La consagración de la primavera :

At the individual level this study may have some relevance for understanding how both parents and clinicians can influence adolescent development. A key question for parenting researchers has been where the optimal balance lies between Parental Warmth and Parental Control for producing optimal functioning in the individual child. This question addresses a very practical conundrum for parents; how do they simultaneously communicate both “I love you” and “don’t do that” in a confrontation? Some attachment theorists have suggested that the parenting required for optimal development changes as the child gets older: that perhaps attachment (and by implication parental sensitive-responsiveness) is important when young, but norms (and by implication Parental Control) are more important in adolescence. Greenberg (1999) for example, suggests that “secure attachment may be more important in early development, whereas cognitive ability and motivation may be more important in middle childhood, and parental norms regarding behaviour may be most critical during adolescence” for preventing psychopatiiology. However, an opposing view asserts that attachment to parents continues to be important through adolescence, but it is less readily expressed by adolescents (Allen & Land, 1999). This study presents evidence for a reconciliation of the argument. Contrary to Greenberg (1999), it suggests that Parental Control is important in adolescence precisely because it is through the exercise of appropriate Parental Control that parents ensure that their children remain securely attached to them. In other words, by saying “don’t do that” when adolescents are about to endanger themselves, parents can communicate love.

In clinical work with individual adolescents, this study suggests that the formulation and treatment of problems in which insecure attachment could play a part will differ quite markedly

according to which model is taken on of the relationship between parenting and attachment. Model 1 suggests that parenting should be viewed in the light of the associative and cognitive mechanisms in the introduction, and that attachment is not a separate problem. Model 2 suggests that attachment may explain particular "reactive attachment disorders of childhood" (Greenberg, 1999) and that clinicians should look at how sensitively- responsive the parent has been in times of stress. Model 3 suggests that the clinician should be investigating both attachment and broader processes, and that they should be looking for ways in which parents might compensate for deficiencies in their sensitive-responsiveness. Model 4 Part 1 suggests that attachment needs to be seen as part of an interactive set of mechanisms which influence both attachment-related and attachment-unrelated aspects of the child’s functioning. Rutter & O'Connor (1999) outline some of the complex mechanisms which might intertwine the attachment and non-attachment components of relationships. Model 4 Part 2 suggests that the clinician needs to look at the balance between the Parental Warmth and Parental Control that the child is receiving, and whether the parenting the child receives meets all its needs.

This clinical task may seem difficult, particularly as making a reliable attachment classification, at least of older children and adults, is a notoriously lengthy process. If however, as is suggested by this study’s discriminant analysis, it proves possible to determine a person’s attachment classification on the basis of a questionnaire of parental responsiveness (broadly or narrowly defined) and Parental Control, then the task of attachment classification would be much easier.

5.2.6. Psychobiological level

In the Introduction to this study it was proposed that a complete explanation of parenting would ideally encompass all levels of the biopsychosocial fi~amework, fi’om the ecological to the psychobiological. At the psychobiological level attachment theorists are working to discover the physiological underpinnings of attachment by research on attachment in “lower” mam m als (Polan & Hofer, 1999), and research using psychophysiological measures of anxiety responses in humans (Fox & Card, 1999). Both have focused on the complex hormonal and behavioural

responses to threat controlled by the limbic system. As Polan & Hofer (1999) note in their description of the rat pup’s sequences of response to separation;

“the striking fact about this neural control system is its similarity to our current understanding o f the neural basis o f anxiety in humans. The same drugs that are effective in reducing anxiety (ie benzodiazepines) selectively decrease calling rates in rat pups, and synthetic compounds that produce severe anxiety in human volunteers selectively raise p ip s ’ calling rates” .

Similarly, Fox & Card (1999) quote research by Nachmias et al. (1996), in which markers of an activated anxiety system, such as salivary cortisol and heart rate, were associated with insecure attachment in toddlers, who responded with increased behavioural inhibition to novel events.

Such findings show efforts to integrate neuropsychological data with Attachment Theory at higher biopsychosocial levels of explanation. They mesh with the theoretical suggestions of Carver (1996) which link several neuropsychological models of behavioural activation and inhibition to attachment theory, as the expression of the dialectic between individualist and communitarian goals. Carver sees this dialectic as particularly important in infancy because it “involves competing pressures between a desire for separation/individuation fi’om mother and a desire for merger with mother”.

Amongst the work delineating the neuropsychology of behavioural activation and inhibition, the most highly developed is that of Jeffrey Gray and Neil McNaughton (Gray, 1985; Gray, 1990; Gray and McNaughton, 2000), which focuses on the behavioural inhibition associated with avoidance, anxiety, phobia and panic. It integrates data about the effects of anti-anxiety drugs on animals and humans with clinical research on human anxiety and neuropsychological research on memory. Although these authors do not explicitly address attachment issues, their model may serve as a structure to integrate results within Attachment theory, or at least provide a finitful basis for investigation of links. In their Theory of Anxiety, Gray and McNaughton propose that a child’s response to anxiety, like that of other mammals, is governed by the interaction between

two neuropsychological systems, one for Behavioural Approach (BAS), one for Behavioural Inhibition (BIS). These systems are control systems governed by feedback in the same way as systems proposed by Bowlby, and are innately preset to respond to particular stimuli, in the same way as Bowlby’s attachment system. The BAS functions to govern the pursuit of goals. The BIS functions to inhibit the pursuit of those goals and organise defensive behaviour when the child detects a discrepancy between its expectations and incoming signals from the outside world. The BIS as proposed by Gray and McNaughton is activated by signals of punishment, non-occurrence of anticipated reward, novel stimuli and innate fear stimuli. It determines a graded response to threat, where potential threat produces behavioural inhibition and intensified cognitive processing of threat stimuli, but actual and immediate threat produces highly automated flight, fight or freeze responses, the choice between these responses depending on whether the threat is avoidable.

This model is sufficiently analogous to Bowlby’s at the neuropsychological level, for it to be a contender for an overall explanation of attachment. Nevertheless, in the past, the operation of attachment system has been seen as governed by a single imperative of security, which does not fit well with a theory of anxiety which reconciles two imperatives of Approach and Inhibition However, if the BAS in Gray’s theory is taken to operate the Exploratory System in Attachment Theory, and the BIS as operating the Attachment System in Attachment Theory, Üien both theories may be predicting the maintenance of the same homeostatic equilibrium at different levels of explanation.

What relevance have these considerations for attachment and parenting? On one view, the attachment system is designed to deal with immediate threats to the child, by making it flee to the secure base of an attachment figure. The attachment system is therefore linked to the more automatic response sequences of the Behavioural Inhibition System, which deal with flight. (See Table 20), If this is the case, the parents’ task for secure attachment must be to provide both a secure base and parenting which is sensitively-responsive to threats to the child. Therefore, the attachment system is only activated at times of immediate threat, when fear, anger and panic are

the appropriate emotional responses and when flight, fighting or freezing are the appropriate behavioural responses. This view predicts that individuals have little capacity to regulate their attachment responses through conscious cognition, since the relevant neuropsychological procedures are highly automated.

Table 20

Gray’s Theory of Anxiety linked to Parenting

Ecological Level

Rewards & No Threat Potential threat, absence of expected rewards

Actual & immediate threat Interpersonal

Level

Parents facilitate e?qploration with Parental Warmth

Parents protect from threat with Parental Control, respond to needs with

Parental Warmth

Parents protect by sensitive- responsiveness to threat, provide secure base for child Behavioural

Level

Child erqrlores Child stops exploring, gest help to avoid potential threat

Child flees or freezes Cognitive

Level

Child is curious, playful Child is vigilant, focuses on potential threat, plans

Child focuses on immediate evasion of threat Emotional

Level

Desire, satisfaction Anxiety, obsession, depression

Fear, anger, panic Psycho­ biological Level Septo-hippocampal system, cingulate cortex, noradrenaline and serotonergic systems Amygdala, medial hypothalamus, periaqueductal grey

On another view, the attachment system is also designed to deal with potential threat or lack of rewards, by making the child inhibit its exploration and call for help and nurturance from an attachment figure. The attachment system is therefore also linked to the more cognitively intensive and planful response sequences of the Behavioural Inhibition System, which deal with anxiety. If so, the parent’s task for secure attachment must be to provide not just a secure base in times of threat, but also the kind of Parental Control which will help the child to inhibit its behaviour in response to potential threat, and the kind of Parental Warmth which will be sensitively-responsive to the child’s calls for help or nurturance in any circumstance. Therefore, the attachment system is also activated at times of potential threat, when anxiety, obsession and depression are the appropriate emotional responses, and when assessment, anticipation and conservation of resources are the appropriate behavioural responses. This view predicts that individuals have some capacity to regulate their attachment responses when anxious or depressed through conscious cognition, since conscious cognition is involved in neuropsychological procedures associated with anxiety and depression.

Evidence for the association of insecure attachment in general, and preoccupied attachment in particular, with chronic worry and depression supports the inclusion within the attachment system of the aspects of the Behavioural Inhibition System which deal with potential threat. The cognitive complexity of attachment responses in older children and adults also suggests that attachment responses are not just automated procedures produced at times of immediate threat. Furthermore an attachment system which matures with the child, so that it is able to produce more nuanced and planful responses to potential threats to attachment relationships, would seem at first sight to have evolutionary advantages.

Against these considerations must be set the enormous body of evidence, including the work of Bowlby himself, which has linked attachment only to security fi’om immediate threat. However, this evidence can be reconciled with the broader model, if one assumes that the cognitively more intensive aspects of the Behavioural Inhibition System mature later in childhood, in line with the development of the inhibitory function of the cortex. Much of the evidence linking attachment to security fi’om immediate threat, including the attachment behaviours identified in the Strange Situation procedure, is derived fi'om infants. It may be that only by childhood and adolescence has the attachment system matured sufiiciently for more generalised sensitive-responsiveness (or Parental Warmth), together with Parental Control, to be important influences on attachment security.

The proposed biopsychosocial synthesis may offer a way to resolve whether sensitive- responsiveness to threat, or generalised Parental Warmth and Parental Control, offer the most appropriate parenting for attachment security. Psychobiological research with animals or humans, which linked the attachment system to the less automated, more cognitively intensive and planful aspects of the Behavioural Inhibition System, would suggest that attachment is about more than security fiom threat. This in turn would bring attachment theoiy and parenting research into closer agreement, and enable professionals working with parents to provide clearer guidance to them on appropriate parenting.