Patterns of Attachment
The empirical work that gave attachment its classifications and its research programme.
There is still no better introduction to attachment theory and research than Patterns of Attachment.
Published in 1978, the book reports the Baltimore longitudinal study: twenty-six infants observed at home across the first year, then seen in a standardized laboratory procedure of separations and reunions with mother and a stranger. Ainsworth and her colleagues set out the Strange Situation in detail, along with the coding of proximity-seeking, contact-maintaining, avoidance, and resistance that grounds it. From those measures the authors derive three groups: secure infants who use the mother as a base for exploration and settle on reunion; avoidant infants who turn away; and resistant infants who mix contact-seeking with anger. The central finding links reunion behaviour in the laboratory to maternal sensitivity rated during the home visits. The classifications are research categories, built to predict from observed patterns rather than to name a clinical condition. A clinician reads them as a validated account of how early relationships organise, and of what sensitive care does.
About the authors
Mary Dinsmore Salter Ainsworth
Mary D. Salter Ainsworth (1913 to 1999) was an American-Canadian developmental psychologist who worked alongside John Bowlby as an equal collaborator. Her Uganda and Baltimore longitudinal studies of mother and infant pairs, together with the Strange Situation procedure she designed, give attachment theory its empirical foundation. Her observations establish the classifications of infant attachment still in clinical use: secure, avoidant, and resistant. This work translates Bowlby's ideas into a measurable research base.
Mary Blehar
Mary C. Blehar is an American developmental and research psychologist. As part of Mary Ainsworth's Baltimore research team, she was a co-author of Patterns of Attachment (1978), the study that sets out the Strange Situation procedure and its classifications of infant behaviour. Her later career centred on mental health research at the National Institute of Mental Health, where she held senior roles and helped lead the Institute's women's mental health programme, contributing to work on mood disorders.
Everett Waters
Everett Waters is an American developmental psychologist and professor at Stony Brook University. As a graduate student he worked within Mary Ainsworth's research group and co-authored Patterns of Attachment, the study that established the Strange Situation. His later work develops tools and ideas that carry attachment beyond infancy: the attachment Q-sort, evidence on the stability of attachment across the lifespan, and the secure base script, a mental representation people draw on in close relationships.
Sally Wall
Sally N. Wall is an American developmental psychologist known for her work on early attachment. She was one of Mary Ainsworth's students on the Baltimore research team, and she co-authored Patterns of Attachment (1978), the study that set out the Strange Situation procedure and its coding. Wall helped develop and score that procedure, which sorts infant reunion behaviour into secure, avoidant, and resistant patterns. Little else about her life is reliably documented, so her standing rests on this contribution to attachment research.
Details
- 1978
- English
- Psychology Press
- Psychology Press, Classic Edition, 2015
- 466
- 9781848726826