Attachment Theory: Retrospect and Prospect

TLDR

The chapter aims to review Bowlby’s attachment theory, emphasize the motivational‑behavioral system and internal working models, clarify unresolved theoretical issues, and integrate recent socioemotional insights to illuminate personality development. It examines maternal and infant contributions, stability and change, carryover effects, and intergenerational transmission of attachment across cultures, using internal working models to interpret refinements by Ainsworth. The author provides a framework for the studies presented in this volume.

Abstract

This chapter has several major aims. The first is to provide an overview of attachment theory as presented by John Bowlby in the three volumes of Attachment and Loss (1969/1982b, 1973, 1980), giving special emphasis to two major ideas: (1) attachment as grounded in a motivational-behavioral control system that is preferentially responsive to a small number of familiar caregiving figures and (2) the construction of complementary internal working models of attachment figures and of the self through which the history of specific attachment relationships is integrated into the personality structure. These two concepts, but especially the notion of internal working models, will be used in the second section of the chapter to interpret refinements and elaborations of the theory that have been primarily the result of the work and influence of Mary Ainsworth. Topics discussed are maternal and infant contributions to the quality of attachment relationships, stability and change in the quality of attachment relationships, carryover effects from earlier to later relationships, and intergenerational transmission of attachment patterns as an intracultural and cross-cultural phenomenon. An attempt is made to clarify a variety of theoretical points and to discuss others that remain to be clarified. Finally, I consider how recent insights into the development of socioemotional understanding and the development of event representation can be integrated into attachment theory to shed new light on the origins of individual differences in personality development. In doing so, I have also attempted to provide a framework for the studies presented in this volume.