Review of Attachment and psychoanalysis: Theory, research, and implications.

Review of Attachment and psychoanalysis: Theory, research, and implications.

Wallerstein, Robert S.

Psychoanalytic Psychology, Vol 31(1), Jan 2014, 145-150.
doi:
10.1037/a0035551

Attachment Theory and Psychohistory: Part II: Psychohistorical Aspects of Attachment

Both attachment theory and the psychogenic theory of history have origins in psychoanalysis. John Bowlby was a member of the "British Psychoanalytic Society," where in the 1950s he presented his most important findings in lectures for the first time. Among the analysts, however, this caused great dismay ("Bowlby? Give me Barrabas!"1), since Bowlby attacked a core area of psychoanalysis at that time, drive theory, and replaced it with ethological, cybernetic and cognitive-psychological concepts. (Today the relationship between attachment theory and psychoanalysis is again more relaxed.2) However, Lloyd deMause kept stronger bonds to some classical psychoanalytical concepts than Bowlby (e.g. transmission, regression, internalized feelings of guilt, "restaging" of earlier traumata), without first embedding them into a new theoretical environment as Bowlby had attempted to do. Only later were results of brain and trauma research incorporated into the psychogenic theory, which placed some patterns of reaction, previously based only on psychoanalytical assumptions on a new foundation.3 In one aspect, however, Bowlby and deMause removed themselves at an equally early stage from Freudian conceptions: In the weighting of the meaning of real experiences of the child over against assumed drives and fantasies.4 Bowlby: "I am interested in the internal world just like anybody else, but I view it as a rather precise reflection of that which a person has experienced in external reality."5 This sentence could just as well have stemmed from deMause. As a result of this in both theories early socialization is assigned a lifelong relevance and internal "parent-representations" ("internal working models" in attachment theory, "Terrifying Mommy" as separated personality segment for deMause6) play an important role in later life. Both theories also recognize the transgenerational transmission of internalized interaction patterns. The meaning of child-rearing practices in a culture, as deMause stresses, is also seen by representatives of attachment theory:.........