Correlation of Juvenile and Adult Attachment Styles

Correlation of Juvenile and Adult Attachment Styles for David Bottorff

David Bottorff

Loyola University of Chicago

31 January 2010
Abstract

This paper explores juvenile and adult attachment patterns for David Bottorff using an adult attachment interview and extrapolating backward toward childhood.  The evaluation concludes I exhibit a borderline Fearful/Dismissing attachment style, presenting both possibilities and challenges for pastoral counseling.

Correlation of Juvenile and Adult Attachment Styles for David Bottorff

Juvenile and adult attachment styles are related yet different.  Using the results of an adult attachment interview, I worked backward in time to examine my early attachment style, particularly in relation to Guinevere – my mother and primary attachment figure (AF).

John Bowlby (1988) postulated the existence of three attachment styles for children: Secure, Anxious/Resistant, and Anxious/Avoidant.  Building on the work of M. Ainsworth, M. Main added a fourth category: Disorganized/Disoriented.  Having never been subjected to Ainsworth’s Strange Situation Protocol, I do not know my childhood attachment style but find clues in my adult attachment style.

Childhood attachment styles were projected into adulthood by such researchers as K. Bartholomew and L.M. Horowitz (1991), who identified four basic attachment styles: Secure, Anxious/Preoccupied, Dismissive/Avoidant, and Fearful/Avoidant.  These styles roughly correspond to the Bowlby/Ainsworth infant classifications (Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991).  The four adult attachment styles are determined using measures of anxiousness and avoidance, which in turn correspond to the client’s Model of Self and Model of Other.

Using the Experiences in Close Relationships-Revised (ECR-R) Adult Attachment Questionnaire, developed by R.C.  Fraley, N.G. Waller, and K.A. Brennan (2000), and based on Bartholomew’s work, I fall on the border between the Dismissing and the Fearful attachment styles.  On a scale of 1 to 7, I score 4.0 for anxiety and 4.5 for avoidance.  Dismissive/Avoidant adults are said to seek independence while avoiding attachment.  They may suppress feelings and deal with rejection by distancing themselves.  Meanwhile, the Fearful/Avoidant style is characterized by feelings of unworthiness and ambiguousness toward close relationships, both desiring and fearing intimacy.  Individuals exhibiting either Dismissive or Fearful attachment style tend to avoid intimacy and suppress their feelings (Bartholomew, 1991).  I see both Dismissive and Fearful attachment styles exhibited in my life.

The adult Dismissing attachment style is associated with the Avoidant juvenile attachment style, thought encouraged when the AF shows little response to the distressed child, discourages emotional display, and encourages independence.  Meanwhile, the adult Fearful attachment style is associated with the Disorganized juvenile attachment style, said encouraged when the AF exhibits inconsistent care, shifting from intrusiveness to withdrawal, or perhaps exhibiting maltreatment.  It is entirely possible my AF exhibited these qualities. 

My internal working model (IWM) is characterized by fierce personal independence and a general distrust of attachment figures.  I have worked to mitigate this psychology through Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACOA), a 12-step program similar to Alanon and based on the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), to which I belong.

Attachment Style, Ministry and Calling

As an AA “sponsor,” I see myself standing somewhat aloof from my “sponsees.”  I have trouble sympathizing or empathizing with their problems, and I tend to offer intellectually sound yet emotionally barren guidance.  Because AA is a form of lay ministry and/or counseling, emotional distancing is encouraged for the protection of all parties involved. 

Conversely, while stoicism appears to work at some level in AA, it does not serve me well in my men’s group.  The work within Mankind Project frequently is intense and my venire of emotional detachment tends to crumble.  It is not uncommon for me to become emotionally disoriented, whether working on myself or working with another man.  I find myself exhibiting a well-established pattern: longing for close attachment but afraid to trust.

From a personal perspective, becoming more familiar with my attachment style will help me focus my own psychotherapy on the weakest aspects of my personality.  My last relationship dissolved after 10 years largely because I exhibited dismissing and fearful attachment patterns, never moving into a position of trust with my romantic partner, always both seeking and rejecting intimacy. 

From a professional perspective, knowing my attachment style will inform counter-transference while supporting my calling to counsel through meaningful and trusting connections with clients.  Further, knowing my attachment style will help me understand my client’s attachment style.  Ultimately, my attachment style will play a crucial role in the way I bond with peers, romantic interests, young, old, and the ill.

Spirituality

Although not a required element of this essay, I would like to briefly discuss spirituality attachment style as postulated by James Fowler and described by Andrew Starky (1999).

Fowler, building on the work of H. Richard Niebuhr, identifies three major types of faith identity relationship, which somewhat resemble the three childhood attachment patterns identified by Bowlby and Ainsworth.  In particular, he states polytheist belief resonates with the Anxious/Ambivalent attachment style, henotheist belief corresponds with the Avoidant attachment style, and monotheist beliefs are linked to Secure attachment style.  I suppose agnostics and atheists fall in the Fearful attachment style, although this conclusion is not found in his writings.

Although unprepared to offer a formal academic challenge to Fowler’s assertions, I will argue correlating the ostensibly superior Secure attachment style with monotheism looks like a transparent attempt to bolster monotheism’s credentials as the more enlightened theology.  Two observations make me bristle.  First, one’s attachment style vis a vis another human versus attachment style vis a vis God only works in the context of God as noun and not a verb – God as a thing and not a process.  Again, it is unclear as to what agnostics and atheists are to make of this theory.  Secondly, one of attachment theory’s strengths is its universality.  Fowler’s argument that interpersonal and spiritual attachment patterns run parallel stands in contradiction to universality in that he implies huge segments of the Earth’s population – Buddhists, aboriginal peoples, Shintos, etc. – simply lack secure attachment styles.  Were they secure, they would adopt monotheism, I infer.  If his theories are meant only to apply to those who believe in God or gods, and therefore only valid within that construct, then his ideas are functionally useless for roughly half of the people living on this planet.  Starky concludes, per Fowler, Bowlby’s concept of a “secure base” might be helpful in pastoral counseling, but mainly as a mechanism for driving clients toward monotheism.  Fowler’s a priori assumptions beg examination.

Conversely, Fowler’s stages of spirituality – intuitive-projective faith, mythic-literal faith, synthetic-conventional faith, individuative-reflective faith, conjunctive faith, and universalizing faith – do resonate with me. 

Although observers may differ, I see myself exhibiting Stage 5 faith (Fowler, 1981): Religiously, it knows that the symbols, stories, doctrines and liturgies offered by its own or other traditions are inevitably partial, limited to a particular people's experience of God and incomplete.  Conjunctive faith, therefore, is ready for significant encounters with other traditions than its own, expecting that truth has disclosed and will disclose itself in those traditions in ways that may complement or correct its own. (Page 186)

Humorously, yet not unexpectedly, my God attachment style appears to reside solidly in the Dismissing or Avoidant quadrant.

References

Bartholomew, K., and Horowitz, L.M. (1991). Attachment styles among young adults: A test of a four-category model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61, 226-244.

Bowlby, J. (1988). A secure base: Parent-child attachment and healthy human development. London, England: Routledge.

Fowler, J. (1981). Stages of faith: The psychology of human development and the quest for meaning. New York: HarperCollins.

Fraley, R.C., Waller, N.G., and Brennan, K.A. (2000). An item-response theory analysis of self-report measures of adult attachment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, 350-365.

Starky, A. B. (1999). A theological application of John Bowlby's psychoanalytic theories of attachment. American Journal of Pastoral Counseling, 2(1), 15-47. doi:10.1300/J062v02n01_03