Toward an architecture of attachment disorganization: John Bowlby’s published and unpublished reflections

Judith Solomon, Robbie Duschinsky, Lianne Bakkum, Carlo Schuengel

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

This article examines the construct of disorganized attachment originally proposed by Main and Solomon, developing some new conjectures based on inspiration from a largely unknown source: John Bowlby’s unpublished texts, housed at the Wellcome Trust Library Archive in London (with permission from the Bowlby family). We explore Bowlby’s discussions of disorganized attachment, which he understood from the perspective of ethological theories of conflict behavior. Bowlby’s reflections regarding differences among the behaviors used to code disorganized attachment will be used to explore distinctions that may underlie the structure of the current coding system. The article closes with an emphasis on the importance Bowlby placed on Popper’s distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification in developmental science.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)539-560
Number of pages22
JournalClinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry
Volume22
Issue number4
Early online date9 Aug 2017
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Oct 2017

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: We gratefully acknowledge the work of the Wellcome Library Archive in preserving and making available Bowlby’s unpublished writings, and Wellcome Grants WT103343MA, and 208155/Z/17/Z. These grants have helped attachment researchers and clinicians in the United Kingdom, Europe, and the United States to revisit and explore constructs and methodologies that until recently had been subject to significant unexamined assumptions among many researchers, clinicians, and social welfare practitioners. Wellcome funding supported a conference comprised of major investigators in this area, which resulted in a common understanding of important future directions. It is particularly satisfying that this progress has occurred in tandem with a renewed exploration and appreciation of the work of John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth, the intellectual parents of this field of study.

FundersFunder number
Wellcome Library Archive
Wellcome TrustWT103343MA, 208155/Z/17/Z.

    Keywords

    • Attachment
    • Bowlby
    • conflict behavior
    • disorganization
    • fear

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