I’ve never had the slightest belief in astrology, but then, that’s very typical of Aquariuses like me.
Lindsay S
6 months ago
This is less about Bowlby being nonsense and more about the mental health hypochondria that is infecting western society all thanks to the internet. That and our obsession with pigeonholing ourselves.
There is nothing wrong with being a loving parent, neglectful parents do a lot of damage to their children. Don’t believe me? Try working with those children!
I agree a loving parent is a wonderful thing, likely to trump any problems. Do you not think though that ‘helicopter parenting’ is a real thing? Coddling, over-protection, smothering, trying to be, first and foremost, a friend to your kids – acts born of love (also fear)….bears testament to the idea ‘you can have too much of a good thing’.
Absolutely! Helicopter parents undermine a child’s ability to learn to trust their own judgment. That’s why they say the goal is the “good enough” parent. Too much and too little is detrimental to growth.
Where in the article does it mention that there’s something wrong with being a loving parent?
Attachment theory more or less says “if you want to have healthy children that form productive relationships then you’d better be present and engaged as a parent”.
My parents were in general kind and loving, if a bit too strict, or maybe too critical.
I found in adulthood, though, that nothing will drive a woman away quite like neediness or insecurity. And few things will attract them so effectively as confident, disinterested assertion, other than, perhaps, above average height.
Being kind or loving is rarely sexually attractive to most women. Father Christmas, Jesus of Nazareth, and child care workers are kind and loving.
Few women – likely none – find them sexy.
I guess it’s a fair warning about the perils of self-diagnosis in general. If you’re genuinely worried, anguished or in pain, go see a reputable professional. Attempting to see yourself from the inside usually isn’t instructive, beyond a pretty basic level. Probably why humans are, at base, social beings I suppose: interacting with peers keeps us grounded, helps to frame behaviour in a sane, coherent way… but t’internet isn’t a substitute for actual social interaction, as we all know, all too well.
”Reputable professionals”? There may be no subject more intriguing than psychology but the reality is that it is a very early stage of development. Psychology and Psychiatry are perhaps where physical medicine was in 200 AD, when Galen was pontificating about the four humours. Attachment theory, Freud, etc are theories of similar quality. Some are plausible, a few may last but virtually none are proven today in any scientific sense. One day there may be professionals able to offer well based advice but at present there are only, at best, gifted amateurs stumbling around in the dark.
Allison Barrows
6 months ago
I always laugh when columnists and others use phrases like “over educated American liberals”. They are, in fact, flattering themselves. These self-proclaimed towers of intellect are not only not over educated, they are mal or dis educated, steeped in fads and propaganda, almost wholly ignorant of even the most recent history, and incapable of writing grammatically correct, lucid sentences, or even just thinking clearly.
And liberal? The least liberal, open-minded people one will ever meet currently attends, is employed by, or graduated from an institute of higher learning – as comical a misnomer as exists today.
And now we have Gen Z shrieking about their fragile mental health every time they have a fight with their boyfriend over whose turn it is to take out the trash. Why wouldn’t one avoid attachments like that? It’s not a syndrome, it’s common sense.
Beautifully put. I completely agree!
Economics used to be called ” common sense made difficult”- I now add Zoomer and Millenial psycho- babble as this writer mostly does to the description.
Think he is confused about most aspects of existence.
Heh. I like that. I had an economics prof who was so incoherent everyone in his class got an “incomplete”. The college had to reimburse all of us for the entire semester. Guess what? Some years later I ran into him at a dinner party. He was teaching adult ed at a local community college. I asked him his subject. Intro to Algebra!
The very first sentence shows a failure to understand what ‘over-educated’ means (i.e. it actually means what she is complaining about). In psychological terms, the comment displays black & white thinking; overgeneralisation; mind-reading; emotional-reasoning. In everyday terms it is such a stale strident cariacature that it spoils the valid points it is trying to make. It looks for all the World like an ill-thought through-polemic, made for the likes.
Many, e.g. Jonathan Haidt, Bill Maher, having been making these points for over a decade – carefully, constructively, with humour.
“And now we have Gen Z shrieking about their fragile mental health every time they have a fight with their boyfriend over whose turn it is to take out the trash”.
.
I’m definitely too old. My wife still doesn’t know where to take out the trash and never knew it 🙁
hayden eastwood
6 months ago
Freddie I had no idea we had so much in common.
As someone who would fall into the “disorganised attachment” catchment I find attachment theory useful, within reason.
The take home message for me is that someone who attaches as I do must only ever pair romantically with a stable attacher.
Stable attachers are fortunate in that they can reliably pair with most other attachment styles. They can shoulder the withdrawal of the avoidant and weather the storm of the anxious.
But avoidant, anxious and disorganised attachers form (almost exlusively) explosively volatile relationships with each other.
When it comes to choosing a partner to have children with it’s important to be realistic about how you respond to emotional distance and emotional closeness.
I think the trouble with the theory, much like most theories, is that once Americans get hold of it, they shake it like a dog, apply it frivolously to all situations like a straight-jacket and, thereafter, it becomes so distorted as to be meaningless (like has happened with almost all discussions of “Narcissism”, a term which has now lost all of its original meaning and now speaks of everything from “someone unpleasant” to a “megalomaniac mass murderer”).
Glynis Roache
6 months ago
At the current stage of knowledge, turning exclusively to the world of scientific medicine is not as easy as it sounds in this particular instance. Psychiatrists/psychologists are genuinely handicapped in their knowledge of the organ they treat. They can examine aspects of the brain’s form and function with the latest technology but in truth it is an organ, an ‘it’ – a processor/storehouse of current and previous experience with a profusion of inputs from the world around. And from this profusion of inputs and past programming emerges the mind. Which is an ‘I’. And this ‘I’ is a wholly different proposition that can only begin to be unravelled via communication and interpretation. Neuroscientists can look at a fancy scan and see a specific part of a person’s brain light up and say – ‘oh look – happy!’ But why the patient is happy is an entirely different matter. A successful murderer or a triumphant lover? Your choice if you just consult the brain as an organ.
There are certain correlations between form and function of course – which has, with the scientific advances, naturally encouraged a professional drift towards the more solid ground of neurobiology. The aim being to further develop the means by which to observe impaired function and parallel it with the mechanics of correction. For stroke and accident victims etc. this approach is of immense benefit. For psychological disorders, not so much. Even the drugs are mostly symptomatic treatment. A cover up or diminution of symptoms that doesn’t specifically help patients interpret their own depths or come to any emotional resolution – though it may give them a calmer breathing space in which to do so.
When I first read that I chuckled, but I would say “highly credentialed” because while they have certificates and have spent time in the system, they are not educated. Trained in occupational techniques, yes; indoctrinated into the au courant beliefs and norms, certainly; educated, no, not at all.
I’d like to know from which factory NPR orders the soporific robots it uses as its newsreaders, and whether that factory could change the default persona to, say, Macho Man Randy Savage.
Joel Guarna
6 months ago
I’m a fan of Freddie’s writing wherever it appears. It is usually clear, coherent, and precise. However, the language in this article is a hot mess. He is conflating psychology, a science of human behavior, with mental health treatment, which is the application of different bodies of knowledge by a wide variety of different disciplines from social workers to therapists to psychiatrists and primary care physicians (the de facto mental health providers for most people). He then conflates medicine with science. While there is much hard science in the body of medical knowledge applied by physicians, the practice is much more of a collection of principles and techniques. Regardless, psychology is not a branch of medicine. In fact, psychology’s decades-long dance with medicine has led to the over-medicalization of human suffering that has caused a lot of harm. This is a LOT of confusion, and we haven’t even gotten past the subtitle.
Psychiatry is a branch of medicine – the one that is obsessed with medical type lables (as seen in the DSM, and its pill for ever problem mentality) – I get the impression you are conflating psychology with psychiatry. There are ten or so main branches of psychology, few if any, I would say, are over-medicalised.
“The result is a system that’s non-falsifiable, and thus not useful.” Well said.
The claim that parenting style A will result in attachment style X is easily falsifiable:
Two children, with the same parenting can end up with two opposite characters; One could be compliant to the parental demands and a compliant adult, the other could stand against it and become a rebel.Someone with insecure attachment might find a loving relationship and settle into it. Another with secure attachment could pick unreliable partners who let them down and develop the sypmtoms of the other attachment.
UnHerd Reader
6 months ago
This is a strange piece. Someone is warning us off googling attachment theory and applying it to our life without understanding more than a meme. This does not need saying, does it? But it goes on to offer us the authors amateur self-diagnoses of a type of attachment theory. What is going on with this article?
I pointed out that Andrew Doyle’s article about a sodomite being punished for philandering was trolling someone who was being punished by a feminist Telegram group because he was allegedly philandering. The victim had just put up a Facebook post the day before Doyle’s article was published. Doyle’s article was prepared in advance.
Part of the same Facebook post can be interpreted as confessing to what de Boer confesses to in this article, “When I’ve wanted to end a relationship […] I was trying to avoid was not present.” De Boer trolls the victim of harassment in other ways as well. This is the aim of the article, which is why it so strange.
This victim is trying to expose an online Telegram group chat that harasses, stalks, drugs, robs, and sexually assaults men. In other actions, they aim to provoke a reaction from the victim that they can catch on camera. They also hack emails and mobile phones to garner material to conducts a smear campaign against him online. Sadly, many people are fooled into taking part, believing what is said about him in the smear campaign. If you want another perspective check out his Substack: interpocula | Substack
Sarah Robinson
6 months ago
I’m an avoidant type too. I always seem to attract anxious types whose neediness drives me nuts. I wonder too whether some of we avoidant types are just hyper aware of the fragility of our fellow humans and are less tolerant of whims, inconsistencies and the problems associated with a lack of EQ.I’ve tried frank discussions when things go astray. They never seem to have a positive outcome – behaviour change is so hard. Anxious types just get ever more anxious when they know you’ve got doubts, because you’ve shared them in an attempt at an open ended discussion. Alan de Botton is hot on all this childhood wounds stuff – he thinks we’re all doomed to end up parenting our infantile partners, and if we are lucky have our inner childhood needs met in return. Hasn’t felt very reciprocal to me!
John Lammi
6 months ago
Psychology should be based in good scientific research and good theorizing, but not on “medicine “. WHY would it be based on medicine?
Fascinating. The author mentions how he dislikes religion, spirituality, and ‘woo-woo’, expresses his familiarity with and fondness for whatever is trending in the world of self-help and psychology, notes the similarities between these things and astrology, which even most religious people consider ridiculous, and yet manages not to to draw any personal insight from this, his faith in ‘science’, ‘education’, and ‘expertise’ intact despite the evidence he offers that it might in fact be less than gospel truth. Like all worshipers at the altar of scientific empiricism, he’s trying to stand on his own head. The entire concept rests upon an impossibility, that objective truth can be gleaned from the same source as everything else, ourselves, and separated into ‘truth’ and ‘woo-woo’ by the same minds equally capable of both. It is thus no surprise to me that the trends of self styled over-educated liberals look remarkably like astrology. Both astrology and psychology were invented by mankind to explain things we perceive. Which is more accurate? Well, if the universe is fully deterministic, then the relative positions of the stars and planets, while they do not ’cause’ events in our lives, nevertheless would correspond to a particular state of the universe, which includes us and whatever we’re doing, so in a sense both the positions of stars and planets and our actions are all predetermined and if one truly understood all the interactions between the one and the other and the nature of all interactions in the deterministic universe, one could deduce the former from the latter, or vice versa. Of course, that too is speculation from my mind. Really, there is no truly objective way to know, as whatever we know as ‘truth’ and however we know it, as well as all fiction, every piece of ridiculous nonsense, were all conceived of by us.
Religion, at least, interrupts this endless recursion by positing the existence of a greater being, beings, energy, spirit, truth, or at least something which is beyond our understanding which we may perhaps perceive indirectly, but never understand, that defines truth, morality, and other important concepts in a way that doesn’t refer back to ourselves in a manner we don’t and can’t understand. I’ve always thought of religion as basically accepting the limitations of oneself and professing faith in someone or something greater than us. It requires a degree of humility, a virtue I find sorely lacking in modern humans, so it makes sense that religion and spirituality would be on the decline. This makes no difference to me, as by whatever blessing, curse, or quirk of biology, I have little inclination to ape the views and opinions of my fellow apes. I have always been this way, but I have come to understand this personal trait is rather uncommon.
Given my opinion of mankind in its individual form is quite low and my opinion of humanity collectively is far lower than that, I’ve always been of the religious persuasion, but rather amorphous beyond that. Christianity appeals to me because it seems most logical. It’s basic truism, do unto others, strikes me as being logical in a closed loop sort of way, recognizing as it does the self-referential nature of our existence which I posited in the first paragraph. It’s the sort of insight I would expect to come from a being greater than ourselves, or at least one of us who had a far greater insight into something beyond than I do.
Jane Davis
6 months ago
Attachment theory started as a corrective to the overly fantasy based approach of Psychoanalysis, where children who had been separated from their parents during war were diagnosed without reference to their trauma or social circumstances.
It is only based on one or two experiments, which were endlessly repeated but not greatly modified – see Mary Ainsworth’s work.
Like much Psychology, it is culture blind – for example, Buddhist theory actually promotes non attachment whereas some religions deify family relationships in an idealistic way.
Bowlby also focuses on the mother almost exclusively and doesn’t mention the father or siblings, who also have a big impact.
This is a great article. Most personality theories have some truth and usefulness – and I’m including the MBTI because it raises questions of how we orientate ourselves to the world that are missing from ‘valid’ stuff like the Big Five.
They are all interpretations as the writer says. Human behaviour and relationships are too many layered and complex to be reduced to simplistic formulas.
Aphrodite Rises
6 months ago
To me this reads like one long advertisement: religion is woo hoo; put your mental health in the hands of the professionals.
Vir Raga
6 months ago
My main issue with Attachment theory is that it fails to allow for happy hermits. The theory implies everyone should be attached to a special other, and that those who are not attached must be suffering. But some people are genuinely happy to live solo. The solitary life does not have to be a pathology.
Nell Clover
6 months ago
Attachment theory. Just the use of the word theory in this context tells me this is quack nonsense that in no way is related to medical or any other science.
Attachment conjecture (to give it a scientific name) is another example of the expanding field of non-science (pronounced “nonsense”) masquerading as science. The driver for this is pure commercial opportunism that is destroying universities as centres of knowledge and advancement.
Entrepreneurs and corporations have an inexhaustible need for new products and services. The rapid expansion of universities has created an almost inexhaustible need for new areas of research and an insatiable demand for income to fund the new academic positions. The graduates of the universities need the jobs. And we the public are suckers for ideas-based marketing, especially relating to our wellbeing and health.
The danger is obvious: the commercialisation of research causes academia to lose all objectivity, spawning highly saleable dogma that then is transferred into the marketplace for the financial gain of all involved. The problem is most acute in social sciences and psychological medicine because the former is largely subjective and the latter is so vague due to sheer complexity.
This isn’t new of course. The late Victorian and Edwardian period saw an almost comedic proliferation of ideas badged as “scientific” and “theory”. And this wasn’t just kranks: respectable luminaries of the age were cashing in with their own hocus pocus. These “theories” eventually led to very dark conclusions such as eugenics (go read the Guardian archive from this period to see how self-supposing intelligent people are the most dangerous).
The eventual pushback then was state regulation. But this has proven to be just a stickingplaster. Today regulators are staffed by the same groups whom they are supposed to regulate and sometimes funded by the groups they’re supposed to investigate. Regulatory capture has left us once again defenceless against the hubris of theoreticians, human hunger for fortune, and our own narcissism.
“Just the use of the word theory in this context tells me this is quack nonsense that in no way is related to medical or any other science.”
It does not tell you that – ‘that’ is just your theory. You’re a psychologist or similar, who has read Bowlby, and are familiar with the formative studies, and the subsequent ones that support, adapt, challenge the concepts?
This isn’t my theory, it is the precise scientific definition of the word theory. Easy for non-scientists to get wrong, but the tell tale for those who aren’t scientists hawking non-science as science.
In the field of science a conjecture is an idea that can’t be empirically tested as there is no agreed way of testing it.
In the field of science a hypothesis is an idea that can be empirically tested and either has been proven or makes no further testable predictions.
In the field of science a theory is a an idea that has been empirically tested, proven, and has made further testable predictions that too have been tested and proven. Relatively few ideas achieve the gold standard to be called theories.
In science nothing is actually proven, a hypothesis may be accepted when the supporting evidence is considered sufficient. A conjecture is something implied by the accepted science, yet to be tested or implied by the available evidence.
Agree wholeheartedly except for the last sentence. We are not defenceless, that’s just what these manipulative shitweasels want us to believe.
Steve Murray
6 months ago
There is of course, one very long-standing theory in human psychology which the author merely touches on; which is useful rather than true – that is, useful until it’s not, or until it’s taken to extremes.
“my parents were remarkably libertine, relentlessly loving, and gave us the opportunity to express our feelings. It’s true that we were raised to be independent and make our own choices. But this wasn’t a result of neglect; it was, in fact, a purposeful approach to parenting, and thus a reflection of love.”
Stoicism?
Kate Madrid
6 months ago
I heard the most obvious thing recently. So obvious and important that it’s invisible. It was that if you want to heal someone, you have to know what wholeness is. So when you go looking for an “expert,” or “medical professional” to heal you, you might want to find out what that expert thinks wholeness is. Can an atheist be an expert on a religious animal?
laura m
6 months ago
A problematic social trend is increasing and promoted in memes and pop psychology journals like Psychology Today. Estranging parents to reclaim your “mental health” with the use of “boundaries”. These term mean anything the person shunning their families want it to mean. Interestingly, when they become parents they practice “extreme attachment” methods while discarding their loving parents/grandparents.
Bret Larson
6 months ago
There is another issue these ideas have. Choice.
Simon S
6 months ago
Freddie – I am a regression hypnotherapist and tomorrow as it happens I am having a third session with a client who came to me saying he suffered from separation anxiety. He is much, much better and cannot believe his progress.
It takes a lot of courage to assume responsibility for our own healing – especially when instead of aiming only for (usually temporary) symptom alleviation we decide to address and resolve the underlying causes, which is achieved tbrough identifying the causal event(s), reliving and cathartically releasing them, forgiving the other party or parties, and (lastly) cognitive reframing.
Baffled by the down vote(s). I must live in a parallel universe!
Last edited 6 months ago by Simon S
Christopher Barclay
6 months ago
No competent psychologist would rely on one theory or indicator. That is the moral of the story. Attachment theory is just one such theory, though seemingly quite useful.
Jane Davis
6 months ago
Mental Health does not have the validity, reliability or replicatability of many physical health problems. Mainly due to the relative infancy of neuroscience but also because the sociological element is often neglected.
Erik nielsen
6 months ago
I would have liked some links to the scientific critiques of attachment theory rather than just the author’s personal case study.
Sarah Owens
6 months ago
Throwing the Big Five personality dimensions into the same category as Myers Briggs or attachment theory is misleading. Big Five personality traits are normally distributed and therefore most people are ‘in the middle’ rather than being divided into ‘types’ at the extremes. This is because it is an empirically derived model using factor analysis rather than a top-down attempt to apply somebody’s psychological theory to the data.
Amy Harris
6 months ago
The author comes across as deeply confused. A mystery as to why… until the latter part of the piece and there it is! His disclosure about being an atheist. Atheism is a symptom of avoidant style of attachment. There’s his answer. Open a bible, try going to church. Praying he finds the meaning he so deeply seeks.
Amy, your comment implies that you receive the largest number of downvotes frequently. Consider then, that your truth/the truth does not actually make others uncomfortable, but rather that you write a lot of tosh.
Resorting to insults supports Amy’s interpretation of the downvotes. I guess you have a democratic view of truth (or rather it’s approximation): the more upvotes there are, the greater the truth content, the more downvotes, the less the truth content. For me, posting regardless of the number of downvotes indicates strength of character. Not someone who bends with the wind. The wind in this case being downvotes and insults.
Denz wasn’t insulting. He didn’t criticize Amy as a person just her actions, her writing. It’s the comments section so one’s comments are fair game, are they not?
Nothing like this! When a person writes nonsense, the nonsense is simply ignored. But the reaction to the generally innocuous advice to read the Bible means it has outraged many. I should note that all communists are atheists. This allowed them to kill millions for completely rational Marxist reasons.
I’ve never had the slightest belief in astrology, but then, that’s very typical of Aquariuses like me.
This is less about Bowlby being nonsense and more about the mental health hypochondria that is infecting western society all thanks to the internet. That and our obsession with pigeonholing ourselves.
There is nothing wrong with being a loving parent, neglectful parents do a lot of damage to their children. Don’t believe me? Try working with those children!
I agree a loving parent is a wonderful thing, likely to trump any problems. Do you not think though that ‘helicopter parenting’ is a real thing? Coddling, over-protection, smothering, trying to be, first and foremost, a friend to your kids – acts born of love (also fear)….bears testament to the idea ‘you can have too much of a good thing’.
Absolutely! Helicopter parents undermine a child’s ability to learn to trust their own judgment. That’s why they say the goal is the “good enough” parent. Too much and too little is detrimental to growth.
I think you’re talking about being controlling not loving. There can never be too much unconditional love.
Where in the article does it mention that there’s something wrong with being a loving parent?
Attachment theory more or less says “if you want to have healthy children that form productive relationships then you’d better be present and engaged as a parent”.
My parents were in general kind and loving, if a bit too strict, or maybe too critical.
I found in adulthood, though, that nothing will drive a woman away quite like neediness or insecurity. And few things will attract them so effectively as confident, disinterested assertion, other than, perhaps, above average height.
Being kind or loving is rarely sexually attractive to most women. Father Christmas, Jesus of Nazareth, and child care workers are kind and loving.
Few women – likely none – find them sexy.
My comment was more a reaction to the comment of attachment theory being nonsense.
Exactly.
I guess it’s a fair warning about the perils of self-diagnosis in general. If you’re genuinely worried, anguished or in pain, go see a reputable professional. Attempting to see yourself from the inside usually isn’t instructive, beyond a pretty basic level. Probably why humans are, at base, social beings I suppose: interacting with peers keeps us grounded, helps to frame behaviour in a sane, coherent way… but t’internet isn’t a substitute for actual social interaction, as we all know, all too well.
”Reputable professionals”? There may be no subject more intriguing than psychology but the reality is that it is a very early stage of development. Psychology and Psychiatry are perhaps where physical medicine was in 200 AD, when Galen was pontificating about the four humours. Attachment theory, Freud, etc are theories of similar quality. Some are plausible, a few may last but virtually none are proven today in any scientific sense. One day there may be professionals able to offer well based advice but at present there are only, at best, gifted amateurs stumbling around in the dark.
I always laugh when columnists and others use phrases like “over educated American liberals”. They are, in fact, flattering themselves. These self-proclaimed towers of intellect are not only not over educated, they are mal or dis educated, steeped in fads and propaganda, almost wholly ignorant of even the most recent history, and incapable of writing grammatically correct, lucid sentences, or even just thinking clearly.
And liberal? The least liberal, open-minded people one will ever meet currently attends, is employed by, or graduated from an institute of higher learning – as comical a misnomer as exists today.
And now we have Gen Z shrieking about their fragile mental health every time they have a fight with their boyfriend over whose turn it is to take out the trash. Why wouldn’t one avoid attachments like that? It’s not a syndrome, it’s common sense.
Beautifully put. I completely agree!
Economics used to be called ” common sense made difficult”- I now add Zoomer and Millenial psycho- babble as this writer mostly does to the description.
Think he is confused about most aspects of existence.
Heh. I like that. I had an economics prof who was so incoherent everyone in his class got an “incomplete”. The college had to reimburse all of us for the entire semester. Guess what? Some years later I ran into him at a dinner party. He was teaching adult ed at a local community college. I asked him his subject. Intro to Algebra!
Equal mumbo jumbo!
Not sure why someone would downvote this. The ignorance of people with serious postgraduate degrees doesn’t bode well.
The very first sentence shows a failure to understand what ‘over-educated’ means (i.e. it actually means what she is complaining about). In psychological terms, the comment displays black & white thinking; overgeneralisation; mind-reading; emotional-reasoning. In everyday terms it is such a stale strident cariacature that it spoils the valid points it is trying to make. It looks for all the World like an ill-thought through-polemic, made for the likes.
Many, e.g. Jonathan Haidt, Bill Maher, having been making these points for over a decade – carefully, constructively, with humour.
Thanks for the additional giggle, Dominic!
Ah good – humour is the best defense; pain turns into pleasure, doesn’t get ant better than that.
You can’t trust anyone under 30.
Or over 30! The sweet spot is at precisely 30.
Spot on. Allison, you’re the greatest.
“And now we have Gen Z shrieking about their fragile mental health every time they have a fight with their boyfriend over whose turn it is to take out the trash”.
.
I’m definitely too old. My wife still doesn’t know where to take out the trash and never knew it 🙁
Freddie I had no idea we had so much in common.
As someone who would fall into the “disorganised attachment” catchment I find attachment theory useful, within reason.
The take home message for me is that someone who attaches as I do must only ever pair romantically with a stable attacher.
Stable attachers are fortunate in that they can reliably pair with most other attachment styles. They can shoulder the withdrawal of the avoidant and weather the storm of the anxious.
But avoidant, anxious and disorganised attachers form (almost exlusively) explosively volatile relationships with each other.
When it comes to choosing a partner to have children with it’s important to be realistic about how you respond to emotional distance and emotional closeness.
I think the trouble with the theory, much like most theories, is that once Americans get hold of it, they shake it like a dog, apply it frivolously to all situations like a straight-jacket and, thereafter, it becomes so distorted as to be meaningless (like has happened with almost all discussions of “Narcissism”, a term which has now lost all of its original meaning and now speaks of everything from “someone unpleasant” to a “megalomaniac mass murderer”).
At the current stage of knowledge, turning exclusively to the world of scientific medicine is not as easy as it sounds in this particular instance. Psychiatrists/psychologists are genuinely handicapped in their knowledge of the organ they treat. They can examine aspects of the brain’s form and function with the latest technology but in truth it is an organ, an ‘it’ – a processor/storehouse of current and previous experience with a profusion of inputs from the world around. And from this profusion of inputs and past programming emerges the mind. Which is an ‘I’. And this ‘I’ is a wholly different proposition that can only begin to be unravelled via communication and interpretation. Neuroscientists can look at a fancy scan and see a specific part of a person’s brain light up and say – ‘oh look – happy!’ But why the patient is happy is an entirely different matter. A successful murderer or a triumphant lover? Your choice if you just consult the brain as an organ.
There are certain correlations between form and function of course – which has, with the scientific advances, naturally encouraged a professional drift towards the more solid ground of neurobiology. The aim being to further develop the means by which to observe impaired function and parallel it with the mechanics of correction. For stroke and accident victims etc. this approach is of immense benefit. For psychological disorders, not so much. Even the drugs are mostly symptomatic treatment. A cover up or diminution of symptoms that doesn’t specifically help patients interpret their own depths or come to any emotional resolution – though it may give them a calmer breathing space in which to do so.
My Effectively treating an anxiety disorder has never had anything to do with medicine
I would give this fine essay an A+ for the following observation alone: “NPR, which is a good guide to the id of the overeducated American liberal.”
When I first read that I chuckled, but I would say “highly credentialed” because while they have certificates and have spent time in the system, they are not educated. Trained in occupational techniques, yes; indoctrinated into the au courant beliefs and norms, certainly; educated, no, not at all.
I’d like to know from which factory NPR orders the soporific robots it uses as its newsreaders, and whether that factory could change the default persona to, say, Macho Man Randy Savage.
I’m a fan of Freddie’s writing wherever it appears. It is usually clear, coherent, and precise. However, the language in this article is a hot mess. He is conflating psychology, a science of human behavior, with mental health treatment, which is the application of different bodies of knowledge by a wide variety of different disciplines from social workers to therapists to psychiatrists and primary care physicians (the de facto mental health providers for most people). He then conflates medicine with science. While there is much hard science in the body of medical knowledge applied by physicians, the practice is much more of a collection of principles and techniques. Regardless, psychology is not a branch of medicine. In fact, psychology’s decades-long dance with medicine has led to the over-medicalization of human suffering that has caused a lot of harm. This is a LOT of confusion, and we haven’t even gotten past the subtitle.
Psychiatry is a branch of medicine – the one that is obsessed with medical type lables (as seen in the DSM, and its pill for ever problem mentality) – I get the impression you are conflating psychology with psychiatry. There are ten or so main branches of psychology, few if any, I would say, are over-medicalised.
Psychologists can’t prescribe.
“The result is a system that’s non-falsifiable, and thus not useful.” Well said.
The claim that parenting style A will result in attachment style X is easily falsifiable:
Two children, with the same parenting can end up with two opposite characters; One could be compliant to the parental demands and a compliant adult, the other could stand against it and become a rebel.Someone with insecure attachment might find a loving relationship and settle into it. Another with secure attachment could pick unreliable partners who let them down and develop the sypmtoms of the other attachment.
This is a strange piece. Someone is warning us off googling attachment theory and applying it to our life without understanding more than a meme. This does not need saying, does it? But it goes on to offer us the authors amateur self-diagnoses of a type of attachment theory. What is going on with this article?
I pointed out that Andrew Doyle’s article about a sodomite being punished for philandering was trolling someone who was being punished by a feminist Telegram group because he was allegedly philandering. The victim had just put up a Facebook post the day before Doyle’s article was published. Doyle’s article was prepared in advance.
Part of the same Facebook post can be interpreted as confessing to what de Boer confesses to in this article, “When I’ve wanted to end a relationship […] I was trying to avoid was not present.” De Boer trolls the victim of harassment in other ways as well. This is the aim of the article, which is why it so strange.
This victim is trying to expose an online Telegram group chat that harasses, stalks, drugs, robs, and sexually assaults men. In other actions, they aim to provoke a reaction from the victim that they can catch on camera. They also hack emails and mobile phones to garner material to conducts a smear campaign against him online. Sadly, many people are fooled into taking part, believing what is said about him in the smear campaign. If you want another perspective check out his Substack: interpocula | Substack
I’m an avoidant type too. I always seem to attract anxious types whose neediness drives me nuts. I wonder too whether some of we avoidant types are just hyper aware of the fragility of our fellow humans and are less tolerant of whims, inconsistencies and the problems associated with a lack of EQ.I’ve tried frank discussions when things go astray. They never seem to have a positive outcome – behaviour change is so hard. Anxious types just get ever more anxious when they know you’ve got doubts, because you’ve shared them in an attempt at an open ended discussion. Alan de Botton is hot on all this childhood wounds stuff – he thinks we’re all doomed to end up parenting our infantile partners, and if we are lucky have our inner childhood needs met in return. Hasn’t felt very reciprocal to me!
Psychology should be based in good scientific research and good theorizing, but not on “medicine “. WHY would it be based on medicine?
Exactly.
Fascinating. The author mentions how he dislikes religion, spirituality, and ‘woo-woo’, expresses his familiarity with and fondness for whatever is trending in the world of self-help and psychology, notes the similarities between these things and astrology, which even most religious people consider ridiculous, and yet manages not to to draw any personal insight from this, his faith in ‘science’, ‘education’, and ‘expertise’ intact despite the evidence he offers that it might in fact be less than gospel truth. Like all worshipers at the altar of scientific empiricism, he’s trying to stand on his own head. The entire concept rests upon an impossibility, that objective truth can be gleaned from the same source as everything else, ourselves, and separated into ‘truth’ and ‘woo-woo’ by the same minds equally capable of both. It is thus no surprise to me that the trends of self styled over-educated liberals look remarkably like astrology. Both astrology and psychology were invented by mankind to explain things we perceive. Which is more accurate? Well, if the universe is fully deterministic, then the relative positions of the stars and planets, while they do not ’cause’ events in our lives, nevertheless would correspond to a particular state of the universe, which includes us and whatever we’re doing, so in a sense both the positions of stars and planets and our actions are all predetermined and if one truly understood all the interactions between the one and the other and the nature of all interactions in the deterministic universe, one could deduce the former from the latter, or vice versa. Of course, that too is speculation from my mind. Really, there is no truly objective way to know, as whatever we know as ‘truth’ and however we know it, as well as all fiction, every piece of ridiculous nonsense, were all conceived of by us.
Religion, at least, interrupts this endless recursion by positing the existence of a greater being, beings, energy, spirit, truth, or at least something which is beyond our understanding which we may perhaps perceive indirectly, but never understand, that defines truth, morality, and other important concepts in a way that doesn’t refer back to ourselves in a manner we don’t and can’t understand. I’ve always thought of religion as basically accepting the limitations of oneself and professing faith in someone or something greater than us. It requires a degree of humility, a virtue I find sorely lacking in modern humans, so it makes sense that religion and spirituality would be on the decline. This makes no difference to me, as by whatever blessing, curse, or quirk of biology, I have little inclination to ape the views and opinions of my fellow apes. I have always been this way, but I have come to understand this personal trait is rather uncommon.
Given my opinion of mankind in its individual form is quite low and my opinion of humanity collectively is far lower than that, I’ve always been of the religious persuasion, but rather amorphous beyond that. Christianity appeals to me because it seems most logical. It’s basic truism, do unto others, strikes me as being logical in a closed loop sort of way, recognizing as it does the self-referential nature of our existence which I posited in the first paragraph. It’s the sort of insight I would expect to come from a being greater than ourselves, or at least one of us who had a far greater insight into something beyond than I do.
Attachment theory started as a corrective to the overly fantasy based approach of Psychoanalysis, where children who had been separated from their parents during war were diagnosed without reference to their trauma or social circumstances.
It is only based on one or two experiments, which were endlessly repeated but not greatly modified – see Mary Ainsworth’s work.
Like much Psychology, it is culture blind – for example, Buddhist theory actually promotes non attachment whereas some religions deify family relationships in an idealistic way.
Bowlby also focuses on the mother almost exclusively and doesn’t mention the father or siblings, who also have a big impact.
This is a great article. Most personality theories have some truth and usefulness – and I’m including the MBTI because it raises questions of how we orientate ourselves to the world that are missing from ‘valid’ stuff like the Big Five.
They are all interpretations as the writer says. Human behaviour and relationships are too many layered and complex to be reduced to simplistic formulas.
To me this reads like one long advertisement: religion is woo hoo; put your mental health in the hands of the professionals.
My main issue with Attachment theory is that it fails to allow for happy hermits. The theory implies everyone should be attached to a special other, and that those who are not attached must be suffering. But some people are genuinely happy to live solo. The solitary life does not have to be a pathology.
Attachment theory. Just the use of the word theory in this context tells me this is quack nonsense that in no way is related to medical or any other science.
Attachment conjecture (to give it a scientific name) is another example of the expanding field of non-science (pronounced “nonsense”) masquerading as science. The driver for this is pure commercial opportunism that is destroying universities as centres of knowledge and advancement.
Entrepreneurs and corporations have an inexhaustible need for new products and services. The rapid expansion of universities has created an almost inexhaustible need for new areas of research and an insatiable demand for income to fund the new academic positions. The graduates of the universities need the jobs. And we the public are suckers for ideas-based marketing, especially relating to our wellbeing and health.
The danger is obvious: the commercialisation of research causes academia to lose all objectivity, spawning highly saleable dogma that then is transferred into the marketplace for the financial gain of all involved. The problem is most acute in social sciences and psychological medicine because the former is largely subjective and the latter is so vague due to sheer complexity.
This isn’t new of course. The late Victorian and Edwardian period saw an almost comedic proliferation of ideas badged as “scientific” and “theory”. And this wasn’t just kranks: respectable luminaries of the age were cashing in with their own hocus pocus. These “theories” eventually led to very dark conclusions such as eugenics (go read the Guardian archive from this period to see how self-supposing intelligent people are the most dangerous).
The eventual pushback then was state regulation. But this has proven to be just a stickingplaster. Today regulators are staffed by the same groups whom they are supposed to regulate and sometimes funded by the groups they’re supposed to investigate. Regulatory capture has left us once again defenceless against the hubris of theoreticians, human hunger for fortune, and our own narcissism.
“Just the use of the word theory in this context tells me this is quack nonsense that in no way is related to medical or any other science.”
It does not tell you that – ‘that’ is just your theory. You’re a psychologist or similar, who has read Bowlby, and are familiar with the formative studies, and the subsequent ones that support, adapt, challenge the concepts?
This isn’t my theory, it is the precise scientific definition of the word theory. Easy for non-scientists to get wrong, but the tell tale for those who aren’t scientists hawking non-science as science.
In the field of science a conjecture is an idea that can’t be empirically tested as there is no agreed way of testing it.
In the field of science a hypothesis is an idea that can be empirically tested and either has been proven or makes no further testable predictions.
In the field of science a theory is a an idea that has been empirically tested, proven, and has made further testable predictions that too have been tested and proven. Relatively few ideas achieve the gold standard to be called theories.
In science nothing is actually proven, a hypothesis may be accepted when the supporting evidence is considered sufficient. A conjecture is something implied by the accepted science, yet to be tested or implied by the available evidence.
or ‘hypothesis’.
In the scientific method, you then test the hypothesis to collect evidence.
Agree wholeheartedly except for the last sentence. We are not defenceless, that’s just what these manipulative shitweasels want us to believe.
There is of course, one very long-standing theory in human psychology which the author merely touches on; which is useful rather than true – that is, useful until it’s not, or until it’s taken to extremes.
Can you guess what it is?
Gen-Duh?
No, more ancient than that concept.
“my parents were remarkably libertine, relentlessly loving, and gave us the opportunity to express our feelings. It’s true that we were raised to be independent and make our own choices. But this wasn’t a result of neglect; it was, in fact, a purposeful approach to parenting, and thus a reflection of love.”
Stoicism?
I heard the most obvious thing recently. So obvious and important that it’s invisible. It was that if you want to heal someone, you have to know what wholeness is. So when you go looking for an “expert,” or “medical professional” to heal you, you might want to find out what that expert thinks wholeness is. Can an atheist be an expert on a religious animal?
A problematic social trend is increasing and promoted in memes and pop psychology journals like Psychology Today. Estranging parents to reclaim your “mental health” with the use of “boundaries”. These term mean anything the person shunning their families want it to mean. Interestingly, when they become parents they practice “extreme attachment” methods while discarding their loving parents/grandparents.
There is another issue these ideas have. Choice.
Freddie – I am a regression hypnotherapist and tomorrow as it happens I am having a third session with a client who came to me saying he suffered from separation anxiety. He is much, much better and cannot believe his progress.
It takes a lot of courage to assume responsibility for our own healing – especially when instead of aiming only for (usually temporary) symptom alleviation we decide to address and resolve the underlying causes, which is achieved tbrough identifying the causal event(s), reliving and cathartically releasing them, forgiving the other party or parties, and (lastly) cognitive reframing.
If you would like a free 30-minute consultation, please visit my site! http://www.tigereyehealing.com
Baffled by the down vote(s). I must live in a parallel universe!
No competent psychologist would rely on one theory or indicator. That is the moral of the story. Attachment theory is just one such theory, though seemingly quite useful.
Mental Health does not have the validity, reliability or replicatability of many physical health problems. Mainly due to the relative infancy of neuroscience but also because the sociological element is often neglected.
I would have liked some links to the scientific critiques of attachment theory rather than just the author’s personal case study.
Throwing the Big Five personality dimensions into the same category as Myers Briggs or attachment theory is misleading. Big Five personality traits are normally distributed and therefore most people are ‘in the middle’ rather than being divided into ‘types’ at the extremes. This is because it is an empirically derived model using factor analysis rather than a top-down attempt to apply somebody’s psychological theory to the data.
The author comes across as deeply confused. A mystery as to why… until the latter part of the piece and there it is! His disclosure about being an atheist. Atheism is a symptom of avoidant style of attachment. There’s his answer. Open a bible, try going to church. Praying he finds the meaning he so deeply seeks.
It seems to me, the author is arguing against all other pseudo-religions in an attempt to convince the reader his is the only true pseudo-religion.
Quite! I do love it when I get the greatest number of down votes. It means I’m right over target and the truth is making people uncomfortable!
Amy, your comment implies that you receive the largest number of downvotes frequently. Consider then, that your truth/the truth does not actually make others uncomfortable, but rather that you write a lot of tosh.
Resorting to insults supports Amy’s interpretation of the downvotes. I guess you have a democratic view of truth (or rather it’s approximation): the more upvotes there are, the greater the truth content, the more downvotes, the less the truth content. For me, posting regardless of the number of downvotes indicates strength of character. Not someone who bends with the wind. The wind in this case being downvotes and insults.
Denz wasn’t insulting. He didn’t criticize Amy as a person just her actions, her writing. It’s the comments section so one’s comments are fair game, are they not?
Suggesting someone’s writing is tosh is hurling an insult which is different to disagreeing with content.
Nothing like this! When a person writes nonsense, the nonsense is simply ignored. But the reaction to the generally innocuous advice to read the Bible means it has outraged many. I should note that all communists are atheists. This allowed them to kill millions for completely rational Marxist reasons.
Well said.
“I do love it when I get the greatest number of down votes“ – #MeToo