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Human attachment patterns exist within and are communicated by the body either through the use of words or not. Degrees of safe and secure or unsafe and insecure attachment are physiological communications about either the presence of or the absence of unresolved trauma. This is true for humans at every stage of our development from birth until death.
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The first thought that came to my mind the first time I encountered a description of the research strategies used to assess infant-mother attachment such as was presented in yesterday’s post was that under no circumstance can I possibly imagine my mother agreeing to participate in such an activity.
Nor can I imagine any severely abusive parent being willing to agree to participate in such research. Nowhere have I seen a discussion in the research about this fact. It is not the researcher’s concern. Abuse is not what they directly intend to measure even though I believe it would clearly be seen in the patterns of attachment between an abused and maltreated infant and its primary caregiver.
As described in the 13 scanned pages presented yesterday about parent-infant attachment research, it is clear that attachment patterns cannot be shown to be related to either personality traits or to intelligence. They have also found that a mothering caregiver’s attachment patterns are not formed directly in relationship with any particular personality trait of their infant, either.
Attachment patters are being shown to be transmitted from caregiver to infant as the research shows the remarkable fact that a pregnant mother’s attachment patterns have great power to predict and to form her infant’s attachment patterns. Research is showing that these transmitted patterns of infant attachment are carried by her offspring through from infancy into adulthood.
One big hole in the research that I find when I look at it from my own point of view is that while researchers seem to clearly understand that an infant can have entirely different attachment patterns with different attachment caregivers, nowhere in the research do I see these experts talk about the fact that caregivers can have different attachment patterns with their different offspring. This matters a great deal in cases where a parent singles out one of their offspring for severe abuse even though they do not abuse all of their children. This was the case in my childhood.
Assuming that a severely abusive mother would ever show up in a research setting such as the ones used in these studies, has research ever been done that shows how any mother might interact differently with her different offspring? Not to my knowledge. (I will have to hunt for this kind of research).
I think the results of the adult attachment research being presented in Siegel’s writing makes the assumption that the adult’s attachment patterns are so formed within the caregiver that the operate consistently across relationships that adult has with everyone, including her offspring (any and all of them).
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When reviewing the findings presented in the comparison table about how a particular mother’s own attachment patterns correspond to her infant’s, the reason why the name of the attachment patterns are different between adult and infant seems to be that while the infant’s classification is based specifically on the mother-infant relationship, the mother’s is based on what researchers determine to be her attachment states of mind.
Researchers suggest that not until the age of 18 months does an infant-child’s brain have the capacity for form and use ‘mental representations’ that are required for it to have a ‘state of mind’. This belief is reflected in the process used to determine attachment depending on age. Infant attachment is based on observable body behavior. Adult attachment is assessed on the basis of verbal communication patterns.
I am not clear as to why researchers do not assess a mother’s attachment to her infant by reproducing a clinical scenario like the one they used to watch how an infant responds in the Strange Situation. I don’t think they watch the mother. They are watching the infant. If they DID watch the mother, what visible patterns would they see in the mother as she came and went from her infant? How does she hold it? How does she let go of it? Does she reach for her infant? What do her facial expressions communicate to the infant or the tone and pitch of her voice?
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Adult assessment of attachment is designed to notice patterns of communication and signaling used in a verbal interview. These same patterns of communication happen between infants and their caregivers even though verbal communication is NOT what matters to the infant. It is the patterns of communication signaling that is being assessed in both infants and adults. The communication of emotion is at the core of these assessed signals for both.
Because of their youth, infants do not use clear mental representations or process their emotions through the filter of a clear state of mind. What they feel is what they do, and what they do shows in the actions their body takes. If you take a look at the information contained in the 13 scanned pages it is clear that because infants cannot yet use words, they are left still communicating with their body.
It is the nature and the quality of a mother’s ability to read, resonate with and to respond appropriately to all the body-based signals of communication her infant has expressed to her from the moment of its birth that create the bedrock of her infant’s social-emotional brain as they also steer and direct the development of her infant’s nervous system, immune system and body. These patterns of interactions between a mother and her infant, the same ones that built the infant, show in the infant as it interacts with its mother during these attachment assessment experiences.
That the physiological, actual body-based actions of a one-year-old infant very accurately are reflected in how its mother TALKS about her own experiences of childhood fascinates me. It shows me that words and the expression of them simply exist on the end of a physiological-response continuum that just gets more sophisticated in its expression the older we get – the more our brains develop – and according to the more options we have to express our emotions.
Language is body-based. It happens through our body. Infants use language from the moment they are born, certainly well before they can use actual words.
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My suspicion is that the farther down the attachment scale into insecure attachment patterns a mother might be appearing to slide — which researchers assess through verbal communication — the more she is communicating as she did when she was an infant. I say this because as researchers watch a mother’s ability to follow Grice’s maxims disintegrate as she attempts to TALK about her childhood, the closer she is getting to body-based emotion that she cannot put into words.
We don’t expect an infant to be able to talk about its ongoing experience of trauma in words. At the same time we also know that it is the nature of ongoing unresolved trauma to NOT be integrated into anyone’s ongoing experience of being a self in the world. This is just as true when ongoing trauma exists in an infant’s reality as it is when it exists in an adult’s.
Experiences of trauma interfere with ongoing experience in a safe and secure world. If trauma can be resolved, it becomes digested and integrated as safety and security return to the individual irregardless of a person’s age. If trauma cannot be resolved, it is not integrated and it then shows itself in interruptions in patterns of signaling communication that can be seen in attachment relationships – again, irregardless of a person’s age.
Patterns of unintegrated and unresolved trauma are what researchers are ‘measuring’ in both infants and in adults while they watch and interpret movements of the body during these studies. It just happens that words and verbal communication styles and patterns in adults are watched more closely than are their bigger bodily movements.
Unresolved and unintegrated trauma exists at the physiological level. This trauma communicates its presence physiologically – even in words and in patterns of spoken communication. It is not only the bigger the unresolved trauma is, but also the older it is that we can see in patterns of insecure attachment – at any age.
The older a trauma is, meaning the younger we were when it overwhelmed us, the more it appears body-based in its signals. That is why an adult will appear increasingly inarticulate (does not follow Grices’s maxims) the more they approach their earliest traumas. The more incoherent a mother’s attachment interview becomes, the more she is becoming her younger body-based (without words) self-in-the-world. The memories the interviewer is asking her to access do not exist with words. They do exist in her body.
The more insecurely and unsafely attached a mother was in her earliest body-brain formation stages of development, the more her early traumas actually changed the body-brain she lives in the world with. Whether researchers are watching (listening to) body-based signals in words or not, in infants or in adults, they are watching degrees of safe and secure being in a benevolent world – or not. They are watching early trauma changed body-brain development – or not.
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Actions are always body-based expressions. The older we get the more options for actions we have. As trauma-laden infants grow through their younger years into their adulthood, the more obvious the trauma drama patterns of communication become. If we separate ourselves from our own experiences of trauma drama and picture them as occurring among actors on a stage, we can easily see that it is simply unresolved trauma itself that is communicating its presence.
If an infant that researchers watch behaves in a safe and secure manner with its mother, those researchers don’t see trauma drama. If an infant behaves in ways that can be seen to represent increasing levels of unsafe and insecure attachment patterns with its mother, researchers can already watch trauma drama taking place.
We could ‘mute the sound’ for any trauma drama we might be watching, at any age, because words really tell us very, very little about the presence of trauma. In fact, the older we get, the more present verbal communication according to Grice’s maxims is, the less trauma will be present! Because unresolved trauma remains physiologically body-based, it best shows itself in the actions of the body. Words themselves are the very, very tip of the proverbial iceberg.
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Speaking of attachment, trauma – resolved or not – I want to highly recommend a film to you. My children gifted me with a Netflix subscription for Christmas, and I streamed this one and watched it last night. It is a true story.
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The Children of Huang Shi (2008)
At is about young British journalist, George Hogg, who with the assistance of a courageous Australian nurse and a Chinese partisan fighter, saves a group of orphaned children during the Japanese occupation of China in 1937. Written by anonymous
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As you watch this movie notice that you would completely understand the entire story, including all the emotions of it, without listening to a single word of dialog. It is a powerful portrayal of the human condition with nearly its fullest spectrum of relationship to, with and within trauma.
As you watch this film notice also that at the same time this entire story is about trauma it is also equally about attachment. We can never consider one without the other – never.
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IN MEMORY OF MY BORDERLINE MOTHER:
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| from Kristalyn Salters-Pedneault, PhD Here we are again, preparing to begin a new year. I’m not one for new year’s resolutions (most people don’t keep them anyway), but thinking of changes you’d like to make this year can help. Getting treatment, or working on particular skills, or committing to developing a life more worth living might be on your list this year. |
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Stop the Storm 