Attachment Theory and Research. Группа авторов

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Attachment Theory and Research - Группа авторов


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I believe states of primary anxiety due to separation to be among the most frequent and pathogenic of such states, it is postulated that primary anxiety will arise in other circumstances also – perhaps whenever any instinctual response system is activated but not terminated. Primary anxiety due to separation seems likely, therefore, to be but one example of a common condition. It has, however, several special features. Not least of these is its specially close linkage in infants and young children to the experiences of fright and fear. When frightened, infants and young children look to their mother for security and if they fail to find her are doubly upset: both comfort and security are missing.

      It is interesting, though by no means easy, to compare the theory of primary anxiety with Freud’s two theories. The similarity to his original one of Transformed Libido is close. Although on occasion Freud spoke as though libido could only be transformed into anxiety after it had first been repressed, this does not appear to be basic to his formulation. Indeed, in his discussion of the conditions which lead anxiety to become pathological the process inculpated is repression (Freud, 1909, p. 26); in the absence of repression, we may therefore infer, there would still be anxiety, but it would be within normal limits. If this is a correct reading, then the main difference appears to be that, whereas in the theory advanced here primary anxiety is an immediate consequence of the persistent activation without termination of certain instinctual response systems, in Freud’s theory anxiety is conceived as being the result of a ‘transformation’ which the libido undergoes.

      Whilst the theory of primary anxiety postulates that separation anxiety is itself an unlearnt and biologically based anxiety, it is far from blind to the existence and pathogenic importance of anxieties which are dependent on learning and anticipation. In the human it seems useful to distinguish at least two main forms of anticipatory behaviour – that based on primitive forms of learning, such as conditioning, and that based on memory organized by means of symbols. As soon as infants can be conditioned, which is very early, they can acquire a simple form of anticipatory behaviour and, in so far as the events to which they are conditioned are disagreeable, such for example as pain, hunger, or lack of human contact, they may be supposed to experience anxiety. This I shall term Conditioned Anxiety. Cognitively, it is still rather a primitive form of anxiety and in many ways more closely resembles primary anxiety than the form next to be described. Later, when the infant develops his capacity for using symbols and can thereby construct a world of objects existing in time and space and interacting causally, he is able to develop some measure of true foresight. Should the foreseen events be of a kind he has learned are disagreeable, he will once again experience anxiety. This I shall term Expectant Anxiety. Once this level of psychic organization is reached many kinds of danger, real and imaginary, may be foreseen and responded to. For example, whatever may occur at more primitive levels, at this level both persecutory and depressive anxieties play a crucial role; for anything which leads the child to believe he either has destroyed or alienated his mother, or may do so, cannot fail to exacerbate his expectant anxiety of temporary or permanent separation.

      Before applying this theory to separation anxiety as the particular problem under examination, however, it is necessary to review the whole problem of anxiety and fear reactions afresh. In doing so four conditions will be delineated each of which, it is believed, although in essence very different from the others, contributes in a special way to our problem. These are primary anxiety, fright, conditioned anxiety, and expectant anxiety.


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