Healthy Marriages, Relationships and Families:

Interventions, Research and Policy Course

Attachment Theory and

Couple Relationships

Week __

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 Promoting Child Welfare: Training Professionals to
Support Healthy Marriages, Relationships and Families
Project.

Project Mission: To develop curricula and

Project Team:
provide training for students and professionals
Keith Alford, principal investigator that enhance their ability to facilitate healthy
Tel: 315- 443-5112 Email: Kalford@syr.edu marriages, relationships and families in the child
Nancy Mudrick, co-principal investigator welfare population, with the end goal of promoting
Tel: 315-443- 5564 Email: Mudrick@syr.edu and improving the well-being of children.
Sharon Alestalo, project manager
Project funded by the US Department of Health
and Human Services, Administration for
Peg Miller Children and Families.
Mona Mittal Oct. 2003 – Sept. 2008
Robert Moreno
Jonathan Sandberg
Carrie Jefferson Smith
Alan Taylor

Syracuse University © 2008, Syracuse University, College of Human Ecology. All

rights reserved.
College of Human Ecology
Sims Hall, Suite 440
Syracuse, NY 13244

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 C.S. Lewis
To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your
heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you
want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your
heart to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully
round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all
entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of
your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark,
motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it
will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.

(http://thinkexist.com/quotation/love-anything-and-your-heart-
will-be-wrung-and/347988.html)

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 Attachment Theory

„ Attachment is an emotional bond with a

specific person that is enduring across time
and space.
„ Attachment theory is a framework for
discussion of interpersonal relationships
between people, especially families.

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 Who
„ Attachment theory originated in the work of
John Bowlby.
„ Bowlby’s seminal work on attachment and loss
and the subsequent work of his student, Mary
Dinsmore Salter Ainsworth, form the core of
attachment theory.

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 Beginnings
„ In infancy attachment is accomplished through contact
comfort with the primary caregiver. Healthy
attachment brings love, security, and joy; unhealthy
attachment brings anxiety, grief, and depression.
„ All humans form attachments to their primary
caregivers in order to survive. (Bowlby, 1982 &
1988). An extensive body of research describes the
evidence for attachment.
„ Caregiver responses lead to the developmental
patterns of attachment giving the individual a
“working model” that will guide his/her feelings,
thoughts, and expectations in later relationships.

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Ainsworth’s 4 Attachment Categories
„ Secure
„ Caregiver is a secure base and infant will show some
distress when they leave and joy at the reunion.
„ Insecure/Resistant or Ambivalent
„ Child is clingy in strange situations, upset when
caregiver leaves and at reunion child will re-establish
contact but resists comfort.
„ Insecure/Avoidant
„ Child avoids strange situations, does not greet caregiver
upon return and child ignores strangers.
„ Disorganized/Disoriented
„ Child shows no consistent way of coping, has dazed
expression and demonstrates variable behavior at loss of
or reunion with caregiver.
(Sroufe, 2003)

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 Attachment and Family
„ Attachment Theory offers unique data about the
dyadic relationship that can be helpful
„ Observable
„ Effective for intergenerational issues and family of
origin issues.
„ Useful to explore the ongoing impact of past
relationships and gives useful information about issues
of unresolved loss or trauma.

„ Wide support in the research to pay close attention

to the attachment styles and relationships (dyadic)
within the family as well as working with the
family systems.
(Akister and Reibstein, 2004)

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 Adult Couple Relationships
„ Romantic love is an attachment process. The
partner becomes an attachment figure. (Hazan and
Shaver, 1987)
„ Person’s adult style of romantic attachment is also
affected by attachment history.
„ Emotional bond that develops between adults is
impacted by the “working model”
model” of attachment formed
as a child
„ Partner’s characteristics can either maintain
existing working models or promote change for
better or worse.
(Akister and Reibstein, 2004)

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 Four key points
„ The couple relationship can either foster or erode the
sense of security of its members.
„ Pursuer-distancer cycles (family systems) are especially
relevant to an understanding of couples’ attachment
relationships.
„ Transition points provide a particular challenge for the
couple systems, as partners seek to re-establish familiar
interaction patterns or to develop new patterns.
„ There is mutual influence between the couple unit and
other subsystems of the family.

(Feeney, 2003 via Akister and Reibstein, 2004)

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Attachment and Family Systems
Theory (Akister and Reibstein, 2004)

„ Attachment theory has a particular strength in

addressing the emotions and motivations
associated with intimate relating, whereas systems
theory highlights the need to consider the broader
context in which individuals and relationships are
embedded.
„ Partners influence each other in complex, bi-
directional ways
„ Ex: sense of attachment security in one partner can
facilitate the autonomy needs in the other.
„ With arrival of a child, the system has to alter to
accommodate the new member and couples’
attachment relationship will need to accommodate.

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 Sense of Attachment Security in
Couples is associated with
„ Positive beliefs about couple relationships
„ The formation of more stable couple relationships
„ Satisfaction with dating relationships and
marriage
„ High levels of intimacy, commitment and
emotional involvement within the relationship
„ Positive patterns of communication

(Akister and Reibstein, 2004)

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 Basic Needs Met in Families
„ Safety
„ Love
„ Security
„ Acceptance
„ Reassurance
„ Support

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 Attachment and Families I
„ Attachment is an innate motivating force
„ Contact, closeness, dependency GOOD
„ Secure dependence compliments autonomy
„ Security builds autonomy
„ Attachment offers a safe haven
„ Comfort and a buffer
„ Attachment offers a secure base
„ Promotes confidence

(Johnson, 2004)

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Susan Johnson on Attachment II

„ Accessibility and responsiveness build bonds

„ Engagement and emotional accessibility
„ Fear and uncertainty activate attachment bonds
„ Threat, emotions, and attachment
„ Process of separation distress is predictable
„ Protest, clinging, depression, despair, detachment
„ Isolation and loss are inherently traumatizing
„ Deprived of reassuring connection and soothing

(Johnson, 2004)

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 Susan Johnson (2002)
It is the ability to derive comfort
from another human being that
ultimately determines the aftermath
of trauma, not the history of the
trauma itself.

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 Families, Attachment, and
Crisis/Trauma
„ A Shattering or Continued Suppression
around issues of
„ Safety

„ Control

„ Meaning

„ Security

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 Susan Johnson (2002)
Isolation from others becomes as pernicious
in its effects as traumatic abuse itself.

Ways of coping, such as dissociation, make

revictimization more likely and tend to
perpetuate insecurity and relationship
difficulties.

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 Implications for your work
„ Assessment of Attachment styles and attachment
injuries and functioning
„ Mate selection
„ Ability to identify responsive caregiving qualities as
attractive.
„ Secure adults tend to be more satisfied in their
relationships.
„ Relationships are characterized by trust, commitment
and interdependence.
„ Tend to seek support from mate.

„ Parenting – ability to form healthy attachments with

children.
„ Labels and boxes
„ Need for healing

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Legacy of Child Maltreatment: A
Child Welfare Perspective
„ Experiences in childhood impact couple
relationships.
„ Relationship between childhood traumas, sexual
abuse in particular, and negative marital outcomes is
well documented by research.
„ Marital disruption is more likely among those who
experienced physical abuse, rape or serious physical
attack during childhood.
„ Childhood rape and molestation is also associated
with lower marital satisfaction which increase the risk
of dissolution of relationships.

(Conway and Hutson, 2008)

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Most Direct Effect of Maltreatment is on
Intimacy & Personal Relationships Skills

„ Negatively influences an individual’s patterns of

interpersonal interaction interfering in the ability to
form and maintain healthy adult relationships.
„ Partners who have been abused have higher
individual stress symptoms and often their partner
will have secondary trauma resulting from:
„ Hearing about the event.
„ Identifying with the trauma survivor
„ Trauma survivor interacting with partner in ways that are
traumatizing.
(Conway and Hutson, 2008)

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 Child Abuse and Neglect Put the
Child at Risk of Negative Outcomes
„ These negative outcomes can also serve as barrier to a
healthy relationship. The negative outcomes can include:
„ Low educational attainment.
„ Employment risks and low financial resources.
„ Mental and physical health problems.
„ Substance abuse.
„ Incarceration.
„ Early child bearing and multi-partner fertility.
„ Involvement in the child welfare system and justice system.

Ramification of Child Abuse Exist Well into Adulthood

(Conway and Hutson, 2008)

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 Role Play
„ FLE and a therapist visit a family
„ Single mom, live in boyfriend, 4 kids
„ Report of abuse
„ You have been asked to work with mom and
boyfriend on parenting

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 Elaine S. Marshall (2002)
On that first day as a nurse, I assumed cure, care, and healing
to be synonymous. I have learned they are not the same.
Healing is not cure.
Cure is clean, quick, and done--often under anesthesia. The
antibiotic kills the pathogen; the scalpel cuts out the
malignancy; the medication resolves the distorted chemistry.

Healing, however, is often a lifelong process of recovery and

growth in spite of, maybe because of, enduring physical,
emotional, or spiritual assault. It requires time. We may pray
for cure when we really need healing.

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 Continued
Whether for cell reconstruction, for nerve and
muscle rehabilitation, for emotional recovery, or for
spiritual forgiveness, healing needs work and time
and energy. Healing cannot happen in a surgical suite
where the pain is only a sleepy memory. Cure is passive, as
you submit your body to the practitioner.

Healing is active. It requires all the energy of your

entire being. You have to be there, fully awake,
aware, and participating when it happens.

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 Required Reading
„ Conway, T. and Rutledge, Q.H. (2008). Healthy
marriage and the legacy of child maltreatment: A
child welfare perspective. Center for Law and Social
Policy (CLASP) Brief 12: May 2008.

„ Johnson, S. M. (1996), Attachment and trauma.

Emotionally focused couple therapy with trauma
survivors. 3: 36-61.

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 Suggested Reading
„ Rothbaum,F., Rosen, K., Ujiie, T. and Uchida,
N. (2002). Family systems theory, attachment
theory, and culture. Family Process. 41:3 p.
328 – 350.

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 Works Cited
„ Akister, J. and Reibstein, J. (2004), Links between attachment theory and
systemic practice: Some proposals. Journal of Family Therapy. 26:2-16.

„ Conway, T. and Rutledge, Q.H. (2008). Healthy marriage and the legacy
of child maltreatment: A child welfare perspective. Center for Law and
Social Policy (CLASP) Brief 12: May 2008.

„ Johnson, S.M. (2004). The practice of emotionally focused couple

therapy. New York, New York: Brunner-Routledge.

„ Johnson, S.M. (2002). Emotionally focused couple therapy with trauma

survivors: Strengthening attachment bonds. New York:Guilford Press.

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 Works Cited
„ Marshall, E.S.. “Learning the healer’s art”. Brigham Young University
Devotional Address, October 8, 2002, Provo, UT. Marshall, Elaine S.
(2002). Retrieved March 27th, 2008 from
http://magazine.byu.edu/?act=view&a=1233.

„ Sroufe, L. A. (May 2003 ). Attachment categories as reflections of multiple

dimensions: Comment on Fraley and Spieker. Developmental Psychology,
39:3. 413-416.

„ Thinkexit Quotes from http://thinkexist.com/quotation/love-anything-and-

your-heart-will-be-wrung-and/347988.html. Retrieved on March 27, 2008.

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