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Caregiver as source of fear and love
Come here, go away
It shows up as come here, go away: the person who runs so hot and cold that people wonder if they're bipolar. It is common in homes with abuse and alcoholism. The sense of self is low and the sense of others is low, which sounds like I want you, but you're terrifying to me.
Anxious and avoidant
The anxious style pairs a low sense of self with a high sense of others. As a child, the anxious person calmed down when someone came back to get them, and learned to perform to bring someone in. The avoidant style is the reverse, a high sense of self and a low sense of others, built on the belief that no one is coming and only they can be relied on.
Independence and interdependence
Avoidant people understand independence but not interdependence, and anxious people understand interdependence but not independence. The disorganized person doesn't want to take either.
How did researchers find a fourth attachment pattern?
In 1986, Mary Main and Judith Solomon at the University of California, Berkeley noticed that some infants in Ainsworth's Strange Situation did not fit any of the three known groups. These babies showed contradictory behavior, such as approaching a parent with the head turned away, freezing mid-motion, or sinking to the floor. Main and Solomon labeled the pattern disorganized or disoriented.
Why does a frightening caregiver cause such conflict?
Mary Main and Erik Hesse proposed in 1990 that disorganization arises from fright without solution. Infants are biologically driven to seek their caregiver when scared. When the caregiver is also the source of the fear, the drive to approach and the drive to flee point in opposite directions, and the infant has no single coherent strategy.
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