Speaker 1: 0:00

In the world of attachment theory. What do you do with the kids that you can't classify? That's what we're going to talk about today the unclassifiable kids in attachment theory. The strange situation test came about in 1969 by Mary Ainsworth when she was following up on John Bowlby's theories about attachment. Essentially, the strange situation test would take infants up to a year old and put them into circumstances of uncertainty in strange situations, both in place and with people. That would create in the child parental anxiety. That would then allow the researchers to see how the children reacted. Now, when Mary Ainsworth was conducting the strange situation, she was doing so with essentially a standard middle class group of kids and what she found was that the majority of them had what she would later classify as a secure attachment. They showed anxiety when their parent left but then showed parent-seeking behaviors when the parent returned. That was the majority, but there was a subset of kids, a minority, who showed different behaviors. Others group of kids there were some who showed very little visible distress upon separation from the parents and didn't show a lot when the parents came back either. And this contradicted John Bowlby's theory that children have this built-in need for survival, to have physical proximity to their parents to their caregiver, so this caused a bit of a problem. Ainsworth eventually determined that this was essentially a mask of distress, that these children had learned by their interactions with their parents that showing emotion was not a good strategy to have their parents be close to them, so they didn't show any. Now they were able to later determine by checking their heart rate that these children were experiencing anxiety. They just weren't showing it, and these are the children that ultimately came to be termed avoidant. There were other children in this minority who showed distress even before their caregivers left, and when they came back the caregiver returned, they showed distress again, sometimes anger. It's as if they didn't trust their presence of their caregiver, even when they were right there, even when they returned, and these children were termed anxious.

Speaker 1: 2:06

So we had secure kids who had what we would expect. They were nervous when their parents left. They had anxiety when their parent left, but then they were calmed and happy to see their parent and went to them when their parents returned. We had the children who showed very little distress when their parents left and didn't show much when the parents got back. Those were the avoidant. And we have kids who are just kind of always dysregulated. They never seemed to trust that their parent was going to be there for them. And those were the anxious kids. But there was an even smaller subset of these children who had essentially unclassifiable reactions.

Speaker 1: 2:41

In reviewing these videos, mary Ainsworth had developed criteria that she wanted her coders to look at. They would see behaviors. They would mark those behaviors down and then code them in such a way that the child would be placed into a category Either the child was secure, avoidant or anxious in their attachment essentially as the terms have now come to be understood. But there were some kids they couldn't classify. These were the unclassifiable kids. What did their behaviors mean? This was a problem for Mary Ainsworth because it started to cast some doubt on her theory. You know, if you have these outlier kids who can't really be classified in what you're saying are the three classes, then what does that mean for your theory? There was some temptation to try to shoehorn these kids into other categories, definitely not secure, but trying to determine if these kids were anxious or these kids were avoidant, trying to put them into that classification. But then Mary Ainsworth had a student named Mary Main and Mary Main started thinking about this a little differently. Main noticed that in 10% of the strange situation group from 1969, that the infants were showing a combination of patterns, that they had some desire to go toward their parent, but also they were trying to avoid them at the same time, and they had this inner conflict going. They had this need to be with their parent. They had their need to be away from their parent. Now they started collecting more samples and there was an ever-increasing amount of these children that they were determining had this kind of disorganized. They ultimately came to be called attachment style. They seemed confused, they didn't quite know what to do, and so they started studying this group more.

Speaker 1: 4:25

Now, during this time period, in the 70s and then in the 80s, when they were looking at these children, there was also at the same time in the culture an increase of assessment of children who have gone through trauma. There was more of an emphasis on helping these children cope, figuring out how to deal with these children. They would have things like therapeutic daycares, where they took children who had been identified by social services as having been abused or neglected and they would put them in these therapeutic daycares, and they started videoing some of these interactions in the daycares as well, which provided additional data for people like Mary Main to consider. Mary Main also had a partner. His last name was Solomon, and they were looking at these behaviors.

Speaker 1: 5:07

So there's a whole list of behaviors, and I'm going to read some, that they were starting to code as being disorganized. So they would have overt displays of fear of the caregiver, contradictory behaviors of affects occurring simultaneously or sequentially. They would have asymmetric, misdirected or jerky movements, or they would freeze and even apparent association. One of the most telltale signs that Mary Main came up with ultimately was a child who, upon the return of their caregiver, would put their hand over their mouth. That came to be for them sort of a classic example of a child with a disorganized behavior.

Speaker 1: 5:46

So, essentially, what they were starting to see was that these infants, these children, did have this strong desire to be physically close with their caregiver, but they had learned that being physically close to the caregiver wasn't safe, unfortunately, and so they would do all sorts of interesting things that they had trouble classifying. You know a lot of it came down to. These children might approach the caregiver but then avert their eyes. It was almost as if they were getting overwhelmed. They were compelled to go physically to their caregiver. But at the same time as they were approaching their caregiver, they're starting to get overwhelmed. They were starting to get not able to control their emotions anymore, but they were afraid of having that display of emotion because that didn't go well for them in the past. Potentially so what you would have would be this physically seeking behavior or going to the parent, while also engaging, even just unconsciously, in some strategies to help divert their attention from the fact that they're about to go to the person who has hurt them in the past or who has made them feel unsafe, even if it's not being physically hurt. So that is an example of that disorganized behavior wanting the physical proximity being overcome by the emotion, the anxiety of being near that person and having a physical manifestation of that inner conflict.

Speaker 1: 7:06

Now it was theorized that children who displayed this kind of disorganized behavior perhaps it was the result of trauma and that as they got into adolescence there were going to be more difficulties that these children would experience. And that turned out to be the case. In the 90s they did additional research and they determined that children who had displayed this sort of disorganized behavior when they were younger had an increase in their difficulties as adolescents, including dissociation. So this is considered to be a moderate connection, a moderate association between a child who exhibited disorganized behaviors in the strain situation test and then that same child having indices of dissociation when they were an adolescent. It doesn't show causation but it does indicate that, at least on a moderate level, these two things go together. They did additional research that was able to remove as a potential cause a specific trauma that these children had undergone. So you had essentially these adolescents who had shown disorganized behavior as kids who now, as adolescents, had indices of association that was not connected to a specific trauma that they could identify. Ultimately, what that does is it supports the idea that, even though it's just this moderate connection between the disorganized attachment style and association in adolescence, that perhaps that is what the connection is, you can't prove the causality, but by removing this alternate cause you make it more likely that whatever is causing that disorganized relationship is what's leading to this association as well. Doesn't prove it, but suggests it.

Speaker 1: 8:40

Later in the 90s they did a meta-analysis of various studies that came to the conclusion that some 48% of children who had shown this sort of disorganized attachment had in fact experienced forms of abuse or neglect when they were younger. So in various ways, we're getting to the idea that, even if it's not a specific trauma that caused from this one acute trauma caused this sort of disorganized behavior and then association. What we were figuring out is that there is abuse and neglect that is connected to this form of disorganized attachment style. So let's think about where we are now. We started off with Mary Ainsworth coming up with the shrink situation test that had the three categories the secure, the insecure, because it's either anxious or avoidant and then having these outliers, these unclassifiable kids. Well, now, through the work of Mary Main, they've started to determine that these unclassifiables are really exhibiting behaviors that indicate that they're both wanting to be with their parent but afraid to be with their parent, and that's why it's disorganized. But what does that really mean? What is happening there?

Speaker 1: 9:48

There's been lots of critiques about this disorganized attachment as being a co-equal fourth portion of attachment. Some folks have criticized it by saying well, it's really just a catch-all, it's not some fourth thing. You're just having a weakness in your three categories, in the secure, the insecure, avoidant and the insecure, anxious. And so, since you have a weakness in your model and you've got these things that don't fit this Allen and Misfit toys, you're going to just say, oh, it's this other kind, it's this other attachment style, disorganized. So that's a critique of the disorganized style.

Speaker 1: 10:27

What Mary Main ultimately came to say was that it's not so much a brand new fourth kind, it's not completely its own category. Really, what it is is the child having this inner conflict. You can think of it more as being on a spectrum of how avoidant are you as the child in your attachment style or how anxious are you. What it might be is that you have a child who has an avoidant attachment style, who has just gotten so overcome by all of the emotions that they're trying to process at the same time, the fear and the need that they start to show disorganized behaviors. Same thing with an anxious attachment style the child may be anxiously attached but in the moment be so overcome by this conflicting need that they have to be both with and away from their caregiver that they show this disorganized style. So this disorganized behavior is them attempting by either looking away, by engaging in some other behavior which could even be their arm flailing about, their hands slamming on the ground. Whatever it is that they're doing, their behavior is an unconscious attempt to get control of their emotional state so that they can permit themselves to be as physically close as possible to their caregiver, even though the caregiver may be a little scary. That's essentially what Mary Main is saying here.

Speaker 1: 11:51

Here's one description of an actual little girl that was being studied, being observed. They said this one little girl cried desperately for her father to return. Throughout the entire separation, in the strange situation experiment At the moment of reunion, she looked into his face and became completely silent, her chest heaving with the apparent effort of holding back her tears. In a moment she turned away to examine the toys at her feet. The remainder of the episode is followed by silent play, despite her father's obvious attempts to interact.

Speaker 1: 12:21

In further thinking about what can cause this sort of disorganized attachment style, mary Main came to the conclusion that it doesn't just need to be that a parent's behavior is frightening to the child. The parent's behavior could be frightened. The child could develop this disorganized pattern not just because their parent was abusive to them or neglectful, as we might think. It could be the case that the parent themselves was undergoing such trauma or stress that they were displaying extremely frightened behavior, which the child was seeing and interpreting, even seeing their parent engaged in this frightened behavior, indicating that they themselves are frightened of the world, was enough for a child to eventually develop this disorganized attachment style.

Speaker 1: 13:04

Ultimately, the unclassifiable kids got a classification. That classification was a disorganized attachment style. What that means is disputed by various people. Some people don't like that as a category at all. Some people think it's its own thing, that it's equal to the other classifications. It's equal to secure avoidant, anxious attachments. As it's equal to secure avoidant, anxious attachments, the bottom line way to think about these unclassifiable kids are that they themselves are subject to such inner conflict that they don't fit the other categories.

Speaker 1: 13:39

Bottom line is your heart goes out for these children who've experienced this kind of disruption in their attachment with their primary caregiver. It's something basic that we all need and, unfortunately, for a lot of kids, this is something they just don't quite get. It can lead to all sorts of issues in the future, including, as we've seen, potentially dissociation as well. Kids who, as they become adolescents and even as adults, get so overwhelmed, unconsciously, by the emotion of the situation that their body compels them in some way to take some action that reduces the emotional load so that they can exist. What can we do as parents to avoid that? To be present, to be responsive, to be attuned, to help our children understand that we love them, no matter what, to be present for them when they need us, to give them the attention that they desire, to not scare them, to not give them trauma, to not let them perceive us to be afraid of this world. Those are the kinds of things that we can do to avoid creating more unclassifiable kids.