines an affectional bond, as "a relatively long-enduring tie in which the partner is important as a unique individual, and is interchangeable with none other. In an affectional bond, there is a desire to maintain closeness to the partner". An attachment is a sub-variety of emotional bond in which a person's sense of security is bound up in the relationship. When you are attached, you feel (or hope to feel) a special sense of security and comfort in the presence of the other, and you can use the other as a "safe-base" from which to explore the rest of the world.
Using these definitions, Bee moves on to explain therefore that the child's relationship with a parent or primary care-giver is therefore an attachment, but the parents' relationship with the child is not. The parent presumably does not feel an the same sense of security in the presence of the child, nor will the adult use the infant as a safe base. In contrast, says Bee, an adult's relationship with her or his spouse, or partner, typically is an attachment in the sense Ainsworth or Bowlby mean the term.
I, personally, would dispute this, given my experience of working with teenage mothers, all who have had experience of residential and foster care situations. They appear to have an overwhelming desire to become mothers, to have "someone to love them". I believe that they see motherhood as a chance to re-create an attachment with the infant in an attempt to make up for what they feel they have missed out on. I believe that the young women use motherhood as an opportunity to create attachment bonds with the infant, and also to use them as their "secure base" in life.
Herbert (1981) believed that the first year of life is the most critical, as he believed that almost all babies should have developed a strong attachment to a mother or mother figure during this time. He believes that the long period of helplessness of infancy entails serious risks, so when looked at from an evolutionary perspective, it is of crucial importance for the survival of the human species that the child and it's parents to become attached to one another for the survival of the young. In effect what he is saying is that it is an instinctual drive for survival that drives babies to seek attention from that of their primary care-givers. This forms very much the foundations of both the Psychoanalytical and Behaviourist views of the attachment theory. Freud (1926, cited in Gross, 2001) believed that "The reason why the infant in arms wants to perceive the presence of its mother is only because it already knows that she satisfies all its needs without delay".
John Bowlby did not side with this theory though, and has been one of the most prolific theorists about attachment and loss, and credit must be given to him for the development of the attachment theory, that is much talked about and used widely within the social care and psychological framework for assessments.
Bowlby - (1969) in his developmental model, detailed four phases in the development of attachment, which subsequently extended to include a fifth:
The Development of Attachment: Bowlby's Four Phase Model
(Bowlby 1969:266-267)
Phase
Age
. Undiscriminating responsiveness
0-3m
...
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John Bowlby did not side with this theory though, and has been one of the most prolific theorists about attachment and loss, and credit must be given to him for the development of the attachment theory, that is much talked about and used widely within the social care and psychological framework for assessments.
Bowlby - (1969) in his developmental model, detailed four phases in the development of attachment, which subsequently extended to include a fifth:
The Development of Attachment: Bowlby's Four Phase Model
(Bowlby 1969:266-267)
Phase
Age
. Undiscriminating responsiveness
0-3m
2. Focus on one or more figures
3-6m
3. Secure base behaviour
6-24m
4. Goal corrected partnership
24-30m
Table 1.1
Cowie, Smith and Blades (2003) have detailed these phases as:
Phase 1 - The infant orientates and signals without discriminating differing people i.e. if you pick up a new born baby, s/he will respond no differently to you than to anyone else.
Phase 2 - In stage two, Bowlby believes that the infant preferentially orientates to and signals at one or more discriminated persons. This is thought to be the first stage of forming an attachment. Usually happening around 5-7 months, this is when the infant first begins to recognise familiar faces.
Phase 3 - The infant maintains proximity preferentially to a discriminated person by means of locomotion and signals. For example, the infant crawls after the person, or returns periodically for contact, or cries or protests if the person leaves ('separation protest'). This is often taken as the definition of attachment to a caregiver. This is normally evident at around 7-9 months. Also evident at this stage is "fear of strangers" where an infant may begin to be wary or even fearful of strangers.
Phase 4 - The formulation of a goal-corrected partnership occurs between child and caregiver. Until now the mother has served as a resource for the child, being available when needed. The goal corrected partnership refers to the idea that the child also begins to accommodate to the mother's needs. For example; being prepared to wait alone if requested until the mother returns. Bowlby saw this as characterizing the child from 3 years of age, though there is evidence that 2 year olds can partly accommodate to verbal requests by the mother to await her return (Weinraub and Lewis, 1977 - as cited in Smith, Cowie and Blades, 2003)
A fifth phase was subsequently added, and this is described in Smith, Cowie and Blades as Phase 5 - Lessening of attachment as measured by the child maintaining proximity. Characteristic of the school age child, and older is the idea of a relationship based more on abstract considerations such as affection, trust and approval, exemplified by an internal working model of the relationship.
Bowlby believed (Gross, 2001:463) that infants display a strong intimate tendency to become attached to one particular adult female (not necessarily the natural mother), a tendency he called "monotropy". However, his views on this have been criticised, not least because this does not reflect or take into account the cross cultural differences in attachment theory.
In addition to this, it has to be said that cultural differences and social changing attitudes may distort Bowlby's viewpoint somewhat. For example, a study of a pygmy group called the Efe, detailed in Bee (1998) by Edward Tronick and colleagues, shows infants living in communities of around twenty individuals in each camp, consisting of several extended families. Infants in these communities are cared for communally in their early months and years. They are cared for and may even be nursed by any or all of the adult women, and interact regularly with many different care givers. Tronick and his colleagues found that children reared in this environment will use any adult or adult child in their world as their "secure base" but that they have no central single attachment figure. However, at around 6 months, the Efe infants seem to insist on being with their mothers more, and prefer her over other women. Bee states that "thus, even in an extremely communal rearing arrangement, we can still see some signs of a central attachment, albeit perhaps less dominant. This would suggest therefore "that attachment behaviour is never purely instinctive, but is heavily overlain with cultural prescriptions". - Bretherton (1992b:150 - as cited in Bee 1998).
Schaffer and Emerson's 1964 study, (Gross, 2001:462) showed that multiple attachments appear to be the rule rather than the exception. Cowie, Smith and Blades (2003) report on the findings of this study by saying that about one-third of the babies tested in the Schaffer and Emerson study of 60 Scottish children, formed strongest attachments with someone other than the mother, such as father, grandparent or sibling. It is thought that attachments were formed with to responsive persons who interacted and played a lot with the infant, and that simple care-giving such as nappy changing was not such an important factor.
Whilst Bowlby did not discount that multiple attachments were formed in infancy, he firmly believed that the mother figure was the principal attachment figure. Bowlby believed that the father was of no direct emotional significance to the child, but was indirectly valued as an emotional and economic support for the mother (Gross, 2001:463.) Schaffer and Emerson's study disputed this somewhat, and this is backed up by Parke (1981, as cited in Gross 2001: "both mother and father are important attachment objects for their infant, but the circumstances that lead to selecting mum or dad may differ".
This leads us directly to the theory of internal working models and their influence on determining a child's predilection for one attachment style or another. It is widely accepted that there is a genetic predisposition for making sense of new experiences, ie, how a child reacts and copes with new situations will lay the foundations in the brain for how they will react and cope with that situation when it arises again. Howe (1995:12) describes this by saying, "As infants struggle to understand what is happening around them, they create models and cognitive structures to help them interpret the buzz of experience. These models help us to make sense of the world relatively quickly and efficiently.......They (the models) prefigure how subsequent experiences of that kind are to be interpreted".
Cotterill (1989 , Cited in Howe, 1995) uses the simile of "...water running down the side of a mountain will gradually cut a channel, which will subsequently serve as the preferred route, so will experience tend to increase the transfer efficiency at certain synapses and thus create favoured pathways for late nerve impulses." Essentially, what this means when relating theory to practice, is that our experiences are not random episodes of behaviour, but patterns that can be organised into models. Howe (1995:22) says that, "for children who enjoy secure, regular relationships with parents and caregivers, the models are continuously modified and updated with experience" He goes on to develop that further with, "the downside of the (internal) modelling process is that initially we try to fit all new experiences of social relationships into old models". For example, Bee (1998:12) writes that if you regularly hear criticism in other people's comments, it might be inferred that you have an internal model with a basic assumption similar to this: "I usually do things wrong, so other people criticise me".
Cowie, Smith and Blades (2003:98) write that "secure attachments would be based on models of trust and affection," whilst in contrast, a child with an insecure relationship with his mother may have an "internal working model of her that leads him not to expect secure comforting from her when he is distressed". They maintain that the relationship will become strained, particularly if the mother is rejecting his approaches. "His action rules then become focused on avoiding her, thus inhibiting approaches to her that could be ineffective and lead to further distress. This in turn can be problematic, as there is less open communication between mother and son, and their respective internal working models of each other are not being accurately updated".
Whilst most theorists now agree that the first attachment in a child's life is the most important and influential, it is not widely believed that this is a situation that cannot be changed. For example, Mary Ainsworth devised a procedure called the "Strange Situation" (Ainsworth et al., 1978). This is a categorisation system which is used to assess children, and examine the differences between insecure and secure attachments formed in children aged between 12 and 18 months.. The Strange Situation consists of a series of eight episodes in a laboratory setting (See Appendix i for details) Ainsworth theorised that the children's reactions to these episodes, and in particular their responses to the reunions with their mothers, could be classified into three types; securely attached, insecure/avoidant and insecure/ambivalent. Mary Main (Main & Solomon, 1990 as cited in Bee 1998) has suggested a fourth group, which she calls insecure/disorganized/disorientated (See Appendix ii for behavioural classifications). Whilst the Strange Situation is now a commonly and internationally used technique, it has received criticisms for its validity cross culturally. For example, studies quoted in Cowie, Smith and Blades (1998) show that Japanese children were excessively distressed by the separation episodes, as culturally in Japan, infants are rarely if ever left alone at 12 months. It also reported that there was no chance for the Japanese infants to express symptoms of avoidance, as the mothers automatically and without hesitation picked up their babies upon re-entering the room. So, whilst it is a valid indication and a useful tool for evaluating how children's reactions to "strange situations" can indicate their attachment "type", it may be necessary to alter the situations to reflect cultural differences in motherhood, or to re-define the categorisations according to the local culture.
One of the key areas of research following the implementation of the strange situation has been in attempting to identify whether these attachment classifications are changeable over time, or whether the classifications at 12-18 months are with the child for life.
Looking after fostered children is one example where the application of relating aspects of the attachment theory to social work practice is evident. Two girls that we have provided short term respite care for, Mary and Chloe, display attachment behaviour systematic to that which you might expect from children who have experienced poor levels of attachment behaviour in their early years. This could be interpreted as being a direct result of forming inner working models based on assumptions that care has not always been and therefore probably will not readily available, and should be accepted and enjoyed when and where it is offered.
Both girls, when first coming into our care, asked within the first day whether they could call us "auntie" and "uncle". They also made gifts and drawings for us daily, and every morning made breakfast, constantly tidying up, and were continuously striving to be accepted by us. It could be taken that their previous experiences, have taught them that relationships with adults are often inconsistent and temporary, and this is what they expect from relationships with adults. I believe that their constant tidying etc, is an attempt to forge attachment bonds with people they feel they can trust. I understand it to be that they have an underlying desire to fit in to a family unit, they do not want to be different, and primarily just want to be loved and belong within a family. I believe that once they have established that they can trust their new carers, all energies are focused on forming "normal" attachments. In addition to this, once attachments had been formed with us, it appeared that the girls attached to people close to our family in a much quicker way than perhaps other "secure" children might.
When comparing their behaviour to that of friend's children who would have experienced secure attachment bonds and behaviours during their early years, it is noticeable that more "secure base" behaviour patterns are evident. For example, Deborah, the child of a friend, will often go very shy on first meeting new people, however, she is easily distracted with games, or the promise of something new to discover, and will go off with you, and can be observed frequently going back and seeking reassurance or praise from her parents. It is apparent that the girls we foster do not appear to need this reassurance. They have been told we are safe, as we are foster carers, they know that we have been entrusted with their care. In addition to this, Deborah when she stays with us, does not feel the same desire or necessity to please us with gifts, tidying etc that Mary and Chloe both feel.
It is argued that for every human problem encountered by social workers, there is a psychological theory to interpret that behaviour. I think that applying psychological theory to social work is an integral aspect of social work practice. I believe that using theories helps us to interpret behavioural patterns and to therefore initiate the appropriate channels of help, be it counselling, therapy or other method.
Daniel (1997) writes though that the problems with using psychological theory to practice are in becoming too obsessed with fitting human nature into "norms". She writes that "because psychology is based heavily upon the construction of norms, there is a danger that people who deviate from the norm are considered to be "abnormal", even though a norm is only an average of the spread of possibilities. When the norm becomes that which is desired and normative, there is a danger of labelling people as deviant, even when they represent part of the natural diversity of human beings". Therefore, whilst I believe it is important to apply theories to human behaviour, some degree of flexibility should be used when applying these to interpreting behavioural patterns.
To support my viewpoint, I found that Neil Thompson (2000: 62) writes that it is (however) unrealistic to expect one theoretical approach to provide all the answers we need. He writes that we "therefore need a grasp of a range of theoretical perspectives and the ability to draw on these as and when required".
3102 Words
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bee, Helen (1998) 2nd Edition - Lifespan and Development
Harrow Addison-Wesley Longman Publishers
Bowlby, John (1969) Attachment and Loss Volume 1 - Attachment
London. Hogarth Press
Cowie, Smith (2003) Understanding Children's Development
and Blades Oxford Blackwell Publishing
Daniel, Brigid (1997) The Blackwell Companion to Social Work
Oxford Blackwell Publishing
Gross, Richard (2001) Pyschology: The Science of Minds and Behaviour
(4th Edition)
London. Hodder and Stoughton Educational
Herbert, Martin (1981) Psychology for Social Workers
London. Macmillan Press Ltd
Howe, David (1995), Attachment Theory for Social Work Practice
Basingstoke Palgrave
Thompson, Neil (2000) Understanding Social Work
Basingstoke Palgrave
Appendix i
THE EIGHT EPISODES OF THE "STRANGE SITUATION"
Episode
Persons Present
Duration
Brief Description
Mother, Baby, Observer
30 seconds
Observer introduces mother to experimental room, then leaves
2
Mother, Baby
3 minutes
Mother is non-participant while baby explores, if necessary, play is stimulated after two minutes
3
Stranger, Mother, Baby
3 minutes
Stranger enters. First minute: Stranger silent. Second minute: stranger converses with mother. Third minute: stranger approaches baby. After three minutes, mother leaves unobtrusively.
4
Stranger, Baby
3 minutes or less
First separation episode. Stranger's behaviour is geared to the baby's.
5
Mother, Baby
3 minutes or more**
First reunion episode. Stranger leaves. Mother greets and/or comforts baby, then tries to settle baby again in play. Mother then leaves, saying "bye-bye"
6
Baby
3 minutes or less*
Second separation episode
7
Stranger, Baby
3 minutes or less
Continuation of second separation. Stranger enters and gears her behaviour to baby's.
8
Mother, Baby
3 minutes
Second reunion episode. Mother enters, greets baby, then picks up baby. Meanwhile, stranger leaves unobtrusively.
* - Episode is ended early is baby is unduly distressed
* - Episode is prolonged if more time is required for baby to become re-involved in play
.
Taken from Gross: 2001:464
Appendix ii
Categorization of Secure and Insecure Attachment in Ainsworth's Strange Situation
Avoidant
Babies are characterized by conspicuous avoidance of proximity to or interaction with the mother in the reunion episodes. Either the baby ignores the mother on her return, greeting her casually if at all, or he mingles his welcome with avoidance responses such as turning away, moving past or averting gaze. During separation, the baby is not distressed, or distress seems due to being left alone rather than to mother's absence.
Secure
Babies are characterized by actively seeking and maintaining proximity, contact or interaction with the mother, especially in the reunion episodes. He may or may not be distressed during the separation episodes, but any distress is related to mother's absence.
Ambivalent
Babies are characterized by conspicuous contact and interaction resisting behaviour in the reunion episodes. Rather than ignoring the mother, this is combined with some seeking of proximity and contact, thus giving the impression of being ambivalent or resistant.
Disorganised
Babies show very disorganised or disorientated behaviour in the Strange Situation; there is no one clear pattern, but inconsistent and often bizarre responses to separation/reunion. Main and her colleagues believe this to be a useful extension of the original Ainsworth classification.
Taken from Cowie, Smith and Blades, 1998: 95
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