What is attachment and what does it mean to raise children “according to the theory of attachment”?
Affection = love
A photo: Getty Images The very word “attachment” (attachment) as a designation of a certain psychological phenomenon originated in the middle of the last century. The English psychoanalyst John Bowlby, observing young children in hospitals, noticed a very strange and alarmed phenomenon: when parents brought a child to hospital to leave there for treatment (in the UK then it was common practice), the child cried, clung to his parents, did not want them to leave, pushed doctors and nurses away, did not let strangers to spend d is the manipulation. This lasted on average for about three days, after which the child seemed to be substituted: he stopped crying, became apathetic, indifferent to manipulation, the medical staff became much easier to manage with such a child, and it was believed that the child was “used” or “adapted” . But when, at discharge from the hospital, parents came to pick up their baby, instead of running to meet their parents, he refused to recognize them, ran away, hid, threw tantrums and pushed parents away in every way. John Bowlby was seriously alarmed by the psychological transformations that separation from parents occurred with a little man for literally a few days. According to the memoirs of the scientist's son, Sir Richard Bowlby, one day his father came home very excited and told his wife a long time about what he had seen in the hospital, describing the suffering of kids without parents and their “strange” behavior when meeting with their own adults. After a long and excited conversation John Bowlby said: “I will call such changes in behavior the Bowlby effect”, to which the wife suddenly exploded: “What the hell Bowlby effect is love!” John Bowlby turned white and sat silently for a long time, his head in his hands. At that time, no self-respecting scientist could afford to explore something with a name consisting of four letters (love)! Not a single scientific community was prepared to recognize such a researcher as a scientist. Thus, the word “attachment” appeared in psychological science.
New is well forgotten old
A photo: Getty Images Tying is craving, craving, longing for contact and intimacy with others. Despite the fact that the word “attachment” as a psychological term is no more than 60 years, the phenomenon itself has always existed and has been studied since time immemorial. Even the ancient Greeks talked about the social nature of man. There are many philosophical, psychological treatises and studies that speak of attachment, but never mention this term.
