What is Attachment and Why is it Relevant?

Attachment involves a person’s (child or adult) need to be protected from danger, and comforted especially after exposure to danger, and a relationship with a person who can provide protection from danger and comfort.

Dr. Patricia Crittenden

Attachment science and theory offers incredible insight into not only parent-child relationships, but why and how those relationships shape the neural structure and function of a child’s brain. Traditionally, attachment is described as involving a child who seeks safety from a parent, and a parent who provides safety and who supports a child’s exploration. This definition is helpful for parents, but not so much for professionals.

Most importantly, attachment describes the ways childhood experience impacts adult thinking, behaviors, communication styles, memory function, and more.

The Dynamic Maturational Model of Attachment and Adaptation (DMM), initially developed by Dr. Patricia Crittenden, offers an updated view of attachment adaptation, with many relevant aspects relational professionals can call upon to better assist clients.

The DMM perspective shifts the focus of attachment slightly and centers it around danger rather than safety:

“Attachment involves a person’s (child or adult) need to be protected from danger, and comforted especially after exposure to danger, and a relationship with a person who can provide protection from danger and comfort.”

With this definition, it becomes clear that danger is a critical aspect of attachment. Perhaps surprisingly, lawyers can quickly see that this definition defines the core of what they do, protecting clients from danger.

Attachment is Really About Adapting to Danger

In the legal setting, most clients are facing some sort of danger, or risk of losing something important. Thus, client feelings, thoughts, behaviors, etc., will be heavily influenced by their attachment pattern.

As hinted in the full name of the DMM, attachment involves adaptation, and this has a very important significance for professionals in the legal field or any relational field. For all of human history, human infants have relied on adults to keep them alive. Children are born with instincts to motivate parents to take care of them. Infants smell nice, look cute, and their smiles are instinctive as opposed to learned behaviors. As infants age, they face new dangers and their brains begin to develop and support new protection seeking behaviors.

Since parents vary in the amount and manner of protection and comfort they give, children adapt their expectations and attachment-behaviors to maximize their parents attachment-behaviors. One of the beautiful discoveries of attachment science was that children’s adaptive behaviors fall into three basic patterns. One pattern is cognitively oriented, another is affectively oriented, and a third is a blend of the two.

Another beautiful discovery of attachment science is that these patterns impact how growing children and adults feel, think, behave, and communicate (and there are other impacts as well; such as to how a person’s seven* memory systems function).

Since attachment strategies develop in the context of danger, attachment behaviors by adults are most clearly and persistently displayed, when they are facing danger. In the legal setting, most clients are facing some sort of danger, or risk of losing something important. Thus, client feelings, thoughts, behaviors, etc., will be heavily influenced by their attachment pattern.

NxR=E

A CSI Formula for Attachment Thinking

Because even Bowlby was looking for a more inclusive term.

Bowlby, Attachment and Loss, Vol III, 1980.

We can think of attachment in simple terms with the formula:

NxR=E. Attachment involves the interplay of Needs and Relationship which lead to certain Effects.

The DMM and the ABC+D models both expand the original attachment concepts developed by Bowlby and Ainsworth, but only the DMM offers a comprehensive, published, and coherent model to help professionals meaningfully apply attachment and its significance in professional contexts.

NxR=E is a concept developed within the framework of the Conflict Science Institute (CSI), and is not part of any traditional attachment approach, yet it seems to capture the essence of what all attachment approaches are generally describing and provides a practical framework to at least help expand thinking about what “attachment” is.

The Professionals Role

In these situations, very often, it is the lawyer or the mental health professional, who functions as a type of Transitory Attachment Figure (TAF) for the client.

Attachment involves certain neurobiologically driven Needs (protection and comfort), a Relationship between a person (child or adult) who needs protection and a person who can provide protection (Attachment Figure), and Effects which include the development of particular behavior and thought patterns (self-protective strategies). The Effects of the interplay between Needs and Relationship are on the development of the body’s neural (and probably endocrine) systems. 

Danger involves a broad array of things, including objective dangers like starvation, rejection, and assault, but it also leads to subjective perceptions of danger. For example, for some people being alone is dangerous and for others it is safe, and for some struggling over an issue is safe while for others it is a danger.

People involved in litigation almost always face danger in the form of some sort of potential loss while lacking skills and strategies to effectively manage fear and loss. (Likewise, many mental health clients are facing danger, loss, and trauma for which they have insufficient self-protective strategies and need help.) In these situations, very often, it is the lawyer or the mental health professional, who functions as a type of Transitory Attachment Figure (TAF) for the client.

For children, their Attachment Figure is a very unique person in their life, so a TAF is not the same as an AF, but there are many similarities. Thus, the study of attachment informs parents and professionals in very similar ways.

Information Processing and Dr. Crittenden’s DMM

Her decades of research in attachment measures led to a unique and deep insight into the detailed facets of SPSs and PIPs, cutting through less relevant behaviors and thoughts, and focusing on what matters, to provide useful insights for relational professionals assisting clients to expand decision making ability.

Dr. Patricia (Pat) Crittenden studied under attachment pioneers John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth, and spent a career taking their ideas to new heights. Like Bowlby and other attachment and non-attachment theorists, she realized that attachment measures uncover information processing patterns which provide rich insight into many aspects of human functioning.

The DMM, consistent with many other theories, describes how information processing can be fundamentally divided into a preference for cognitive (A) and affective (C) oriented  processing. Her decades of research in attachment measures led to a unique and deep insight into the detailed facets of SPSs and PIPs, cutting through less relevant behaviors and thoughts, and focusing on what matters, to provide useful insights for relational professionals assisting clients to expand decision making ability.

Crittenden’s DMM in part strengthens the understanding of the basic ABC patterns of attachment, and also parses them into much finer gradations. (ABC+D, the traditional attachment model parses 11 patterns and the DMM parses 23.) The DMM, like IPNB, is a neuropsychological meta-model, incorporating many fields of study such as biology, neurology, genetics, temperament, memory, sociobiology, developmental psychology, learning theory, systems theory, theory of mind, etc., and as such, it provides a robust model for understanding how and why people act the way do when faced with danger and conflict.

Self-Protective Strategies and Patterns of Information Processing

Attachment strategies may provide safety in a child’s parenting environment, but the use of the same strategies at school or in interpersonal relationships may be ineffective or problematic.

Because attachment is centered on obtaining protection from danger, one of its effects is to promote Self-Protective (behavior)Strategies. People, including infants and young children, develop behavioral strategies that minimize danger and maximize relative safety within the attachment relationship. 

Attachment strategies may provide safety in a child’s parenting environment, but the use of the same strategies at school or in interpersonal relationships may be ineffective or problematic. Attachment deeply impacts the development of PIPs. Of the many impacts on PIPs, some include minimizing or eliminating (A) or maximizing (C) negative affect, using an overly narrow and rigid (A) or overly broad and vague (C) set of facts to make decisions, and appearing to lack memory and relying on semantic conclusions (A) or recalling too much and relying on imaged memory and connotative language (C) to describe and analyze issues.

How CSI Uses Attachment to Understand Conflict and Clients at a Core Level

Patterns of Information Processing, or the way in which neural systems manage the process of information, should be of particular interest to lawyers because of the way these systems impact party behavior and decision making.

Once it’s understood that attachment leads to two primary ways of being in the world (cognitively or affectively), it becomes clear that professionals can understand and adjust their own patterns to best work with clients. Likewise, parents can learn to adjust their own parenting styles and techniques to optimize their child’s neural development. 

Patterns of Information Processing, or the way in which neural systems manage the process of information, should be of particular interest to lawyers because of the way these systems impact party behavior and decision making.

CSI uses the DMM as a foundation to build the Conflict Model of personality, adding in or clarifying additional elements and insights from other fields such as Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB). The DMM’s identification of patterns of information processing, behavioral self-protective strategies, and the impacts on memory function, which are all organized around neurobiological drives to obtain protection from danger, all combine to provide a powerful foundation for a model of conflict psychology.