What is attachment and what does it mean to raise children “according to the theory of attachment”?
Attachment = love
Photo:Getty ImagesThe word "attachment" itself as a designation of a certain psychological phenomenon arose in the middle of the last century. The English psychoanalyst John Bowlby, observing small children in hospitals, noticed a very strange and alarming phenomenon: when parents brought a child to the hospital to leave him there for treatment (in Great Britain at that time this was a common practice), the child cried, clung to the parents, did not want them to leave, pushed away doctors and nurses, did not allow strangers to manipulate him. This continued for about three days on average, after which the child seemed to be replaced: he stopped crying, became apathetic, indifferent to manipulations over him, it became much easier for the medical staff to manage such a child, and it was believed that the child "got used to" or "adapted". But when the parents came to pick up their baby upon discharge from the hospital, instead of running to meet them, he refused to acknowledge them, ran away, hid, threw tantrums and pushed the parents away in every possible way. John Bowlby was seriously alarmed by the psychological transformations that occurred in the little person in just a few days under conditions of separation from his parents. According to the recollections of the scientist's son, Sir Richard Bowlby, one day his father came home very excited and told his wife at length about what he had observed in the hospital, describing the suffering of babies without parents and their "strange" behavior when meeting their own adults. After a long and excited conversation, John Bowlby said: "I will call such changes in behavior the Bowlby effect," to which his wife suddenly exploded: "What the hell is the Bowlby effect, it's love!" John Bowlby turned white and sat silently for a long time, clutching his head in his hands. At that time, no self-respecting scientist could afford to study something with a name consisting of four letters (love)! No scientific community was ready to recognize such a researcher as a scientist. This is how the word "attachment" appeared in psychological science.
New is well forgotten old
Photo:Getty ImagesAttachment is a person's desire, craving, yearning for contact and closeness with their own kind. Despite the fact that the word "attachment" as a psychological term is no more than 60 years old, the phenomenon itself has always existed and has been studied since time immemorial. Even the ancient Greeks discussed the social nature of man. There are many philosophical, psychological treatises and studies that talk about attachment, but nowhere mention this term.
