Attachment Theory: History, Concepts, and Evaluation

Running head: ATTACHMENT THEORY
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ATTACHMENT THEORY
Introduction:
For almost half a century, attachment theory has been creating an insightful
research in the history of literature. The attachment theory suggested that strong
emotional, as well as the physical attachment, is critical for personal and cognitive
development of individuation (White, 2018). Consequently, these attachments further
shape the future relationships of the adult. Therefore, attachment theory is a
psychological model which attempt to describe the short term and long term relationship
dynamics between human being (Van Rosmalen et al., 2016). This paper will illustrate
the history of the theory, research of other theorists for the theory, concepts of theory and
evaluation of theory in the following paragraphs.
Discussion:
History of theory:
Slade (2018), suggested that attachment theory is joint work of John Bowlby and
Mary Ainsworth whereas the term attachment was first coined by John Bowlby when he
was studying the development of psychology from various background. Therefore, he
revolutionized the thinking of entire mankind that a child’s attachment to its mother and
its disruption and separation further shape the personal development and future
relationships. On the other hand, Mary Ainsworth's innovative methodology made it
possible to test some of the ideas which further helped to expand the theory for the new
direction of literature and identified attachment styles along with Main and Solomon

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ATTACHMENT THEORY
(Hertler et al., 2018). Therefore, the innovative idea of Mary contributed to the concept
of attachment figure as a trusted shield through which a child further explores the world.
Although Bowlby and Ainsworth worked independently to build the concept of
attachment theory, both theorist were influenced by other psychoanalytic thinkers,
especially Freud. Initially, during the study of medicine and psychiatry, Melanie Klein
was a major influencer who was an influential psychoanalyst who was inspired by
Sigmund Freud and developed the object relations theory (Hertler et al., 2018). The
theory emphasized that unconscious expression of past experiences, relationships, feeling
are based on the childhood experience which is the further indicated the concept of
attachment theory. On the other hand, Sigmund Freud attempted a systematic
consideration of infants' attachment which further attributed to the character of an infant
to stat near to the family members or familiar person (Laschinger, 2018). He suggested
that attachment is observed because of the feeding experience and libidinal drive
gratification. On a different note, In 1930, British developmental Ian suttee put forward a
suggestion that the infants attachment is a primary one , not based on their hunger or
physical gratifications (Fonagy, 2018). After Bowlby's first official representations of
attachment theory, Harry Harlow's conducted an experiment of attachment theory which
was published in Nature of love and the result showed that infant rhesus monkeys spent
the majority of the time with soft mother like dummies that offer no food than the
dummies who offered food but less pleasant to touch. Chambers (2018), also highlighted
that although Sigmund Freud work mostly with adults and assist them to reconstruct their