Integr Psych Behav (2008) 42:406–415

DOI 10.1007/s12124-008-9080-9
M O V I N G T O WA R D S T H E F U T U R E

Attachment—Past and Present. But What About

the Future?

Heidi Keller

Published online: 17 September 2008

# Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2008

Abstract This essay acknowledges the seminal contribution of the founders of

attachment theory and research as a paradigm shift in understanding the importance
of the socioemotional foundation of developmental processes. However, it is surprising
that attachment theory has been treated as a closed system by its students with re-
markable resistance to change and further development of theory and methodology.
Especially three dimensions are identified that would help to advance attachment theory
as a valid conception also for the future. The context specificity of evolutionary
theorizing, the different socialization goals and parenting strategies across cultures and
the new insights in infant development need to be taken into consideration in order to
develop a valid theory of socioemotional development as the culturally informed
solution of universal developmental tasks.

Keywords Cultural models . Autonomy . Relatedness . Evolutionary theory . Infancy

Attachment theory has substantially changed the understanding of human develop-

ment. John Bowlby is the father of a real paradigm shift. His meritoriousness
consists especially in defining the following cornerstones of attachment theory:
—the emphasis of social emotional relationships as the foundation of all
developmental progress
—the conception of relationships as psychological constructs sui generis, implying
independence from drive reduction (as had been postulated by psychoanalysts) as
well as independence from reinforcement circuits (as has been postulated by
learning theorists)
—the adaptive functions of relationships as evolved during the history of
humankind

H. Keller (*)
Department of Culture and Development, University of Osnabrück,
Artilleriestrasse 34, 49076 Osnabrück, Germany
e-mail: [email protected]
Integr Psych Behav (2008) 42:406–415 407

—the interaction of relationships with other developmental constructs like e.g.

exploration
—the conceptual links between normal development and psychopathology
(developmental psychiatry, LeVine 1990)

Mary Ainsworth complemented Bowlby's theoretical/conceptual approach with

specifying different attachment qualities as related to different qualities of parental
behavior; she considered especially maternal sensitivity, defined as the prompt,
adequate, and consistent response towards infant's signals, as the essence of
caregiving during the first year of life. She also introduced an empirical procedure to
assess the attachment quality, the strange situation test or procedure. Based on
Bowlby's emphasis on the effects of separation between mother and infant, she
constructed a sequence of situations for the infant to experience, consisting of
confrontations with a stranger, separations from the mother, and reunions. She
developed this sequence as a consequence of different reactions of Ugandan and
Euro-American infants to separations in the home environment (Ainsworth 1967).
Ugandan infants as most sub-Saharan infants are held in constant body contact day
and night during infancy. A physical separation from the mother or another caregiver
even in the familiar home environment is therefore a highly unusual as well as a
threatening event. Euro-American infants as Western middle-class children in
general, on the other hand, spend considerable amounts of time on their own and/
or with toys (Keller 2007; LeVine 1977). Separation situations in the familiar home
environment are therefore a daily routine as well as a pedagogical measure. The
combination of the unfamiliar lab environment, the strange person and the separation
from the mother are therefore means to increase the psychological stress in the infant
so that the attachment systems becomes activated (for the development of the strange
situation procedure, see Karen 1994).
The quality of attachment is inferred—in line with the ethological approach—
from the approach/avoidance behavior of the infant after separations from the mother
(Ainsworth and Wittig 1969; Ainsworth et al. 1978).
Since these early pioneering days, attachment theory has not experienced much of
development and refinement—or to put it more straightforward, has resisted to
changes and did not keep pace with the development of knowledge in the field. The
concepts as laid out in attachment theory are broadly defined and lack theoretical
clarity in many instances. Obviously, many facets of attachment theory were
theoretically immature (e.g. separation, stress, and stranger anxiety are confounded
in the strange situation) and not tested against methodological fallacies. Norbert
Bischof (1975) suggested a differentiated systemic analysis of the interplay between
attachment and fear. He proposed his contribution, which became later elaborated in
the Zurich model of social motivation, as a theoretical refinement of Bowlby's
original approach (see also Gubler and Bischof 1991). Much to his disappointment,
Bowlby and other students of attachment ignored his contribution and even refused
to discuss it (several personal communications between 2004 and 2007).
Michael Lamb, a student of Mary Ainsworth at John Hopkins University, and
collaborators (Lamb et al. 1984) tried to instigate the discussion about the
methodological soundness of the Strange Situation procedure and the validity of
408 Integr Psych Behav (2008) 42:406–415

conclusions that were based on these grounds. Lamb and colleagues voiced the
doubts that many developmentalists had raised. For example, “(t)he English
developmentalist Michael Rutter referred to it as curious procedure “involving
mother, caretakers and strangers not only going in and out of rooms every minute for
reasons quite obscure to the child but also not initiating interactions in the way they
might usually do”” (Karen 1994, p. 267). However, Mary Ainsworth and her
followers were not ready to discuss the arguments raised, but they perceived the
Lamb et al. paper as an “intolerable insult” (Karen 1994, p. 267). Leading
attachment theorists refused to submit peer commentaries to Behavioral and Brain
Sciences, were this paper has appeared.
There are many more instances where leading attachment theorists ignored
knowledge that did not support the original ideas or where data were interpreted
to fit the framework (see e.g. the discussion of maternal sensitivity in the van
IJzendoorn and Sagi (1999) paper on cultural similarities or Sroufe's and Water's
(1997) reaction to the proposal of a culture sensitive interpretation of relationship
formation (Keller et al. 1997)).
In the remainder of this article I would like to highlight three areas, in which
attachment theory needs to be developed in order to keep up with its claim to explain
children's behavioral development and its variations in order to stand the test of time
also over the next 50 years (see Suomi et al. 2008).
The three areas are the following:
1. The evolutionary bases of attachment
2. The cultural nature of attachment
3. Attachment and new developments in infancy research
These areas will be briefly discussed in the following sections.

The Evolutionary Bases of Attachment

It was John Bowlby's great merit to include the evolutionary basis of attachment into
his framework of thinking. However, he restricted himself to the contributions of
ethology (Lorenz 1969; Tinbergen 1963) and animal psychology/biology (Harlow
1958) and left out the neo Darwinian evolutionary view(s). Ethology and comparative
psychology/biology are both interested in universal laws that evolved during evolution
as adaptive responses to selection pressures. Mary Ainsworth continued to promote
this universalistic stance of attachment despite her cultural experiences in Uganda, as
do their followers until today. This view implies that there is one healthy way of
development, i.e. the development of a secure attachment relationship, which has
universal precursors (maternal sensitivity) and universal consequences for the further
behavioral development. The two or three, respectively, identified other forms of
attachment are considered to be insecure (avoidant and ambivalent) or disorganized
(Main 1990) and thus aberrations from the secure strategy. Already Lamb et al.
(1984) have raised the questions of the adaptability of one evolutionary strategy as a
misunderstanding of evolutionary principles and natural selection. As these authors
state correctly that “(E)evolutionary biology, however, demands an evaluation not
only of biologically influenced predispositions but also of the contingencies
Integr Psych Behav (2008) 42:406–415 409

provided by the specific environments or “niches” in which the individuals must

manifest these predispositions.” (p. 146). Belsky et al. (1991) later qualified secure
and insecure attachment resp. as developmental organizers in terms of different
reproductive strategies, yet equally adaptive in terms of reproductive success.
Until today, evolutionary theory is often misunderstood as subscribing to the
assumption of psychic unity (Norenzayan et al. 2007). In fact Neo Darwinian
evolutionary theory (Alexander 1988; Tooby and Cosmides 1990; Wilson 1975)
claims that contextual information is crucial for defining adaptation, thus putting
variability in the very centre of evolutionary theorizing. The core assumption is that
individuals need to select the behavioral alternatives that promise highest reproductive
outcomes in a particular ecological situation (Keller and Chasiotis 2008). It is
therefore unlikely that in the Pleistocene environment of evolutionary adaptedness
(EEA), which is regarded as the cradle of modern men, only one behavioral strategy
would have been selected as adaptive. In the same vein, Belsky (1999) argued that
the different attachment strategies, as defined by Ainsworth et al. (1978) do not
represent one healthy strategy and different aberrations, but different adaptive
strategies in different environments responding to different selective pressures.
Therefore secure attachment is not “better” than insecure attachment, but a different
way to maximize reproductive success. The difference in perspective is, whether
the assumed psychological wellbeing (associated with secure attachment) or the
reproductive success is the tertium comparationis. This difference is also the
starting point for the growing interest in an evolutionary developmental
psychology (Bjorklund and Pellegrini 2002; Keller 2001).
As a consequence, it can be assumed that humans, although they are K-strategists
in general (few children and high parental investment, cf. Suomi et al. 2008),
develop strikingly different reproductive strategies from mating effort and parental
investment across contexts. Therefore, the definition of attachment and attachment
strategies needs to be revised due to different contextual/environmental affordances
and constraints. In this respect also the Lamb et al. (1984) questions should be
reconsidered whether the identified attachment strategies cover the whole range of
infants’ emotional regulations. There are promising empirical approaches linking
psychological and somatic development far beyond “story telling” (cf. Suomi et al.,
this volume). This is where also culture comes into play.

The Cultural Nature of Attachment

In line with the claim of universality, attachment theorists are interested in culture
only so far as to demonstrate the pan-cultural validity of all aspects of attachment,
i.e. the precursors (maternal sensitivity), the distribution of attachment styles (A
(21%), B (65%), and C (14%), van IJzendoorn and Kroonenberg 1988) and the
developmental consequences (see also Rothbaum et al. 2000a, b). However, there
were notably two studies, that revealed different distributions, especially one conducted
in North Germany (Grossmann et al. 1981) in which more avoidant (A) infants were
found than global norms would suggest, and one in Japan (Takahashi 1986) where
more resistant (C) infants were found. The unexpected distributional differences of
attachment strategies were interpreted post hoc with half-hearted reference to culture
410 Integr Psych Behav (2008) 42:406–415

without taking the chance to thoroughly analyze the role of culture for the formation of
attachment. However, if we take culture serious, we have to analyze behavior as well
as how behavior is interpreted and what it means to the acting people. Thus culture
centres around distinct models of man.
Bowlby's psychoanalytic training may have had an impact in creating a
psychology that defined independence from others as a requisite of healthy human
development (Erikson 1950; Freud 1961; Mahler 1972). Ever since, independence
from others and personal autonomy are the ideological foundations of attachment
theory with notable consequences for the definition of parenting quality, childrearing
goals, and thus with respect to an understanding of desirable endpoints of
development (Keller 2003, 2004, 2007; Keller and Harwood 2008).
Thus, security of attachment is not simply a behavioral category; it is also a
moral ideal in as much as it provides a pathway to the development of culturally
valued qualities, such as self-confidence, curiosity, and psychological indepen-
dence (Harwood et al. 1995; LeVine and Norman 2001; Morelli and Rothbaum
2007; Rothbaum et al. 2000a, b). The inherent moral imperative in attachment
discourse has implications for the definition of psychological health and well-being
in general.
Thus, maternal sensitivity is not simply assumed to be a causal influence in the
development of attachment; it is a judgment on maternal adequacy, a way of
distinguishing good from bad mothers (LeVine and Norman 2001). Ainsworth
(1969) describes the sensitive mother as one who acknowledges that her baby has
his/her own will; she also respects her baby's anger and evaluates the baby's needs as
a separate autonomous person. Promptness of responding to the baby's signals is
important because the baby cannot perceive a delayed response as contingent upon
his communication. It is assumed that it is good for a baby to gain some feeling of
efficacy, and eventually to gain a sense of competence in controlling the social
environment. Cultural influences in the conceptualization of maternal sensitivity are
even more pronounced with regard to the evaluation of maternal cooperation vs.
interference with the baby's ongoing behavior (Ainsworth et al. 1978). Interference is
conceived of as instructing, directing, and controlling, rather than following the
baby's lead. The highly interfering or intrusive mother is regarded as one who has
no respect for her baby as a separate, active, and autonomous person, whose
wishes and activities have a validity of their own. Ainsworth (1969) considered
one of the dynamics behind interference to be an emphasis on training. From this
perspective, the mother feels that she can shape the baby to fit her own concept of
good behavior, and she imposes her agenda on him without regard to his own
wishes (cf. also Rothbaum et al. 2000a, b).
However, it is especially this picture of the intrusive and controlling mother in a
positive understanding, who is the ideal of good parenting in many non-Western
cultural environments (Chao 1995; Keller 2007; Morelli and Rothbaum 2007) with
the consequence that what is normative in one cultural environment is regarded
as a pathological condition in another. For example, mother-infant symbiosis or
triangulations belong to the clinical repertoire in the Euro-American middle-class
culture whereas it is the cultural standard and the valued practice in many non-
Western contexts, which actually comprise the majority world (Kagitcibasi 2007;
Yovsi et al., paper submitted for publication).
Integr Psych Behav (2008) 42:406–415 411

It is not surprising that also attachment strategies differ across cultural environ-
ments (see above). Otto (2008) demonstrated that 1-year-old West-African Nso
children reacted with a behavioral pattern towards a stranger that has been also
observed by True et al. (2001) with children from Mali. This pattern consists of
complete emotional inexpressiveness. True and collaborators (2001) interpreted this
behavior as demonstrating the disorganized pattern of attachment, which they
reported to be frequent in African children. Otto (2008), however, found out in
interviews with the mothers that it was especially this behavioral pattern that the
mothers evaluated as appropriate and wanted to be seen in their children. Thus,
cultural goals and values define what is an appropriate attachment strategy.
Again, in order to stand the test of time over the next 50 years, attachment theory
has to address the cultural solutions of universal behavioral tasks seriously.

Attachment and New Developments in Infancy Research

John Bowlby proposed a developmental sequence from birth to goal-corrected

partnership in attachment. Bowlby (1969) suggested four phases, the first three are:
pre-attachment, attachment in the making, and clear-cut attachment that the infant
undergoes in order to develop a primary attachment relationship during the first
two years. Bowlby (1969) also conceptualizes a fourth phase as goal-corrected
partnership that is the foundation for the formulation of the internal working model,
i.e. the representation of attachment relationships (Main 1990). Mary Ainsworth
(1973) (Ainsworth et al. 1978) revised the sequence of phases for the development
of attachment and substantiated this with the expertise of infants’ developmental
processes of that time. In her conception, the first phase, undiscriminating responses,
covers the first 3 months, the second phase, discriminating behavior, extends from
3 to 6 months, and the third phase, formation of secure base, is terminated by
24 months. Ainsworth perception of infancy primarily concentrates on physiological/
neurological immaturity.
The newborn infant is seen as a mass of poorly organized neurological responses.
The brain's function at this time is to organize and control physiological states and
behavior. It needs the responses from an external figure in order to coordinate
behavior like grasping, crying, and other autonomic responses.
Infancy research during the last decades has demonstrated that infants are
equipped with a repertoire of perceptual and cognitive capabilities that allow
competent interactions with the physical and social world from birth on (Rovee-
Collier 1997). For example, infants prefer human faces to other visual displays and
with three months of age they have formed a mental representations of the category
“faces” (de Haan and Groen 2006). They remember actions over several days and
have expectations over the nature of social exchange (Bremner and Fogel 2001).
With few months of age they have an understanding of object permanence (Baillargeon
1987).
John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth did not know—at their time—about infant's
mental and representational capacities and their ways of intentionality and co-
regulation of behavior. In light of these recent advances, it would be possible to
revise the ideas about the formation of attachment as a co-construction process based
412 Integr Psych Behav (2008) 42:406–415

on evolved propensities to process information. This would probably lead to a

different time schedule with different milestones in the self-development.
However, Bowlby and Ainsworth could have known about the cultural ways of
socialization from cultural psychologists and anthropologist of their time (Konner
1977; LeVine 1977; Super and Harkness 1980). Nevertheless, the developmental
sequence that they proposed is oriented towards the Euro-American middle-class
context for children's development. The mother is regarded as the main caretaker
with time for extended interaction and a focus on exclusive attention. The emphasis
on the link between attachment and exploration as reflecting secure base behavior is
also informed by a Western middle-class view on development (see also Rothbaum
et al. 2000a, b). On the other hand, the concept of exploration is not very elaborated
in attachment theory. It covers basically every behavior related to the physical world
and non-directed to the caregiver, albeit much more information is available about
mechanisms and processes of exploratory behavior in different cultural environments
(Farver and Howes 1988; Power 2000).
During the first 2 years of life, children reach major developmental milestones in
all developmental domains. With about 2 years of life, children are representatives of
their cultural environments with motor mobility, language, socio-cognitive capaci-
ties, and motivational underpinnings

Conclusions. From a Closed System to Environmentally Open Strategies

Attachment theory signified a major shift in our thinking about child development.
The seminal contributions of John Bowlby and Harry Harlow in developing the third
way between psychoanalysis and learning theory, which were the dominant theories
of the time, are unquestioned. Mary Ainsworth contributed to the elaboration of this
theoretical account. However, as the papers of this special issue demonstrate (see
2008, vol 42 No 4), she contributed not so much in a conceptual and theoretical way,
but with empirical studies and behavioral observations in natural and laboratory
environments. Her contributions were crucial for disseminating attachment theory
into mainstream Euro-American psychology and to form an intellectual community
with devoted students. Nevertheless the downside may be an intellectual closeness
that was certainly not intended by the pioneering trio.
In order to stand the next 50 years, attachment theory needs to redefine its
developmental sequences on the basis of infant's development in different cultural
contexts. The understanding of attachment development needs to start with the
consideration of the ecosocial context to which adaptation and competence needs to
be developed. Parental goals and beliefs represent the ecosocial affordances and
define the ethics and morality of development. Different behavioral parenting
strategies have been identified which correspond to different parenting values and
norms (Keller 2007). Children's development reflects these different socialization
strategies in terms of social, emotional as well as cognitive development. Future
attachment research should start with reviewing the appropriateness of the
established attachment strategies for different cultural context. In light of this review
also the conceptions of secure and insecure need to be evaluated beyond their
functional value for reproductive success. This discussion would greatly benefit
Integr Psych Behav (2008) 42:406–415 413

from liberating it from the demand of the encompassing truth that is attached to it
and that the disciples of attachment theory still maintain.
The field is certainly ready for a new pioneering generation.

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Heidi Keller is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Osnabrück and a director of research at the
Lower Saxonian Institute for Early Development and Education. Her interests are centered on the
interrelationship between culture and biology for the understanding of human development. She has done
extensive research in the area of cross-cultural psychology and taught at different universities. ADDRESS:
Prof. Heidi Keller, University of Osnabrück, Department of Culture and Development, Artilleriestrasse 34,
49076 Osnabrück, Germany. [email: [email protected]]