The previous chapter, in its review of attempts to identify antecedents of the child-caregiver attachment relationship, focused particularly upon the individuals developmental history as the most promising predictor of parenting quality, defined in terms of the child's socio- emotional status. The complexities of assessing adults' attachment status were discussed in terms of the difference between infants' non-verbal, physical modes of communication and the increasingly sophisticated verbal modes of communication used by older children, adolescents and adults. This chapter describes a recently developed structured interview, called the Adult Attachment Interview (George, Kaplan, and Main, 1985) which is based on the analysis of adults' linguistic responses to questions and repeated probes concerning salient childhood attachment experiences. Careful reading and coding of the interview yields a classification of the adult's organization of cognitions and affects concerning attachment, which is more dependent on the adult's current state of mind with regard to their developmental history than their objective recollection of that history. This interview technique has been validated through repeated findings that it correlates positively with previously and concurrently collected measures of the child-parent attachment derived from the Strange Situation (Main, Kaplan & Cassidy, 1985? Grossmann et al., 1988? Ainsworth & Eichberg, in press). These
findings support the view that relationship patterns repeat themselves systematically across generations. Strengths and weaknesses of the existing research are highlighted, and emphasis is given to the need for a prospective demonstration of the link between the Adult Attachment Interview and the Strange Situation.
THE INTERGENERATIONAL LINK: Assessing attachment patterns in adulthood
It was in the context of the Berkeley longitudinal study of attachment processes, that Mary Main and her colleagues focused on linguistic manifestations of the individuals internal working model for the first time. They did this with the follow-up sample of 6 year-olds and also for their parents. Chapter One described the distinguishing features of the behaviour and language of the 6 year-olds as correlated with their earlier assessments in the Strange Situation. This chapter considers in detail the discourse patterns of their parents when speaking about their own attachment history.
The Adult Attachment Interview (George, Kaplan & Main, 1985) asks a series of questions and probes designed to elicit as full a story as possible about the individual's childhood attachment experiences and evaluations of the effects of those experiences on present functioning. The manner in which these experiences are conveyed, rather than
the nature of the experiences themselves, is used to give an overall classification of the adult's current state of mind with respect to attachment. The classification, either Secure (Free-Autonomous (F)) or Insecure (Dismissing
(D) or Preoccupied-Enmeshed (E)) , has been shown to have a significant association to the observed behaviour of the infant in the Strange Situation procedure (Ainsworth, 1978). Main, Kaplan & Cassidy (1985) show that mothers of securely attached children, in describing their childhood, share the achievement of some integration between current feeling and past experiences relevant to attachment. They are objective and show a balance in their evaluation of childhood experiences, in much the same way as securely attached (B) children steer a middle course between attachment behaviours and autonomous exploration in the Strange Situation. Secure mothers' continuation of free access to and independence from their own childhood experience may be a primary source of their ability to respond sensitively to their infants' signals. Insecure- Dismissing interviews reflect a common history of some rejection and an organization of thought which permits attachment to be de-activated through strategies of: self- deception (leading to high idealization and poor recall), grandiosity (leading to a derogatory attitude) and denial
(leading to a view of the self as unaffected by malignant experiences). Individuals whose interviews are classified Dismissing seem cut-off from attachments in much the same way as anxiously avoidant (A) infants adopt a strategy of
acknowledge their attachment needs may make such mothers insensitive and unresponsive to their infants' signals. Insecure-Preoccupied interviews are characterized by are passively overwhelmed by a passive or angry over involvement with their early attachment experiences; interviews judged Insecure-Preoccupied are strongly characterized by ambivalence, confusion, unfinished sentences, and an intense current resentment towards the parent. In a similar way, anxiously resistant (C) infants appear to be overwhelmed by both the novelty of the unfamiliar situation and by their own anger towards the parent with whom there is an ambivalent attachment. Man & Goldwyn (1989) report a concordance coefficient of .61 (p < .001) between mother and child attachment classifications, and a coefficient of .37 (p < .05) between father and child. The figure for the mothesr is particularly impressive, since these interviews were conducted with parents of six-year olds, and then correlated with their child's security of attachment as measured five years previously (Main et al., 1985). Other laboratories took up the challenge of replication of these results because of the important implications of this finding and also in light of the relatively small sample
(A=8, B=18. C=6).
The first of these efforts to utilize the new technique was undertaken by the Grossmanns' laboratory in
West Germany. While they adhered to the sequence and content of questions as outlined by George et al. (1985), they did not apply the Main and Goldwyn Adult Attachment Interview Classification System (in press). They reasoned that they needed to change the system for coding of their interviews because of linguistic and cultural differences. They employed a two-way classification system, in which interviews were described as either valuing (secure) or devaluing (insecure), (Grossmann et al. 1988). Drawing heavily on psychoanalytic theories of defensive processes (Freud, 1901? A. Freud, 1936? & Bowlby, 1980), the interviews rated identified a non-defensive and open pattern of communicationas valuing of attachment, while an inconsistent or repressive pattern of communication concerning attachment was rated devaluing. The groups were distinguished by significantly different amounts of narratives relevant to attachment during the interview, and of readiness to recall and reflect upon childhood experiences.
Twenty mothers from the Bielefeld longitudinal study undertaken by the Grossmanns' laboratory and forty five from itsthe Regensburg study were interviewed when their children were 6 years-old. Of the 31 mothers judged valuing of attachment from their interviews, 25 had infants who were rated as secure, 5 years previously in the Strange Situation. Of the 34 mothers who were classified devaluing of attachment, 27 had infants who had been rated as
insecurely attached 5 years earlier.
There were other features of the mothers* behaviour which were collected during the child's first two years which correlated with the AAI five years later. Interviews reflecting a valuing of attachment were significantly associated with maternal sensitivity (r=.60, p < .001) and acceptance of her baby during the first year (r=.47, p < .05) and her acceptance of her toddler's autonomy at age 2 (r= .56, p < .01).
Grossmann et al. (1988,p. 258) point out that "an unsupportive parenting pattern, as reported in the Adult Attachment Interview, was passed on to the next generation only if the mother showed a strong defensiveness against the interview and had not shown any substantial reflections on her experiences as a child." Thus, despite differences in approach to classification from the Berkeley study, the German investigation drew similar conclusions regarding the central importance of adults' current internal organization of their cognitions and affects with respect to their development history.
A point of difference between the Regensburg and Berkeley studies is that the former uses a two-way classification system for the Adult Attachment Interview, while the latter uses a three way one. Main et al. (1985) distinguish between two types of insecure representations
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