A Secure Base: Theoretical Context and Overview

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A SECURE BASE

Theoretical Context and Overview

Attachment theory refers to the early emotional bond that develops (or fails to develop
adequately) between infants and their caregivers. According to Bowlby (1988), infants develop a
secure attachment when certain core needs in the developmental process are met. When secure,
the infant who becomes frightened or feels threatened, a normal occurrence, will reach out to the
caregiver for responsiveness, comfort, and protection, confident that it will be forthcoming. On
the other hand, those infants who experience rejection or indifference when feeling in jeopardy
are likely to internalize insecure or anxious attachment relationships.
There are three principal patterns of attachment:
 Secure attachment – an individual is confident that his parent (or parent figure) will be
available, responsive and helpful when he encounters frightening situations. With this
assurance, he feels bold in his explorations of the world.
 Anxious resistant attachment – an individual is uncertain whether his parent will be
available or responsive when called upon. He is always prone to separation anxiety,
tends to be clinging, and is anxious about exploring the world. Threats of abandonment
are used as a means of control.
 Anxious avoidant attachment – an individual has no confidence that, when he seeks care,
he will be responded to helpfully but, on the contrary, expects to be rejected. Therefore,
he attempts to live his life without the love and support of others, tries to become
emotionally self-sufficient and may later be diagnosed as narcissistic or as having a false
self.
According to Bowlby (1988), attachment behavior is organized by means of a control system
within the central nervous systems, analogous to the physiological control systems that maintain
physiological measures such as blood pressure and body temperature within set limits. Thus, the
attachment control system maintains a person’s relation to his attachment figure between certain
limits of distance and accessibility, using various methods of communication for doing so. As
such, the effects of its operation can be regarded as an example of environmental homeostasis.
By postulating this concept, attachment theory contains within itself a theory of motivation. The
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presence of attachment control system and its linkage to the working models of self and
attachment figures that are built in the mind during childhood are held to be central features of
personality functioning throughout life.
Object-relations therapists also believe that these early attachment patterns represent a
cornerstone of intimate relations in adult life. Individuals who grow up with a history of insecure
attachments often unconsciously choose intimate partners to repair their early deprivation, only
to reenact their earlier failed attachment experience.
Five therapeutic tasks:

1. To provide the client with a secure base from which he can explore various aspects of his
life (holding environment).
2. To assist the client in his explorations by encouraging him to consider his interpersonal
styles, his relationships with others, expectations for his own feelings and behaviors as
well as others.
3. To encourage the client to examine the relationship between the two of them (possible
transference).
4. To encourage the client to consider how his current perceptions and expectations and
feelings and actions may be the product either of the events from his childhood or the
product of what he may repeatedly have been told by parental caregivers.
5. To enable the client to recognize that the images of himself and others derived from past
painful experiences may not be appropriate for his present and future; or indeed, may
have never been justified.
A therapist’s stance
The therapeutic alliance appears as a secure base, an internal object as a working, or
representational model of an attachment figure, reconstruction as exploring memories of the past,
resistance as deep reluctance to disobey the past orders of parents not to tell or not to remember.
Therapist’s role is to be a companion for a client in his exploration of himself and his
experiences, rather than interpreting things to the client (“You know, you tell me”). The client is
encouraged to believe that, with support and occasional guidance, he can discover for himself
true nature of the models that underlie his thoughts, feelings, and actions, and that, by examining
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the nature of his early experiences with his parents, or parental caregivers, he will understand
what has led him to build the models now active within him and be free to restructure them.
The human psyche is strongly inclined towards self-healing and therapist’s job is to
provide the conditions in which self-healing can best take place.
Concepts
Violence in the family (p.79)
Violence in the family can be understood as the distorted and exaggerated versions of
behavior that is potentially functional, especially attachment and care giving behavior.
When a relationship to a special loved person is endangered, we are not only anxious but are
usually angry as well. As responses to the risk of loss, anxiety and anger go hand in hand. The
specific relationships, threats to which may arouse anger are three main types: relationship with a
sexual partner, relationships with parents and relationships with children. Each type of
relationship is filled with strong emotion because a person’s whole emotional life – the
underlying tone of how he feels- is determined by the state of these long-term, committed
relationships.
Characteristics of abusive mothers (p.86)

- prone to periods of intense anxiety punctuated by outbursts of violent anger,
- impulsive and immature,
- strong “dependency needs” but extremely distrustful and consequently unable or willing to
make close relationships – socially isolated,
- having no one else to turn to, they seek care and comfort from their children, whom they treat
as though they were much older than they are,
- most of them suffered physical or prolonged mental abuse as a child or/and neglect (p. 86).
Thoughts and feelings disconfirmed (p.103)

The scenes and experiences that tend to become shut off, though often continuing to be
extremely influential in affecting thoughts, feelings and behaviors fall into 3 distinct categories:
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a) those that parents wish their children not to know about; b) those in which parents have treated
children in ways that children find too unbearable to think about; c) those in which children have
done, or perhaps thought, things about which they feel unbearably guilty or ashamed.
Many of the children are aware of how their parents feel, and they proceed to conform to
their parents’ wishes by excluding from further processing such information as they already
have; and that, having done so, they cease consciously to be aware that they have ever observed
such scenes, form such impressions, or had such experiences (e.g. parent’s death). Many of the
children’s psychological problems seemed directly traceable to their having been exposed to
situations of these kinds. Their problems included chronic distrust of other people, inhibition of
their curiosity, distrust of their own senses and a tendency to find everything unreal. When
working with these children a therapeutic process will not be so much about restoring a memory
but giving a client permission to talk about something he had always is some ways known about.
Mother recalling her childhood (p.133)

Mother of secure infant is able to talk freely about good and bad things, shows emotions
and her story is fluent and coherent, with positive aspects integrated with the negative ones.
Mother of an anxious resistant infant describes a difficult and unhappy relationship with
her own mother which she is still clearly disturbed about.
Mother of an anxious avoidant infant describes usually a happy childhood but she is
unable to give any supportive details and what is more, often refers to episodes that point in an
opposite directions.
References
Bowlby, J. (1988). A Secure Base. Parent-Child Attachment and Healthy Human Development.
Basic Books.

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Theoretical Context and Overview

Five therapeutic tasks:

Characteristics of abusive mothers (p.86)

Thoughts and feelings disconfirmed (p.103)

Mother recalling her childhood (p.133)

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