Impact of Childhood Attachment and Separation Experiences upon Adult Re

Impact of Childhood Attachment and Separation Experiences upon Adult Relationships Abstract This qualitative research was conducted to ascertain if the attachment style a person has as an adult is created or influenced by his/her interactions with early childhood experiences. The research was carried out by means of a thematic analysis of an interview of a married middle-aged couple. The interviews bought the themes of Work, Childhood and Relationships to the foreground and these were analysed to establish if there is a connection in our childhood attachments and those we make as adults. It can be seen that there are similarities to the attachment types of infants compared to those that emerge as adults although individual differences and life experiences also have a part to play in our capacity to form secure adult attachment relationships. Introduction The general principle behind attachment theory is to describe and explain people’s stable patterns of relationships from birth to death. Because attachment is thought to have an evolutionary basis, these social relationships are formed in order to encourage social and cognitive development, and enable the child to grow up to ‘become socially confident’ in adulthood. The assumption in attachment research on children is that sensitive responses by the parents to the child’s needs result in a child who demonstrates secure attachment while lack of sensitive responding results in insecure attachment. John Bowlby who attempted to understand the distress infants experience during separation from their parents originally developed this research. Bowlby saw attachment as being crucial to a child’s personality developing and to the development of relationships with others later in life. This theory has its foundation in vertical relationships i.e. Primary Care Giver/Child, while on the other hand in The Nurture Assumption, Judith Rich Harris (1999) suggests that it is the peer groups that have the strongest control in shaping how that child will grow up and that parents have very little influence over the matter, this is known as a horizontal relationship. In developing and classifying infant behaviour Mary Ainsworth who worked with Bowlby for a number of years developed a method of gauging attachment in infants, in an experiment known as the ‘Strange Situation’. This involved observations in la... ...ng to see Jo smile and raise her eyebrows when Tony says at the beginning of the first interview he is â€Å"Fairly easy going†. It led me as a researcher to think that perhaps this was not actually the case, in Jo’s opinion. Actions like this give the interview a complete different angle, and can add tremendous information to the final interpretation of what is said. References Wood C, Littleton K & Oates J, Lifespan development, Chapter 1 in Challenging Psychological Issues by Cooper T and Roth I (eds) The Open University, Milton Keynes, 2002. Ainsworth, M.S., Blehar, M.C., Waters, E. and Wall, S. (1978) Patters of Attachment: A Psychological Study of the Strange Situation, Hillsdale, NJ, Erlbaum Goodley D, Lawthom R, Tindall C, Tobbell J, Wetherell M, (eds) (2003) Methods Booklet 4 – Understanding People: Qualitative Methods. Open University Press. Banister P, (ed) (2003) Methods Booklet 5 – Qualitative Project. Open University Press. Harris, J.R. (1999) The Nurture Assumption, London Bloomsbury. Research Methods in Psychology DSE 212 Video 1 –Part 4: Interviewing, Milton Keynes, The Open University. Appendix Appendix A -  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Annotated copy of transcript.