Secure Attachment and Successful Relationships

This essay explores the impact of secure attachment on successful relationship formation, self-identity, and confidence. It discusses the developmental theory and adult attachment theory, highlighting the positive and negative aspects of secure attachment. The essay emphasizes the importance of interacting with strangers for emotional growth.

Human Development across Lifespan
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“Secure attachment was once viewed as important for infant development. More recently,
it has been deemed the most important ingredient for successful relationship formation,
strong self-identity & confidence to function and achieve in our lifetime.”
The purpose of this essay is to enlighten the reader about the life span developmental theory in
wellbeing. The essay highlights information about the impact of secure attachment in creating
effective relationship in the environment. The statement says that secure attachment at a time
was looked as an important aspect in infant development which is now looked as an important
factor in creating successful relationship in the environment. The below mentioned essay explain
the statement while evaluating the concept of developmental theory in the environment. Further,
adult attachment theory is also explained in the paper which is a stem of life span developmental
theory. The latter part of the essay highlights positive and negative aspects of the above
mentioned statement.
The fact should be noted that secure attachment plays a lead in creating an effective relationship
among the caregiver and children in the environment. It helps the caregiver in creating a bond
and effectively maintaining it as well. Infant easily get to develop their personality and grow
mentally as well as physically with the help of secure attachment in the environment. Secure
attachment can be explained with the help of children who show distress when their caregiver
leave them but are also composed because they will come back the other day. Children that feel
secure attachment sense protection by the caregivers and have complete faith on them as well
(Fonagy, 2018). The attachment theory was coined by John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth which
explained the ways in which a relationship of parent and children grows and how it influences
their subsequent behaviour in the environment. Furthermore, there are four stems created from
this type of theory that are ambivalent attachment, secure attachment, disorganized attachment
and avoidant attachment. Further, it should be noted that with the help of secure attachment, the
infants get to trust people in the environment and develop a bond with them as well. Along with
this, it should also be noted that there are various other factors as well that acts an important
ingredient in creating a successful relationship in lifetime (Bowlby, 2018).
According to Bowlby, attachment is all or nothing process whereas some of the researches
explained that there are distinct differences in attachment quality while it is an important
paradigm in attachment theory that is security of an individual’s connection. The form of

attachment of an individual differs from that of a middle age person. The level of sociability in
people also differs as some babies prefer cuddling while others prefer interaction and then
physical touch. It can be easoly known that when a person is attached to other person because
when the other person is apart then they can easily feel it and express the feeling through words
as well. Psychologist Mary Ainsworth established an assessment technique that is called Strange
Situation Classification which aims to investigate that how attachment varies between kids
(Fonagy, Luyten, Allison, & Campbell, 2018). The secure attachment concept between one to
two years old people is being investigated in the paper using SSP model. An experimental
procedure was developed to observe the variety of attachment forms exhibited between mother
and an infant. The experiment is initiated in a small room to analyse series of eight episodes that
are mentioned below:
1. Mother, baby, and experimenter
2. Mother and baby
3. An outsider joins the mother and baby
4. Mother leaves the baby with stranger alone
5. Mother returns and stranger goes
6. Mother leaves and baby is left completely alone
7. Stranger comes back
8. Mother comes back and stranger leaves (McLeod, 2018)
The attachment styles are based majorly on the four above mentioned episode. The behaviour of
the baby is analysed on the basis of four aspects that are:
 Proximity and contacting seeking
 Avoidance of proximity and contact
 Contact maintaining
 Resistance to contact and comforting
Along with this other observed behaviour might be exploratory, search behaviour and display
negative behaviour (Fearon, 2017). Further, on the basis of the main attachment styles, behaviour
is discussed below:

Secure Ambivalent Avoidant Disorganized
Separation
Anxiety
Upset when
mother leaves
Deep pain on
mother leaving
No particular
sign of ache
when mother
leaves
Starts to cry and
show
uncontrollable
behaviour
Stranger Anxiety Avoids stranger
at the beginning
but approachable
when mother
comes back (Ein-
Dor, &
Hirschberger,
2016)
Avoids stranger
and shows fear
sign
Baby is
comfortable with
stranger and
casually plays
with them.
Baby is feeling
terrified and
missing mother.
Reunion
Behaviour
Happy and
cheerful moment
of mother
returning
Baby approaches
the mother, but
resistant contact
might have
pushed her away.
Little interested
when mother
return.
Still crying even
after mother
returning back;
calms down after
some time.
Others Mother is seen as
a safe base to
discover the
surroundings
Baby cries more
and explore less
Both mother and
stranger equally
comfort the baby
(Liotti, 2016)
Even mother is
unable to
comfort the baby
when he is crying
According life span developmental theory, development does not stop even if adulthood is
reached to a person as it is a regular thing that occurs during whole lifetime. The life span theory
explains the individual’s activities from birth to death. This theory explains that development is
not completed in adulthood instead development is complex process that is continuous from life
to death. This approach investigates different stages of development as along with maturity,
different cognitive, biological and socioemotional development are initiated in a person. Three
important subjects of this approach are nature vs. nurture, change vs. stability and continuity vs.
discontinuity. Further, it should be noted that in a lifespan, a male person grows differently than

a female person (Nguyen, Weinstein, & Ryan, 2018). The way of comforting, learning and
emotional approaches is different of male person than women present in her development
process. It should also be noted that secure attachment given by a male caregiver is different
from that of a female caregiver as a father figure might not comfort to a child to that extent than
that of a motherly figure.
Further, it should be noted that before 80’s the researchers only believed that attachment is
categorized as human understanding from the crib to the grave. However, after mid 1980’s, the
concept of adult attachment started becoming serious. The idea of this attachment is relate to
romantic relationship where an emotional bond is developed between adult romantic partners
motivates each other, attaches behaviour and give rise to emotional bond between romantic
partners as well (Shaver, 2017). Below mentioned are the features of adult attachment theory:
 Both feel safe in company of each other
 Both engage in baby talks
 Both engage in close and bodily contact
 Both feel anxious when unreachable
 Both share discoveries with each other
Furthermore, talking about the positive as well as negative aspects of this statement, it should be
noted that secure attachment makes the person vulnerable in the environment. This type of
feature makes the infant or an adult get close to only one person that is either their parent or
partner due to which in most cases they feel distress and anxiety when their loved one leaves
them for a while (Gillath, Karantzas, & Fraley, 2016). So, it is can be said that this type of
attachment comes with its own good and bad features in the environment. Talking about
development, it should be noted that if a child is close to only one person in the environment
then it limits their scope to grow mentally because they will not face diverse circumstance with
other people. So, it should be noted that for both adult and infant, it is important for them to
interact with strangers and develop relationship with them as well otherwise absence of one
person with who the person is connect can stop the emotional growth of a person and make them
agitated as well.

Coming up to the good part, it should be noted that maintaining a strong bond with one person
makes the children and adult develop in a better way as in this way they can share their views
and opinion with one person and seek for their perspective as well. It should be noted that secure
attachment helps the person to emotionally as well as physically grow using the support of one
trustable person in the environment with whom they can be comfortable as well (Van Rosmalen,
Van Der Horst, & Van der Veer, 2016). Thus, in the limelight of above mentioned events, the
fact should be noted that on one part secure attachment helps the infant and adult in growing and
outshining their personality in the environment whereas on the other hand this type of bond or
relationship stagnate the growth of the individual as well. The paper represented the importance
of secure attachment along with its features in infant. It explained life span developmental theory
and adult attachment theory. The essay successfully explained details about secure attachment in
the environment.

References
Bowlby, R. (2018). Fifty years of attachment theory. In Fifty Years of Attachment Theory (pp.
11-26). Routledge.
Ein-Dor, T., & Hirschberger, G. (2016). Rethinking attachment theory: From a theory of
relationships to a theory of individual and group survival. Current Directions in
Psychological Science, 25(4), 223-227.
Fearon, P. (2017). ATTACHMENT THEORY. Transforming Infant Wellbeing: Research, Policy
and Practice for the First 1001 Critical Days.
Fonagy, P. (2018). Attachment theory and psychoanalysis. UK: Routledge.
Fonagy, P., Luyten, P., Allison, E., & Campbell, C. (2018). Reconciling psychoanalytic ideas
with attachment theory. Guilford Press.
Gillath, O., Karantzas, G. C., & Fraley, R. C. (2016). Adult attachment: A concise introduction to
theory and research. Academic Press.
Liotti, G. (2016). Infant attachment and the origins of dissociative processes: an approach based
on the evolutionary theory of multiple motivational systems. Attachment, 10(1), 20-36.
McLeod, S., (2018). Mary Ainsworth. Retrieved from <
https://www.simplypsychology.org/mary-ainsworth.html>
Nguyen, T. V., Weinstein, N., & Ryan, R. (2018). Identifying Personality Characteristics
associated with the Capacity to be Alone using Big-Five Theory, Attachment Theory, and
Self-Determination Theory.
Shaver, P. (2017). Attachment to Attachment Theory. Voices: Journal of the American Academy
of Psychotherapists, 35.
Van Rosmalen, L., Van Der Horst, F. C., & Van der Veer, R. (2016). From secure dependency to
attachment: Mary Ainsworth’s integration of Blatz’s security theory into Bowlby’s
attachment theory. History of Psychology, 19(1), 22.

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