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The trouble with attachment theory Psychology should be based on medicine not memes

Two avoidant partners. (Mr. & Mrs. Smith)


October 30, 2023   9 mins

I’ll tell you up front: I am an avoidant partner. I frequently withdraw into myself and become uncommunicative. In fights I get quiet rather than angry, saying less and less, making a partner feel like they have no ability to elicit a reaction from me. My stock response to criticism is not to deny it but to say I don’t care; my chief insult, across my 20+ years of romantic relationships, has been to say that I just wasn’t that into the person I was with.

These are all classic signs of an avoidant attachment style. According to the Attachment Project, avoidant individuals “do not want to depend on others, have others depend on them, or seek support and approval in social bonds”, which is a pretty good description of my longstanding fear of relying on others.  The question is whether the broad understanding offered by attachment theory can really help me be a better partner, or enable my partner to better help me.

The concept of attachment styles has been rattling around in psychology for at least 70 years, but it has recently become inescapable. Pioneered by the British psychologist John Bowlby in the Fifties, attachment theory suggests that experiences in our childhoods, most significantly the way we were parented, play a large role in our later adult relationships. If our parents made us feel safe, if their attachment to us was stable, we carry that into adulthood and have healthy relationships in turn. But if we were parented in a way that was cold or uncaring or inconsistent, then we will bring echoes of that treatment into our friendships and romantic partnerships, to our detriment.

Attachment theory has gone in and out of fashion over time, but when it’s been hot, it’s been worked into self-help books, discussed to death by unhappy girlfriends, and used to analyse everything from societal trends to episodes of reality TV shows. The 2010 book Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find — and Keep  Love has become something of a bible for adherents to this philosophy, and has kept selling, to the point that the New York Times wrote it up in a trend piece more than a decade after its publication. NPR, which is a good guide to the id of the overeducated American liberal, ran an explainer of attachment theory last year. And right now, topics related to it have hundreds of millions of views on TikTok.

The theory goes that there are four major styles, though there are variations depending on who you’re listening to. A healthy childhood, with loving and committed parenting, usually leads to the secure attachment style: these people tend to be dependable and self-confident, good partners who don’t let their relationships be influenced by fear of abandonment. The avoidant style presents itself as a commitment to extreme independence, which can threaten the mutual bonding of a healthy relationship, and which typically springs from the fear of relying on others and the vulnerability that brings. The anxious style is found in those with an unhealthy degree of need for their partner, and a constant fear that the person they’re attached to will leave them. The disorganised style combines aspects of both the anxious and avoidant styles, alternating between aloofness and deep neediness.

The internet is a sea of dubious claims that your partner might be a sociopath, or that your relationships fail because of conflicting astrological signs; in this context, a simple explanation about the connection between loving and secure parenting and loving and secure romantic partnership seems sensible. The existence of the secure style does seem a little like a projection of a “normal” ideal that few people actually reach, and as always with this type of thing, there’s a question of how far you can deviate in any direction before you occupy another of the styles. But I’d certainly like to believe that there’s plenty of people out there who enjoyed healthy childhoods and are able to navigate adult relationships with confidence because of that. The assumption of universal childhood trauma that has grown over the years is good for no one.

Still, there’s little doubt that people who have suffered neglect in childhood often struggle, later in life, to feel safe in relationships — because they are either unable or unwilling to allow for true intimacy, or constantly afraid of losing it. But the disorganised attachment style — otherwise known as “fearful-avoidant”, “anxious-avoidant” or “mixed” — strikes me as just the kind of catch-all category that you often see with this sort of schema, into which people squeeze stubbornly complicated cases.

That doesn’t mean it’s a useless concept. What I’m suggesting here is that categories like these are helpful when our experiences conform to their guidelines, potentially unhelpful when they don’t, and dangerous when we begin to see them as science instead of interpretation. If we think of them as useful-but-artificial frames for understanding ourselves, they can be handy and healthy. If we insist on seeing them as a matter of scientific fact, we risk falling into all sorts of bad mental habits. For example, let’s consider me.

As I said, I’m typically avoidant. When I’ve wanted to end a relationship, I’ve simply pulled further and further away, making it clear to the other person that I was no longer invested, without sitting them down for a frank talk. When someone else has ended a relationship with me, I’ve responded by parting as quickly as possible, shutting down the opportunity for a sympathetic conversation, even when I was secretly very upset. In general, my inability to escape the fantasies playing out in my head was convenient to me: they became another world, in which what I was trying to avoid was not present.

This dynamic would only support attachment theory if it stemmed from childhood and my relationship with my parents. Here again my case study seems to support it. Both of my parents died when I was young, and I spent the remainder of my childhood without an adult to securely hold on to. I had a legal guardian, but she and I had an explosively unhappy relationship, and I left home as soon as I was able. I spent so much time in a state of emotional self-defence that I never really confronted what happened to me, and it’s taken decades of turmoil to put it together, with the help of therapy. My embarrassingly predictable response to a childhood where attachment led only to pain has been an adulthood in which I have craved intimacy but have consistently refused to allow myself to feel it. This is about as obvious an expression of the core of attachment theory as you’re likely to find.

And yet I’m also a good object lesson in the limitations of this approach. According to the Attachment Project, “parents who are strict and emotionally distant, do not tolerate the expression of feelings, and expect their child to be independent and tough might raise children with an avoidant attachment style”. But my parents were remarkably libertine, relentlessly loving, and gave us the opportunity to express our feelings. It’s true that we were raised to be independent and make our own choices. But this wasn’t a result of neglect; it was, in fact, a purposeful approach to parenting, and thus a reflection of love. Their belief was that allowing us to make our own choices and accept the bumps and bruises that came along with them was ultimately the only way to prepare us for real life.

There are also ways in which my behaviour, as well as my background, doesn’t fit into attachment theory. Avoidant people supposedly dodge arguments, which is not exactly a trait I’m known for. And they are generally less likely to fall in love, but as a younger man I would fall head over heels in no time at all. Within a given intimate relationship, romantic or not, I’m likely to withdraw, as a defence mechanism — but my heart still desires intense connection. My brain is just unwilling to countenance the risks.

Some would say, well, that means your attachment style is disorganised. But this is precisely my problem with catch-all categories like that one: anytime there’s an apparent internal contradiction, you just throw people into them. The result is a system that’s non-falsifiable, and thus not useful.

If you dig around into forums devoted to attachment styles, such as the relevant subreddit, or look through the endless Instagram posts dedicated to them, you’ll find that this kind of confusion is very common — people will say something like, “my attachment style describes me so perfectly in this regard, but in this other aspect of myself, it doesn’t describe me at all”. And it seems that the more closely a given attachment style seems to reflect one part of your life, the more it stings when it fails to reflect another. An apparently scientific model that seems to fit us perfectly can feel like validation, like our problems and struggles are not incomprehensible to others. When we then fail to conform to other aspects of that model, it makes our original feeling of alienation — the one that had us Googling “what’s my attachment style” in the first place — all the more acute.

And yet, any broad categorisation of messy human people will, in practice, blur at the edges. People who subscribe to Myers Briggs or the Big Five Personality Test, or the most popular categorisation scheme of all, astrology always find this — it explains everything, until it explains nothing. Horoscopes are written to be vague and broad enough to be non-falsifiable. But as the industry of astrology has grown, so too has its claims to truth — which will inevitably and eventually fail, given that the stars can’t actually predict our destinies. People who are invested in attachment styles hate the comparison to astrology. But if you look at how these systems are discussed and experienced, you can’t help but note the similarities.

So, if they’re doomed to fall apart, why do we keep putting ourselves in categories? We all recognise that taking a Buzzfeed quiz about which Disney princess we are is a frivolous exercise. And yet the enduring popularity of that sort of thing — I remember the copies of Seventeen magazine that my sister collected and the endless personality quizzes therein — speaks to one of the most powerful urges in human life, which has only grown stronger in the digital age. We long to be understandable to others, to represent a type, so that we can be seen — especially in the cacophony of personalities that is the internet.

Of course, anyone who has ever known a teenager knows that this desire to fall into an easily-communicable category often goes hand-in-hand with extreme discomfort with being categorised. But in a culture that has effectively discarded religiosity — which has ironised defining ourselves by our professions and abandoned the communal markers that once created a sense of meaning — we find ourselves desperate to be something. Some people fill this need by overidentifying with their consumer choices — the person who has tried to make owning Beanie Babies a personality, the ones who thinks environmentally-friendly consumption makes an identity. Some people become “stans”, giving their autonomy to a celebrity to feel a sense of belonging. Some people join cults. And some people overinvest in systems like attachment theory.

As an atheist, and one who feels that spiritual woo-woo is ultimately corrosive to many lives, I’m not a fan of people reading their horoscopes or Googling whether a potential match has a compatible star sign. But I also understand that most people use astrology for fun and perhaps to give them another lens through which to consider their own behaviour. Despite their scientific patina, attachment styles ought to be used in a similar way. They are useful rather than true.

If they are understood to be a metaphor for deeper patterns and pathologies in relationships, they can promote healthy romantic and sexual lives. If they are mistaken for some sort of transcendent categories into which we all fit, and which are existential or comprehensive descriptors, they are more likely to promote misery than healthy relationships.

It’s particularly easy for this sort of system to create self-fulfilling prophecies; someone who encounters attachment styles in popular culture, rather than therapy, might decide that they are simply cursed to be a certain way and act out avoidance or anxiety in response. A therapist who uses attachment theory to counsel couples in how to have better relationships will be well aware of this distinction between what is useful and what is transcendently real. But the internet is a machine for making people place undue faith in limited human concepts. “There are exactly four ways that adults attach to each other” fits comfortably in an Instagram meme, just like “Geminis are capricious and can’t be counted on”. “These concepts are useful descriptors of broad human behaviours, but they are necessarily limited and contextual and should not be relied on for literal or perfect advice” does not. And the latter doesn’t sell self-help books, which become popular by offering exactly the kind of certitude and totalising advice that we shouldn’t invest in them.

Part of the misery of the contemporary conversation about mental health is that the people who are best equipped to navigate its incredible and increasing complexities are precisely those that need it the least. An emotionally healthy person is more likely to accept the limitations of attachment theory, where an emotionally vulnerable person might get overinvested in it. An avoidant person is more likely to use broad concepts they find on the internet to make sense of their lives, because they lack the deep human relationships that would help them understand themselves. An anxious person is more likely to cast about for any reassuring explanation for precisely what they need to change in order to maintain their grasp on someone they love. A fearful-avoidant person might experience both at the same time. Each, in other words, is highly impressionable, and more likely to put too much faith in attachment theory.

The devolution of psychology to a crowdsourced “science”, popularised through memes, has done tremendous damage to our ability to let experts guide our complicated paths toward understanding our own minds. The solution here is for us to return mental healthcare to the status of medicine, not internet fads. There’s nothing wrong with reading about attachment styles — or boundaries, or gaslighting, or narcissism; nothing even wrong with learning about them through Instagram. The trouble is when we start to think of these frameworks for understanding relationships as “real”, as certainties rather than human tools, when in fact, like so much else in the science of human behaviour, they cannot exist outside of our collective effort to define them. We created them, and we would do well to remember it — but of course, that’s hardest for the people who need help the most.


Freddie deBoer is a writer and academic. His newsletter can be found at freddiedeboer.substack.com.


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Right-Wing Hippie
Right-Wing Hippie
11 months ago

I’ve never had the slightest belief in astrology, but then, that’s very typical of Aquariuses like me.

Lindsay S
Lindsay S
11 months ago

This is less about Bowlby being nonsense and more about the mental health hypochondria that is infecting western society all thanks to the internet. That and our obsession with pigeonholing ourselves.
There is nothing wrong with being a loving parent, neglectful parents do a lot of damage to their children. Don’t believe me? Try working with those children!

Dominic A
Dominic A
11 months ago
Reply to  Lindsay S

I agree a loving parent is a wonderful thing, likely to trump any problems. Do you not think though that ‘helicopter parenting’ is a real thing? Coddling, over-protection, smothering, trying to be, first and foremost, a friend to your kids – acts born of love (also fear)….bears testament to the idea ‘you can have too much of a good thing’.

Lindsay S
Lindsay S
11 months ago
Reply to  Dominic A

Absolutely! Helicopter parents undermine a child’s ability to learn to trust their own judgment. That’s why they say the goal is the “good enough” parent. Too much and too little is detrimental to growth.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
11 months ago
Reply to  Dominic A

I think you’re talking about being controlling not loving. There can never be too much unconditional love.

hayden eastwood
hayden eastwood
11 months ago
Reply to  Lindsay S

Where in the article does it mention that there’s something wrong with being a loving parent?

Attachment theory more or less says “if you want to have healthy children that form productive relationships then you’d better be present and engaged as a parent”.

Andrew Vanbarner
Andrew Vanbarner
11 months ago

My parents were in general kind and loving, if a bit too strict, or maybe too critical.
I found in adulthood, though, that nothing will drive a woman away quite like neediness or insecurity. And few things will attract them so effectively as confident, disinterested assertion, other than, perhaps, above average height.
Being kind or loving is rarely sexually attractive to most women. Father Christmas, Jesus of Nazareth, and child care workers are kind and loving.
Few women – likely none – find them sexy.

Last edited 11 months ago by Andrew Vanbarner
Lindsay S
Lindsay S
11 months ago

My comment was more a reaction to the comment of attachment theory being nonsense.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
11 months ago

Exactly.

RM Parker
RM Parker
11 months ago

I guess it’s a fair warning about the perils of self-diagnosis in general. If you’re genuinely worried, anguished or in pain, go see a reputable professional. Attempting to see yourself from the inside usually isn’t instructive, beyond a pretty basic level. Probably why humans are, at base, social beings I suppose: interacting with peers keeps us grounded, helps to frame behaviour in a sane, coherent way… but t’internet isn’t a substitute for actual social interaction, as we all know, all too well.

Alex Carnegie
Alex Carnegie
11 months ago
Reply to  RM Parker

”Reputable professionals”? There may be no subject more intriguing than psychology but the reality is that it is a very early stage of development. Psychology and Psychiatry are perhaps where physical medicine was in 200 AD, when Galen was pontificating about the four humours. Attachment theory, Freud, etc are theories of similar quality. Some are plausible, a few may last but virtually none are proven today in any scientific sense. One day there may be professionals able to offer well based advice but at present there are only, at best, gifted amateurs stumbling around in the dark.

Allison Barrows
Allison Barrows
11 months ago

I always laugh when columnists and others use phrases like “over educated American liberals”. They are, in fact, flattering themselves. These self-proclaimed towers of intellect are not only not over educated, they are mal or dis educated, steeped in fads and propaganda, almost wholly ignorant of even the most recent history, and incapable of writing grammatically correct, lucid sentences, or even just thinking clearly.
And liberal? The least liberal, open-minded people one will ever meet currently attends, is employed by, or graduated from an institute of higher learning – as comical a misnomer as exists today.
And now we have Gen Z shrieking about their fragile mental health every time they have a fight with their boyfriend over whose turn it is to take out the trash. Why wouldn’t one avoid attachments like that? It’s not a syndrome, it’s common sense.

Sayantani Gupta
Sayantani Gupta
11 months ago

Beautifully put. I completely agree!
Economics used to be called ” common sense made difficult”- I now add Zoomer and Millenial psycho- babble as this writer mostly does to the description.
Think he is confused about most aspects of existence.

Allison Barrows
Allison Barrows
11 months ago

Heh. I like that. I had an economics prof who was so incoherent everyone in his class got an “incomplete”. The college had to reimburse all of us for the entire semester. Guess what? Some years later I ran into him at a dinner party. He was teaching adult ed at a local community college. I asked him his subject. Intro to Algebra!

Sayantani Gupta
Sayantani Gupta
11 months ago

Equal mumbo jumbo!

Albert McGloan
Albert McGloan
11 months ago

Not sure why someone would downvote this. The ignorance of people with serious postgraduate degrees doesn’t bode well.

Dominic A
Dominic A
11 months ago
Reply to  Albert McGloan

The very first sentence shows a failure to understand what ‘over-educated’ means (i.e. it actually means what she is complaining about). In psychological terms, the comment displays black & white thinking; overgeneralisation; mind-reading; emotional-reasoning. In everyday terms it is such a stale strident cariacature that it spoils the valid points it is trying to make. It looks for all the World like an ill-thought through-polemic, made for the likes.

Many, e.g. Jonathan Haidt, Bill Maher, having been making these points for over a decade – carefully, constructively, with humour.

Last edited 11 months ago by Dominic A
Allison Barrows
Allison Barrows
11 months ago
Reply to  Dominic A

Thanks for the additional giggle, Dominic!

Dominic A
Dominic A
11 months ago

Ah good – humour is the best defense; pain turns into pleasure, doesn’t get ant better than that.

starkbreath
starkbreath
11 months ago

You can’t trust anyone under 30.

Right-Wing Hippie
Right-Wing Hippie
11 months ago
Reply to  starkbreath

Or over 30! The sweet spot is at precisely 30.

starkbreath
starkbreath
11 months ago

Spot on. Allison, you’re the greatest.

El Uro
El Uro
11 months ago

“And now we have Gen Z shrieking about their fragile mental health every time they have a fight with their boyfriend over whose turn it is to take out the trash”.
.
I’m definitely too old. My wife still doesn’t know where to take out the trash and never knew it 🙁

hayden eastwood
hayden eastwood
11 months ago

Freddie I had no idea we had so much in common.
As someone who would fall into the “disorganised attachment” catchment I find attachment theory useful, within reason.
The take home message for me is that someone who attaches as I do must only ever pair romantically with a stable attacher.
Stable attachers are fortunate in that they can reliably pair with most other attachment styles. They can shoulder the withdrawal of the avoidant and weather the storm of the anxious.
But avoidant, anxious and disorganised attachers form (almost exlusively) explosively volatile relationships with each other.
When it comes to choosing a partner to have children with it’s important to be realistic about how you respond to emotional distance and emotional closeness.
I think the trouble with the theory, much like most theories, is that once Americans get hold of it, they shake it like a dog, apply it frivolously to all situations like a straight-jacket and, thereafter, it becomes so distorted as to be meaningless (like has happened with almost all discussions of “Narcissism”, a term which has now lost all of its original meaning and now speaks of everything from “someone unpleasant” to a “megalomaniac mass murderer”).

Glynis Roache
Glynis Roache
11 months ago

At the current stage of knowledge, turning exclusively to the world of scientific medicine is not as easy as it sounds in this particular instance. Psychiatrists/psychologists are genuinely handicapped in their knowledge of the organ they treat. They can examine aspects of the brain’s form and function with the latest technology but in truth it is an organ, an ‘it’ – a processor/storehouse of current and previous experience with a profusion of inputs from the world around. And from this profusion of inputs and past programming emerges the mind. Which is an ‘I’. And this ‘I’ is a wholly different proposition that can only begin to be unravelled via communication and interpretation. Neuroscientists can look at a fancy scan and see a specific part of a person’s brain light up and say – ‘oh look – happy!’ But why the patient is happy is an entirely different matter. A successful murderer or a triumphant lover? Your choice if you just consult the brain as an organ.
  There are certain correlations between form and function of course – which has, with the scientific advances, naturally encouraged a professional drift towards the more solid ground of neurobiology. The aim being to further develop the means by which to observe impaired function and parallel it with the mechanics of correction. For stroke and accident victims etc. this approach is of immense benefit. For psychological disorders, not so much. Even the drugs are mostly symptomatic treatment. A cover up or diminution of symptoms that doesn’t specifically help patients interpret their own depths or come to any emotional resolution – though it may give them a calmer breathing space in which to do so.

John Lammi
John Lammi
11 months ago
Reply to  Glynis Roache

My Effectively treating an anxiety disorder has never had anything to do with medicine

J Bryant
J Bryant
11 months ago

I would give this fine essay an A+ for the following observation alone: “NPR, which is a good guide to the id of the overeducated American liberal.”

Martin Johnson
Martin Johnson
11 months ago
Reply to  J Bryant

When I first read that I chuckled, but I would say “highly credentialed” because while they have certificates and have spent time in the system, they are not educated. Trained in occupational techniques, yes; indoctrinated into the au courant beliefs and norms, certainly; educated, no, not at all.

Last edited 11 months ago by Martin Johnson
Right-Wing Hippie
Right-Wing Hippie
11 months ago
Reply to  J Bryant

I’d like to know from which factory NPR orders the soporific robots it uses as its newsreaders, and whether that factory could change the default persona to, say, Macho Man Randy Savage.

Joel Guarna
Joel Guarna
11 months ago

I’m a fan of Freddie’s writing wherever it appears. It is usually clear, coherent, and precise. However, the language in this article is a hot mess. He is conflating psychology, a science of human behavior, with mental health treatment, which is the application of different bodies of knowledge by a wide variety of different disciplines from social workers to therapists to psychiatrists and primary care physicians (the de facto mental health providers for most people). He then conflates medicine with science. While there is much hard science in the body of medical knowledge applied by physicians, the practice is much more of a collection of principles and techniques. Regardless, psychology is not a branch of medicine. In fact, psychology’s decades-long dance with medicine has led to the over-medicalization of human suffering that has caused a lot of harm. This is a LOT of confusion, and we haven’t even gotten past the subtitle.

Dominic A
Dominic A
11 months ago
Reply to  Joel Guarna

Psychiatry is a branch of medicine – the one that is obsessed with medical type lables (as seen in the DSM, and its pill for ever problem mentality) – I get the impression you are conflating psychology with psychiatry. There are ten or so main branches of psychology, few if any, I would say, are over-medicalised.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
11 months ago
Reply to  Dominic A

Psychologists can’t prescribe.

Mike Bell
Mike Bell
11 months ago

“The result is a system that’s non-falsifiable, and thus not useful.” Well said.
The claim that parenting style A will result in attachment style X is easily falsifiable:
Two children, with the same parenting can end up with two opposite characters; One could be compliant to the parental demands and a compliant adult, the other could stand against it and become a rebel.Someone with insecure attachment might find a loving relationship and settle into it. Another with secure attachment could pick unreliable partners who let them down and develop the sypmtoms of the other attachment.

Sarah Robinson
Sarah Robinson
11 months ago

I’m an avoidant type too. I always seem to attract anxious types whose neediness drives me nuts. I wonder too whether some of we avoidant types are just hyper aware of the fragility of our fellow humans and are less tolerant of whims, inconsistencies and the problems associated with a lack of EQ.I’ve tried frank discussions when things go astray. They never seem to have a positive outcome – behaviour change is so hard. Anxious types just get ever more anxious when they know you’ve got doubts, because you’ve shared them in an attempt at an open ended discussion. Alan de Botton is hot on all this childhood wounds stuff – he thinks we’re all doomed to end up parenting our infantile partners, and if we are lucky have our inner childhood needs met in return. Hasn’t felt very reciprocal to me!

John Lammi
John Lammi
11 months ago

Psychology should be based in good scientific research and good theorizing, but not on “medicine “. WHY would it be based on medicine?

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
11 months ago
Reply to  John Lammi

Exactly.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
11 months ago

This is a strange piece. Someone is warning us off googling attachment theory and applying it to our life without understanding more than a meme. This does not need saying, does it? But it goes on to offer us the authors amateur self-diagnoses of a type of attachment theory. What is going on with this article?
I pointed out that Andrew Doyle’s article about a sodomite being punished for philandering was trolling someone who was being punished by a feminist Telegram group because he was allegedly philandering. The victim had just put up a Facebook post the day before Doyle’s article was published. Doyle’s article was prepared in advance.
Part of the same Facebook post can be interpreted as confessing to what de Boer confesses to in this article, “When I’ve wanted to end a relationship […] I was trying to avoid was not present.” De Boer trolls the victim of harassment in other ways as well. This is the aim of the article, which is why it so strange.
This victim is trying to expose an online Telegram group chat that harasses, stalks, drugs, robs, and sexually assaults men. In other actions, they aim to provoke a reaction from the victim that they can catch on camera. They also hack emails and mobile phones to garner material to conducts a smear campaign against him online. Sadly, many people are fooled into taking part, believing what is said about him in the smear campaign. If you want another perspective check out his Substack:  interpocula | Substack

Steve Jolly
Steve Jolly
11 months ago

Fascinating. The author mentions how he dislikes religion, spirituality, and ‘woo-woo’, expresses his familiarity with and fondness for whatever is trending in the world of self-help and psychology, notes the similarities between these things and astrology, which even most religious people consider ridiculous, and yet manages not to to draw any personal insight from this, his faith in ‘science’, ‘education’, and ‘expertise’ intact despite the evidence he offers that it might in fact be less than gospel truth. Like all worshipers at the altar of scientific empiricism, he’s trying to stand on his own head. The entire concept rests upon an impossibility, that objective truth can be gleaned from the same source as everything else, ourselves, and separated into ‘truth’ and ‘woo-woo’ by the same minds equally capable of both. It is thus no surprise to me that the trends of self styled over-educated liberals look remarkably like astrology. Both astrology and psychology were invented by mankind to explain things we perceive. Which is more accurate? Well, if the universe is fully deterministic, then the relative positions of the stars and planets, while they do not ’cause’ events in our lives, nevertheless would correspond to a particular state of the universe, which includes us and whatever we’re doing, so in a sense both the positions of stars and planets and our actions are all predetermined and if one truly understood all the interactions between the one and the other and the nature of all interactions in the deterministic universe, one could deduce the former from the latter, or vice versa. Of course, that too is speculation from my mind. Really, there is no truly objective way to know, as whatever we know as ‘truth’ and however we know it, as well as all fiction, every piece of ridiculous nonsense, were all conceived of by us.
Religion, at least, interrupts this endless recursion by positing the existence of a greater being, beings, energy, spirit, truth, or at least something which is beyond our understanding which we may perhaps perceive indirectly, but never understand, that defines truth, morality, and other important concepts in a way that doesn’t refer back to ourselves in a manner we don’t and can’t understand. I’ve always thought of religion as basically accepting the limitations of oneself and professing faith in someone or something greater than us. It requires a degree of humility, a virtue I find sorely lacking in modern humans, so it makes sense that religion and spirituality would be on the decline. This makes no difference to me, as by whatever blessing, curse, or quirk of biology, I have little inclination to ape the views and opinions of my fellow apes. I have always been this way, but I have come to understand this personal trait is rather uncommon.
Given my opinion of mankind in its individual form is quite low and my opinion of humanity collectively is far lower than that, I’ve always been of the religious persuasion, but rather amorphous beyond that. Christianity appeals to me because it seems most logical. It’s basic truism, do unto others, strikes me as being logical in a closed loop sort of way, recognizing as it does the self-referential nature of our existence which I posited in the first paragraph. It’s the sort of insight I would expect to come from a being greater than ourselves, or at least one of us who had a far greater insight into something beyond than I do.

Jane Davis
Jane Davis
11 months ago

Attachment theory started as a corrective to the overly fantasy based approach of Psychoanalysis, where children who had been separated from their parents during war were diagnosed without reference to their trauma or social circumstances.
It is only based on one or two experiments, which were endlessly repeated but not greatly modified – see Mary Ainsworth’s work.
Like much Psychology, it is culture blind – for example, Buddhist theory actually promotes non attachment whereas some religions deify family relationships in an idealistic way.
Bowlby also focuses on the mother almost exclusively and doesn’t mention the father or siblings, who also have a big impact.
This is a great article. Most personality theories have some truth and usefulness – and I’m including the MBTI because it raises questions of how we orientate ourselves to the world that are missing from ‘valid’ stuff like the Big Five.
They are all interpretations as the writer says. Human behaviour and relationships are too many layered and complex to be reduced to simplistic formulas.

Aphrodite Rises
Aphrodite Rises
11 months ago

To me this reads like one long advertisement: religion is woo hoo; put your mental health in the hands of the professionals.

Simon S
Simon S
11 months ago

Freddie – I am a regression hypnotherapist and tomorrow as it happens I am having a third session with a client who came to me saying he suffered from separation anxiety. He is much, much better and cannot believe his progress.

It takes a lot of courage to assume responsibility for our own healing – especially when instead of aiming only for (usually temporary) symptom alleviation we decide to address and resolve the underlying causes, which is achieved tbrough identifying the causal event(s), reliving and cathartically releasing them, forgiving the other party or parties, and (lastly) cognitive reframing.

If you would like a free 30-minute consultation, please visit my site! http://www.tigereyehealing.com

Last edited 11 months ago by Simon S
Simon S
Simon S
11 months ago
Reply to  Simon S

Baffled by the down vote(s). I must live in a parallel universe!

Last edited 11 months ago by Simon S
Vir Raga
Vir Raga
11 months ago

My main issue with Attachment theory is that it fails to allow for happy hermits. The theory implies everyone should be attached to a special other, and that those who are not attached must be suffering. But some people are genuinely happy to live solo. The solitary life does not have to be a pathology.

Nell Clover
Nell Clover
11 months ago

Attachment theory. Just the use of the word theory in this context tells me this is quack nonsense that in no way is related to medical or any other science.

Attachment conjecture (to give it a scientific name) is another example of the expanding field of non-science (pronounced “nonsense”) masquerading as science. The driver for this is pure commercial opportunism that is destroying universities as centres of knowledge and advancement.

Entrepreneurs and corporations have an inexhaustible need for new products and services. The rapid expansion of universities has created an almost inexhaustible need for new areas of research and an insatiable demand for income to fund the new academic positions. The graduates of the universities need the jobs. And we the public are suckers for ideas-based marketing, especially relating to our wellbeing and health.

The danger is obvious: the commercialisation of research causes academia to lose all objectivity, spawning highly saleable dogma that then is transferred into the marketplace for the financial gain of all involved. The problem is most acute in social sciences and psychological medicine because the former is largely subjective and the latter is so vague due to sheer complexity.

This isn’t new of course. The late Victorian and Edwardian period saw an almost comedic proliferation of ideas badged as “scientific” and “theory”. And this wasn’t just kranks: respectable luminaries of the age were cashing in with their own hocus pocus. These “theories” eventually led to very dark conclusions such as eugenics (go read the Guardian archive from this period to see how self-supposing intelligent people are the most dangerous).

The eventual pushback then was state regulation. But this has proven to be just a stickingplaster. Today regulators are staffed by the same groups whom they are supposed to regulate and sometimes funded by the groups they’re supposed to investigate. Regulatory capture has left us once again defenceless against the hubris of theoreticians, human hunger for fortune, and our own narcissism.

Last edited 11 months ago by Nell Clover
Dominic A
Dominic A
11 months ago
Reply to  Nell Clover

“Just the use of the word theory in this context tells me this is quack nonsense that in no way is related to medical or any other science.”
It does not tell you that – ‘that’ is just your theory. You’re a psychologist or similar, who has read Bowlby, and are familiar with the formative studies, and the subsequent ones that support, adapt, challenge the concepts?

Nell Clover
Nell Clover
11 months ago
Reply to  Dominic A

This isn’t my theory, it is the precise scientific definition of the word theory. Easy for non-scientists to get wrong, but the tell tale for those who aren’t scientists hawking non-science as science.

In the field of science a conjecture is an idea that can’t be empirically tested as there is no agreed way of testing it.

In the field of science a hypothesis is an idea that can be empirically tested and either has been proven or makes no further testable predictions.

In the field of science a theory is a an idea that has been empirically tested, proven, and has made further testable predictions that too have been tested and proven. Relatively few ideas achieve the gold standard to be called theories.

Last edited 11 months ago by Nell Clover
Aphrodite Rises
Aphrodite Rises
11 months ago
Reply to  Nell Clover

In science nothing is actually proven, a hypothesis may be accepted when the supporting evidence is considered sufficient. A conjecture is something implied by the accepted science, yet to be tested or implied by the available evidence.

Last edited 11 months ago by Aphrodite Rises
Mike Bell
Mike Bell
11 months ago
Reply to  Nell Clover

or ‘hypothesis’.
In the scientific method, you then test the hypothesis to collect evidence.

starkbreath
starkbreath
11 months ago
Reply to  Nell Clover

Agree wholeheartedly except for the last sentence. We are not defenceless, that’s just what these manipulative shitweasels want us to believe.

Steve Murray
Steve Murray
11 months ago

There is of course, one very long-standing theory in human psychology which the author merely touches on; which is useful rather than true – that is, useful until it’s not, or until it’s taken to extremes.

Can you guess what it is?

Dominic A
Dominic A
11 months ago
Reply to  Steve Murray

Gen-Duh?

Steve Murray
Steve Murray
11 months ago
Reply to  Dominic A

No, more ancient than that concept.

Dominic A
Dominic A
11 months ago
Reply to  Steve Murray

“my parents were remarkably libertine, relentlessly loving, and gave us the opportunity to express our feelings. It’s true that we were raised to be independent and make our own choices. But this wasn’t a result of neglect; it was, in fact, a purposeful approach to parenting, and thus a reflection of love.”

Stoicism?

Kate Madrid
Kate Madrid
11 months ago

I heard the most obvious thing recently. So obvious and important that it’s invisible. It was that if you want to heal someone, you have to know what wholeness is. So when you go looking for an “expert,” or “medical professional” to heal you, you might want to find out what that expert thinks wholeness is. Can an atheist be an expert on a religious animal?

laura m
laura m
11 months ago

A problematic social trend is increasing and promoted in memes and pop psychology journals like Psychology Today. Estranging parents to reclaim your “mental health” with the use of “boundaries”. These term mean anything the person shunning their families want it to mean. Interestingly, when they become parents they practice “extreme attachment” methods while discarding their loving parents/grandparents.

Bret Larson
Bret Larson
11 months ago

There is another issue these ideas have. Choice.

Christopher Barclay
Christopher Barclay
11 months ago

No competent psychologist would rely on one theory or indicator. That is the moral of the story. Attachment theory is just one such theory, though seemingly quite useful.

Jane Davis
Jane Davis
11 months ago

Mental Health does not have the validity, reliability or replicatability of many physical health problems. Mainly due to the relative infancy of neuroscience but also because the sociological element is often neglected.

Erik nielsen
Erik nielsen
11 months ago

I would have liked some links to the scientific critiques of attachment theory rather than just the author’s personal case study.

Sarah Owens
Sarah Owens
11 months ago

Throwing the Big Five personality dimensions into the same category as Myers Briggs or attachment theory is misleading. Big Five personality traits are normally distributed and therefore most people are ‘in the middle’ rather than being divided into ‘types’ at the extremes. This is because it is an empirically derived model using factor analysis rather than a top-down attempt to apply somebody’s psychological theory to the data.

Amy Harris
Amy Harris
11 months ago

The author comes across as deeply confused. A mystery as to why… until the latter part of the piece and there it is! His disclosure about being an atheist. Atheism is a symptom of avoidant style of attachment. There’s his answer. Open a bible, try going to church. Praying he finds the meaning he so deeply seeks.

Aphrodite Rises
Aphrodite Rises
11 months ago
Reply to  Amy Harris

It seems to me, the author is arguing against all other pseudo-religions in an attempt to convince the reader his is the only true pseudo-religion.

Amy Harris
Amy Harris
11 months ago

Quite! I do love it when I get the greatest number of down votes. It means I’m right over target and the truth is making people uncomfortable!

denz
denz
11 months ago
Reply to  Amy Harris

Amy, your comment implies that you receive the largest number of downvotes frequently. Consider then, that your truth/the truth does not actually make others uncomfortable, but rather that you write a lot of tosh.

Aphrodite Rises
Aphrodite Rises
11 months ago
Reply to  denz

Resorting to insults supports Amy’s interpretation of the downvotes. I guess you have a democratic view of truth (or rather it’s approximation): the more upvotes there are, the greater the truth content, the more downvotes, the less the truth content. For me, posting regardless of the number of downvotes indicates strength of character. Not someone who bends with the wind. The wind in this case being downvotes and insults.

Last edited 11 months ago by Aphrodite Rises
Clare Knight
Clare Knight
11 months ago

Denz wasn’t insulting. He didn’t criticize Amy as a person just her actions, her writing. It’s the comments section so one’s comments are fair game, are they not?

Aphrodite Rises
Aphrodite Rises
11 months ago
Reply to  Clare Knight

Suggesting someone’s writing is tosh is hurling an insult which is different to disagreeing with content.

Last edited 11 months ago by Aphrodite Rises
El Uro
El Uro
11 months ago
Reply to  denz

Nothing like this! When a person writes nonsense, the nonsense is simply ignored. But the reaction to the generally innocuous advice to read the Bible means it has outraged many. I should note that all communists are atheists. This allowed them to kill millions for completely rational Marxist reasons.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
11 months ago
Reply to  denz

Well said.

El Uro
El Uro
11 months ago
Reply to  Amy Harris

“I do love it when I get the greatest number of down votes“ – #MeToo

Last edited 11 months ago by El Uro